Evaluate This!

It's that time of the year again at my place of employment.  What time you ask?  Evaluation time.  I hate evaluations!  Not only are they demeaning:  tell us what you think of your performance.  But, they leave you (me) feeling deflated and anxious:  here's why that's not good enough.  I have never liked evals, no matter the job or company.  I don't think I am alone in this thinking either.  People of different levels and titles, all seem to dread this process.  Who came up with this junk?  Usually there is a tie between your eval and expected bonus and/or raise.  That makes them all the more critical and annoying.  I feel like the manager's job in these scenarios is to justify not giving you what you either deserve and/or want.  My biggest problem with these corporate torture tactics is, you submit your self-evaluation, then the manager gets to look it over, before meeting with you.  But you get their subsequent "rebuttals" at the time of your one-on-one meeting.  So you're reading their crap, while they verbally try to jazz it up in your face.  You never get the full scope until you get back to your desk.  Yeah, they offer you "a few minutes to look it over", but for a slow and OCD reader like myself, I feel ridiculous taking my time to read it while they wait.  My face starts to get hot and flushed, my stomach begins to tighten as I read the same sentence over and over trying to comprehend their comments.  My girl, Ang, says the fair thing would be for both parties to exchange their evals at the same time.  That way you know exactly how they really feel about your performance, not their answer or response to what you feel you've done.  It would force them to be as "creative" as you to come up with something fresh and thoughtful.  Furthermore, I wonder how many times, I have ranked myself a 2 or 3 and my manager may have thought I deserved a 4 or 5, but seeing my low self ranking, they decide to follow suit with my score.  And yes, I used the term score, because that's how it feels.  In my head I'm on the Star Search stage with Ed McMahon, patiently receiving my three and a quarter stars all the while attempting to look like I am a good sport about it.  As I type this post, I am very much aware of tomorrow's looming deadline that hangs over my head like a cloud.  I don't want to do it.  I guess I will pull last year's evaluation and see how I've progressed.  Just twelve months ago, I set some goals for myself.  As of today, I have no idea what those goals are.  Maybe this year I should include procrastination and retentive memory as goals for 2013.