Desperately Pleading the Fifth

Now here's some news about corporate sleaziness:

Back in November, our company distributed a questionnaire to all employees asking them to rate their direct managers. The questionnaire contained about 25 questions probing us about all aspects of the employee/manager relationship. The company assured us that the questionnaire would be done on a 100% anonymous basis: Absolutely no one would have to worry about their individual answers being made known to anyone else. So far, so good.

In mid-February, the company announced the results for everyone to see. To make the results more meaningful (their words), the company revealed to each manager the breakdown of answers within their individual department. For example, my department consists of seven employees reporting to one manager. The results provided the manager with the seven exact answers to each question, but fortunately did not reveal exactly how the individual employee answered any given question.

I personally considered that somewhat of a breach of anonymity, but the manager still did not know exactly who provided which answer. So I swallowed my sense of violation and got back to work.

Well, last week, our manager informed us that the company now wanted each manager of each group to have one-on-one meetings with each employee to get a better idea of what was on employees' minds. This really made me feel uneasy, but our manager assured us that everyone's anonymity would be honored.

Today, I discovered just what that meant: Our manager scheduled one-hour one-on-one meetings with each of us. When my time came, I showed up as planned. I was expecting some sort of generic, non-specific discussion with my manager in which she would ask for suggestions on how we could improve productivity within our department. Boy was I wrong!

After I sat down, my manager pulled out a complete copy of the questionnaire and proceeded to step through the questions one by one in order to get my direct input for each! I sat there somewhat shell-shocked. I did my best to deliver non-answers on each question, but I soon realized there are only so many ways you can deliver a non-answer without it sounding exactlly like your previous non-answers.

I'm still a bit stunned. I don't know whether I should emit a very loud sigh of relief...or wait for the next shoe to drop!