Back in the good old days, when a manager didn't think an employee was performing up to corporate expectations, there was a simple way to handle the matter. The manager simply hired another employee to take up the slacker's slack.

These days, ineffective workers do not get the backup staff they deserve. Sad to relate, due to the worldwide economic meltdown, and a lack of government cash after executive bonuses are paid, workers who can't do their jobs inevitably become workers who don't have a job.

Of course, the firing doesn't happen immediately. That requires a manager to make a decision, and that could lead to lawsuits. (Since when did making your direct report spend their afternoons detailing your Bentley become an "unfair labor practice?" We pay these people salaries, don't we? They are our slaves, aren't they?)

Besides, firing someone is too quick and easy. Much better to slowly drive them crazy with a series of toxic performance reviews.

The performance review has become the iron maiden of the 21st century. No medieval torture instrument can inflict the pain possible in a loosely worded, legally vetted document that outlines your sins and omissions over the previous 12 months.

Of course, a more naive individual — some dewy-eyed naif, fresh from Harvard Business School — might actually view a bad review as a template to help an employee improve their performance. We experienced soldiers of corporate fortune know better. A bad review is merely the first step on a steep and slippery slope that leads directly to the portals of the unemployment office.

This undeniable fact of business life makes one wonder why Matt Villano, a writer for "The New York Times'" Career Couch column, would waste words providing expert opinions on how to respond to a negative performance review.

"It's important to see bad reviews as wonderful gifts," is the view of Wendy Kaufman, chief executive officer of Balancing Life's Issues, and my personal candidate for Miss Goody Two-Shoes of 2008. "At the very least, they are going to make you stronger and give you a roadmap of strategies to do your job better down the road."

As the recipient of so many "wonderful gifts," I'm thinking that thee and me should be feeling pretty darn lucky to have a string of really rotten reviews in our past. And I now realize that we should have responded to these gifts with childlike glee, instead of breaking down in uncontrollable sobbing, punctuated by cries for mercy.

But get this — even this most natural response to a bad review apparently represents inappropriate workplace behavior. According to Paul Shrivastava, professor of management at Bucknell University, employees should take 24 hours to "digest the feedback they received in a negative review."

"Generally, when we get bad news, we need some time alone to marinate in it and let the gravity of the feedback sink in," Professor Shrivastava teaches. "It's probably a good idea to give yourself time to process the review before you react, just so you don't do something you might regret."

In other words, even our response to a bad review gets a bad review.

I am all for marinating, and have a most excellent recipe for a marinade. The ingredients are gin, vermouth and an olive, chilled to the temperature of a HR person's heart. Still, I believe that nothing can save your job, or demonstrate your willingness to change, better than a good, wrenching cry, especially when delivered on your knees, your face buried in the hem of your manager's dress, with your gasping promises to do better — to be better! — echoing up and down the halls of Mahogany Row.

This technique, in fact, is so effective that many experienced survivors of bad reviews suggest breaking into inconsolable weeping the moment your manager enters the room.

Perhaps the most surprising fact columnist Villano exposes is the existence of individuals so clueless that they wonder if it is advisable to question one's manager's conclusions. In case you harbor any such feelings, let me be the first to tell you —- the person who signs your paycheck is always right. Perhaps if you had remembered that simple fact of workplace life, you wouldn't be getting a bad review in the first place.

That's why I say - turn on the waterworks and hope for the best. And if an emotional breakdown doesn't work, all you can do is hope that your boss needs someone to detail his Bentley.

Bob Goldman has been an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@funnybusiness.com. To find out more about Bob Goldman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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