What started as an innocent project meeting took a dark turn this week when 33-year-old Megan McDermott asked her boss for some honest feedback and – startlingly – received it.
Pausing at the conference room door, McDermott asked her boss, Jeorgia Harris, what she really thought of the project she just presented, being so bold as to use terms like “I love constructive criticism” and “I can handle it.”
Instead of the anticipated compliments, Harris told McDermott that she expected more progress to have been made on the Watson project.
“I mean, what the fuck?” says McDermott. “You’re supposed to say something nice! Everyone knows ‘constructive criticism’ is code for ‘compliment’ followed by something vague I can improve upon but never really fix!”
“Later my boss told me that I seem more confident speaking in meetings recently,” McDermott adds. “But I do wonder if that’s because she saw me tearing up in my cubicle after we spoke.”
Harris weighed in on the developing story.
“I do think she seemed more confident in speaking,” Harris says. “But I wish that confidence was a bit less fragile because since I gave her the bit of constructive criticism she explicitly asked for, she’s been playing Johnny Cash’s cover of ‘Hurt’ out loud on her work computer. It’s distracting.”
McDermott remains unsure how she’s meant to go on in such a “punitive work environment”, but reports that she is trying to move on with her life.
Later that night, at a P.F. Chang’s, McDermott asked her date if he thought things were going well, being so bold as to use terms like “constructive criticism” and “I can handle it.”
