A few months into my job at a Chicago ad agency. A Drexel University student started his second internship in my department. This position had been arranged months before I started my job, thus I was not involved in the hiring process and didn’t know much about him.
The 6-months of this 2nd tour with the agency came and went really quickly. He always did great work, had a great sense of humor. We connected over our mutual interest in baseball and movies.
He never balked at working overtime –including a 100-plus hour week during a new business pitch. Frankly, I had mixed feelings about that. His hourly was roughly equivalent to jack-shit. Though he was willing to do it for the experience and to hang out with his agency friends.
After he went back to school, I received some forms from his school’s internship program. It was for a performance review.
I had done performance reviews in the past, but I’d never had an intern who’d reported directly to me. So, I hadn’t expected this request from he university.
My practice was to do the reviews in a neutral setting: over coffee, or beer, or in a park, etc. He was already in Philadelphia, so that was not an option.
Or was it?
Around that same time, a long-time friend (who was a professor at Penn,) had been talking about my coming out there so that we could hit a few East Coast baseball games.
I pitched (pun intended) some weeks that I could fly out there. Several were free for both of us. Thus, I sent my former intern, Steve, a note to see if could meet us at a Phillies game.
I booked a cheap direct flight to Philadelphia. I contacted Steve and arranged a meeting place, ”Gate 1 of Veteran’s Stadium…”
I arrived in at the Philly airport two weeks later. I did the paperwork for the performance review at my friend’s house that afternoon.
Two days later, I was here:
Veterans Stadium
(Paul Altobelli / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
That stadium was ugly, the Phillies were bad, and it was a hellishly hot day. It wasn’t hard to find privacy. My former intern and I just walked up four rows from where my friend and his kids sat. We went over the review form and returned a few minutes later.
Certainly employee-performance reviews during the 3rd inning of a Phillies game is one those things that is no longer a thing.
What is the Zoom equivalent?
