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. Continued...