Self-Evaluation

March 1, 2018

In this strip Wilfrid’s sage advice is sought by Norton to evaluate his employee self-evaluation at work. That probably defeats the purpose of the whole self-evaluation process. Thankfully Wilfrid’s presence provides some constructive feedback for Norton prior to submitting the evaluation to his boss.

I assume that Norton’s first goal is a little too obvious and doesn’t need to be explicitly stated, as it is usually implied in the employee self-evaluation. Norton’s second goal is clearly not related to his job.

For those unaware, and too busy to check the Internet, the game of Horse that Norton refers to is a type of basketball game often played one-on-one. The way the game works is the first player attempts to sink a basket from a particular spot in a specific way, explaining the requirements of the shot beforehand. If successful, the other player has to make the same basket in the same way as the first player. Then the second player gets to call a shot to make a basket, and the first player has to sink the same basket. If a basket is missed, the player acquires a letter, starting with the letter H. For each missed basket a player acquires another letter until they spell the word “horse”, at which point they lose the game.

In Norton’s case, it’s obvious that his goal is way to lofty as he would definitely lose to Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player to play the game. Discounting the fact that he’s a comic strip character, a much more reasonable but still unlikely goal for Norton would be to simply play a game of Horse against Michael Jordan, and forget the winning part.

But thinking about it a bit more, being a comic strip character shouldn’t be a roadblock for Norton. After all, Bugs Bunny played basketball with Michael Jordan in the movie Space Jam. So I guess it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility for Norton to consider playing with Michael Jordan too. And come to think of it more,  I’m pretty sure I’m over-thinking this topic.