Well, this sucks. I got an email that we need to discuss my low production last month. The same for the other woman, we'll call her F, (hers was a bit worse). F thinks for now we should each make the same case individually, as we have the same point of view, and hopefully that will make the point. Unfortunately, our boss is kind of hard to approach and who knows if she might take both of us together as an attack. If not we'll have to try together.

The thing is that the whole team was below the goal on new projects - even the cut and paste people. Between she and I we did over half the total, so the other two people clearly had low figures as well. It makes us wonder why does our boss not even seem to be entertaining the thought that the goal is not realistic and instead blaming everything on us?

We went over what we both are going to say individually. I did a little write-up. Both of us were out of work for a while before we found this job, and aren't looking forward to job hunting again, so hopefully we can make our case for a more reasonable goal.

If they fire both of us, they lose the two most senior people on the team. So many people have been absolute disasters, making a mess of things and didn't work out. They should be happy to have people who know what they are doing. We know our industries, our work is good quality, it's just that quality research takes time, and that is why it is hard to meet the production targets they want.

The target for updates was originally developed by that worthless efficiency expert who came from the banking industry, so he had no idea about editorial work nor did he want to learn. I'm not sure who decided that 80 updates was equivalent to 50 new write-ups; when my boss announced it she said she was open to feedback, but in practice it hasn't played out that way. She has insisted it's reasonable in team meetings.