Her annual review said uneventful three times. Once for each quarter she'd managed without an incident.
She kept the binder anyway. The call at 2 AM in March—a contractor who wanted to skip the gas line check. She'd said no. The ceiling tile in Building C she'd flagged in April before anyone walked under it. The medication error she'd caught in June by reading the decimal point the pharmacist had missed.
Her supervisor read the binder. “These are all things that didn't happen,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I need things that did.”
She closed the binder. The review went on. He checked a box that said meets expectations and another that said no significant contributions noted. Both were accurate. Both were true. Neither was wrong.
The pharmacist got an award that year for lowest error rate in the department. At the ceremony, someone mentioned his attention to detail.