Performance Review

Here I am at the airport again.
Different city, same ritual.

I needed the toilet.

Side note — there's an entirely separate furious debate, raging among the world's leading intellectuals, about whether you use a toilet while someone is actively cleaning it.
Sometimes there's a yellow caution cone on the floor telling you not to.
People still walk in.
We have collectively decided that the cone is a suggestion, not a rule.
But that's a story for another day.

I did my business.
Washed my hands.
Walked over to dry them — and discovered there were no paper towels.
Just one of those high-velocity air blowers.
You know the kind. Marketing calls it a "hand dryer."
It's not.
It should be called what it actually is: "a device that prepares your hands to be wiped on your jeans."

I gave up after twelve seconds.
Wiped on jeans.
Embarked toward the exit, and toward civilization.

That's when I saw it.
The little white device by the door with five big smiley faces.
Bright green smile; soft green smile; neutral face; pink frown; red frown.
"How was your experience?"

I love these things.
Anonymous feedback.
A tiny act of civic participation.
I was about to press the soft green smile — the bathroom was clean, the soap worked, the toilet flushed.
I'd give it a four out of five.
The missing star was the jeans incident.

My finger was a centimeter away.

That's when I noticed him.

The cleaner.
Standing two meters behind me.
Mop in hand.
Watching.
Not aggressively — just... there.
Present.
Witnessing.

And in that moment, the entire concept of anonymous feedback collapsed.
Because there is nothing anonymous about pressing a button while the subject of your review is staring at you.

What was supposed to be honest data was now a public performance review.
And not of the bathroom — of him.

If I press the soft smile, am I telling him "you missed a spot"?
If I press the bright green one, am I lying to make him feel good?
If I press the red frown, do I just... walk past him afterward, in silence, like nothing happened?

I froze. Time stopped.

I considered walking out without pressing anything.
But that felt rude — he was clearly waiting to see what I'd do.
Not pressing might read as worse than pressing red.
Like in any election, abstaining is its own statement.

Now — I have a principle.
I always tell the truth.
It's one of the core values I try to live by.
Honesty over comfort.
Always. Almost always.

I considered pressing the soft smile and explaining myself out loud.
"Just so you know, this is about the air blower, not you, the bathroom
is genuinely clean, you're doing a great job, the four out of five is a structural critique of the rating system itself, not a personal one."
But that felt insane.
I was afraid he wouldn't buy it.

So I did what any reasonable adult would do.
I pressed the brightest, greenest, happiest smile.
I gave it a five.
I made eye contact with him.
I nodded.
He nodded back.

I lied.
With my finger.
To his face.

And as I walked out, I realized something.

This little white device promises anonymous feedback.
But in reality, the moment a human is watching you press it, you're not rating the bathroom.
You're rating the human.
And nobody wants to give a stranger a frown to their face.

Which means the data this thing collects isn't honest.
It's just polite.

Somewhere, an analyst is looking at a chart that says airport bathrooms have a 96% satisfaction rate.
They are wrong.
That number reflects what the cleaners saw you press.
The real cleanliness of the bathroom?
Nobody will ever know.

But maybe it's not just about bathrooms.
Maybe this is the quiet rule of all human feedback.
The performance reviews where everyone says nice things about the colleague nobody likes.
The dinner you tell your friend was delicious.
The presentation you tell your coworker was great.
We tell ourselves we want honesty.
But the moment honesty has a face — a real, watching, human face — we choose kindness instead.
Or is it cowardice?
It's hard to tell which.

The truth needs distance to survive.
Without it, we just smile, press the green button, and move on.

Anonymous, with witnesses.