Dear Mr. Ryan,
As you know, each year we are required to provide feedback to employees through a performance review. Please read and sign this document to show you’ve received it. We ask that you refrain from drawing penises all over it. Our human resources manager did not appreciate the gesture last year, or any of the ten previous years in which you’ve done it.


Job Knowledge
Seeing how Mr. Ryan’s official job description was written 11 years ago by an editor who didn’t give half of one crap about such things, the description we have on file merely says “Get drunk and write words.” This limits our ability to critique. We have attempted many times to procure Mr. Ryan’s signature on an updated job description. Each time, he folds the paperwork into a pirate hat and sends back a photo of himself wearing it. We’ve told him, to no avail, that this is not the same as a signature.

Work Consistency
Most of Mr. Ryan’s columns are crude and disgusting, with frequent references to his own bowel movements or those of well-known members of the community. Occasionally, Mr. Ryan will make a point or argument that is meaningful, but he will almost always follow it with a string of curse words or grotesque sexual descriptions that render his entire point irrelevant. However, Mr. Ryan is very consistent in this mediocrity.

Work Relations
The last time Mr. Ryan visited Duluth, the publisher provided a free hotel room and invited him to dinner. Mr. Ryan took the free hotel room but failed to show up for the dinner. He claimed he got into town late, but we suspect he’s just an asshole.

Adherence to company policies
Mr. Ryan once wrote a column that used the f-word 34 times. When we declined to print it, and asked that he write a replacement column, he refused. We ended up running a large liquor ad in place of his column that week. We received many complimentary letters regarding the change. Unfortunately, the liquor store could only afford to run the ad once.

Punctuality
All articles are due Sunday evening. Mr. Ryan would routinely send his columns on Monday afternoon, so we altered the due date to Friday, in hopes of receiving his articles on time. He now sends them Tuesday afternoon. When asked why, Mr. Ryan explained that he’s an asshole.

Creativity
Mr. Ryan once submitted a column that was an exact copy of Amy Zontelli’s column from the previous week, but with all uses of the word “I” replaced with the word “Aardvark”. When confronted, he claimed it was no different than Kanye West sampling Rick James.

Communication/Listening Skills
When asked via email to fix errors in his columns or provide insight into his choices, Mr. Ryan always replies back with “Awesome, thanks!” No matter the inquiry, we always receive this same reply. We’ve sent hundreds of emails over the past 11 years, and suspect he hasn’t read a single one of them.

Initiative
We once asked Mr. Ryan to write a serious news article. The assignment merely involved taking a press release and rewriting it in his own words. It took him seven months, and the resulting “article” about the National AIDS Foundation included numerous fictional conspiracy theories involving aliens and reptilian overlords disguised as people.

Attitude
When given constructive criticism, Mr. Ryan is hostile and defensive. When given polite compliments, he mistakes this for some sort of sexual interest in him, and repeatedly makes unwanted verbal and physical advances to the complimenter.

Good at:
Absolutely nothing. Mr. Ryan possesses no useful skills or meaningful purpose in life. The fact that he’s 34 years old and hasn’t yet killed himself is a disappointing miracle.

Needs work:
Writing ability. Sentence structure, specifically Mr. Ryan’s tendency to start most sentences with the word “and” and end them with prepositions. Overuse of conversational tone - a columnist should make firm statements to readers supported by strong evidence, answering questions rather than asking them. Extremely limited vocabulary, littered with curse words and endless euphemisms for feces and horse penises. Lack of creative ideas, most notably in his tendency to overuse tired, predictable themes like alcohol and drug abuse. His writing topics are usually juvenile and lacking in depth. One can often predict nearly every joke in his columns just by reading the title. Mr. Ryan has poor social skills and maturity, especially around people who are smarter or more successful than him (of which there are endless candidates). His antisocial personality, selfish demeanor and stubbornness make him unsuitable for personal relationships, even with the whoriest of women. He needs to shake more thoroughly after using the urinal, as he regularly exits the restroom with visible droplets of fluid in his groinal region. He lacks responsibility, wasting hundreds of dollars per month on Japanese toys and pornographic webcam sites full of Taiwanese shemales that were forcibly trafficked into the Philippines on boats hand-carved from children’s bloody skulls. Mr. Ryan also wears the color blue too often. Why not some green once in a while? A tastefully heathered shade of maroon can’t be found in any of the clothing stores in Los Angeles? GOOD LORD.