A sinking feeling...

I read "The Lawyer" today and was hugely depressed by a story about CMS Cameron McKenna. I quote the section that gave me a particularly sinking feeling:

The quarterly associate time recording (ATR) bonus was still paid as usual to associates who recorded 400 billable hours in the last quarter. However, an additional performance-linked bonus available to senior support staff has not been paid.

What is being rewarded here? Associates are being rewarded for running up the clock while senior support staff are effectively told that, no matter how well they do their job (and we have to hope that the performance measures used will be (a) sensible; and (b) linked to longer term things like profitability and good staff management), they will receive no bonus.

To summarise: don't worry if you are doing good, profitable work so long as you are cranking in the hours.

Oh dear.