That's surprisingly common. Where I am, every department, no matter how big or small, has to be within x points of the average rating on a bell curve. If not,

That's surprisingly common. Where I am, every department, no matter how big or small, has to be within x points of the average rating on a bell curve. If not, your whole dept gets scaled to it. Where my friend works, it's more like yours and a select few get the stick. But they have this feature where you get reviewed formally if you have 3 consecutive "bad ratings", so mysteriously, no one ever gets the stick if they got it last cycle. Just, for both of us, it's company-wide knowledge.