Who says a person has to be a paradigm of a model employee? I don't get how we got to this point. That sounds like a work/life imbalance to me if you 'give your all' for a company and that's a 'meets expectations' on a review.

I don't no-life it; I come in at about the same time every day and leave about the same time. If the work is really interesting, I'll surely stick around later, but there's no reason to work 9-10 hours a day if there's no emergency.