CoronaQuarantine, Day 71
I spent slightly more than two hours on Zoom with my cond-neighbor, Alexia, after work yesterday—even though her unit was literally on the other side of the wall of my bedroom I was sitting in, at my desk. There was a sort of odd effect to this, as well, given that the last several times I have seen her, we were walking (spaced several feet apart) with masks on. It was almost jarring to see her entire face again, as being separated in our homes there was finally no need for masks.
It was a lot of fun sharing photos of Australia with her. I had already, months ago, created a dedicated Flickr photo album just for this purpose: "Australia 2020: Greatest Hits," with the best of the photos from all four places we visited: Sydney, Melbourne, Kangaroo Island and Adelaide. At first I had 55 shots in there, but after talking about the photos I realized there were at least 3 others I really needed to include, and so I added them this morning for whenever I might be able to share them again. And that will probably be for showing Mom (given she's Uncle David's sister), whenever that might actually be, and so I also threw in another seven shots of just Uncle David and Mary Ann's house at the end, as I know Mom will be interested in seeing what their home looks like.
My original plan had been to invite both Alexia and Gary—the guy who lives in the west building and who actually looked after the cats during this trip as Alexia was unavailable—over for a home-cooked Indian dinner, during which I could share photos to both of them. I thought it would be a nice thank-you to Gary and something fun Alexia would enjoy, as we showed her photos of our Yellowstone trip after she took care of the cats while we were there in 2018. I'd still like to find some way to better thank Gary if I can, but in my walks with Alexia, we came up with the plan to share photos over Zoom and so we finally scheduled a day this week.
It took several minutes to figure out how to start a session and invite her into it, but we finally made it happen, and I was able to "share screen" quickly thereafter. It worked out very well, and Alexia seemed very interested and engaged through all of it, which was a lot of fun. We chatted just generally for a few minutes once the photo album was scrolled through, and we hung up right after 7:00, after having started at maybe around 5:10 once we got things figured out.
Then I watched the final two episodes of Undone on Amazon Prime, which I cannot recommend highly enough, before Shobhit got home; after that we watched an episode of Upload and then an episode of Hunters. As far as TV was concerned, it was an all-Amazon Prime Evening.
Beyond that, I am posting a bit later than usual today because we had our all-office-staff "Town Hall" today, the second one to be done entirely over Zoom. And, as it turns out, the last one to include our CEO, Cate.
It turns out the whole reason for this "Town Hall" was to drop quite the bombshell: Cate has accepted another job in the Bay Area, and her last day at PCC will be July 3. I was slightly taken aback by this, although to be perfectly honest, after the stunning shock of Kibby's sudden departure in February, this was pretty small potatoes to me personally in terms of news impact. Well, immediate news impact, anyway; the changing of a CEO can have massive implications for an entire company's future. Cate had only been with us for five years, and it kind of feels like the company as a whole was only starting to get used to her.
I always liked her fine. She had her detractors for sure, especially among lower-level staff on the store level, but I never paid that much mind. That kind of shit happens no matter who the CEO is, and if you have 1600+ staff, you can't be liked by everyone. I have always maintained she was a massive improvement over Tracy, who was kind of legit psychotic.
The thing I keep thinking about, honestly, is the challenge of simply maintaining stability in the wake of this kind of shakeup during everything we're already dealing with in regards to the global pandemic. Talk about terrible timing—and frankly, I would not be surprised if there were something more to this story. But, who knows? Maybe it really is just nothing more than an opportunity she could not pass up. I do feel like Cate has been a big driver of our rapid expansion the past few years, which always made me at least a little nervous. I'm immediately curious as to how that rate of growth might change in the wake of her departure, and it will probably always be a question as to how much of that is influenced by a "changing of the guard" versus a forced slowing-down in the face of inevitable recession.
The meeting did not last long either. People were encouraged to send in any questions they had via text to Adrienne, the Executive Assistant to the CEO and Board, who then read them aloud for Cate to answer. A lot of them were actually pretty good, thoughtful, even in a few cases slightly challenging questions ("I wasn't prepared for such hard-hitting questions!" she said at one point, laughing). A lot of them were pretty softball too, such as her favorite experience at PCC (she had a good answer: any time she told anyone she worked for PCC, "one hundred percent of the time" people would say they love PCC and have some kind of story at the ready as to why), or what she feels PCC's greatest strength is and what is our greatest threat. Stuff like that.
The whole thing was an odd experience though, as by definition it would have been a lot different, and probably more openly emotional for more people, had this announcement been able to be made in person. The office will not open for regular work for all staff any time close to when Cate leaves, so most of us last saw her in person for the rest of our lives already, having no idea it was the case at the time. Not even Cate knew; that was all the way back in March.
So, now I get back to work for just a little while, and then find out what more might be said about all this in the all-Merchandising Department meeting scheduled for 1:30. There was already some talk about minor structural changes, but it didn't sound like they will impact me in any real way—but, it will impact Merchandising as a department. Hence the meeting.
I was going to be walking to the office with Alexia after work today, but she texted me this morning that she wasn't feeling that well after not getting very much sleep last night so she canceled. I think now I might wait until tomorrow to go to the office, just to give me something to do.
[posted 12:44 pm]