sharing is caring
Yesterday Darrell, whose current title is now "Senior Vice President of Merchandising and Promotion," which effectively makes him head of both Merchandising and Marketing since Heather quit her position as Director of Marketing and she has yet to be directly replaced, came to me and asked if I could share my document of PCC store locations history. He wanted to share it with the Leadership Team (LT) that their meeting later in the day.
He came back to me today and told me everyone was duly impressed. I've been keeping this document just for my own records for several years now; some of the dates are from a PCC history page on our website that has since been updated and no longer includes all of the information that used to be there.
There is an "All Merchandising Department" meeting on the first Wednesday of every month, which folds in the few of us who do not have to attend the Merchandising meeting that otherwise happens every week. This means I'll be attending the one happening on Wednesday next week—it will be interesting to see how it's done, now that so many of us are back to working at the office. I guess I'll find out when we come to it. In any event, Darrell asked me if I want to "present" the document to the team next week. Uh, sure, okay.
I told him I don't think I'm any more of an expert than just the data that’s already there, and he said that was okay; he just wanted to give me credit, which was nice. I did make one adjustment to the document yesterday before sending it to Darrell: I changed the opening date for the Madison Valley store to 2084, because I no longer have any real faith that that damned store will actually open in my lifetime. Its originally announced opening date was 2017. Four years ago!
I just decided to upload the document to OneDrive so I could also share it here, just for shits and giggles.
Some other things about today that I have already posted about elsewhere:
Today is the one-year anniversary of Mom dying. I think I'm honestly a bit more blasé about it than I let on in my Facebook post about it, which has already been met with care in reactions. I mean, clearly I care, or I wouldn't even mention it; but, do I "miss" her? In some senses, yes. But not actively, no. I have long considered myself to have had three parents, since Sherri has been a part of my life since I was five years old (I don't count Bill because he did not come along until I was an adult—I am perfectly comfortable calling him my "stepdad" but he in no way has ever been "a parent"), and I remain certain that among them all, Mom's passing will ultimately prove to have had the least significant emotional impact on me. I cried for a minute right after I first got the news that she died, pretty hard actually, but I've really never cried about it since. There have been strange moments when remembering or reflecting on her memory, but that’s it.
Generally speaking, I have quite easily moved on. Honestly it's because it was many, many years before her death when she stopped really being the mother I wanted or needed her to be. I never stopped loving her as much as I ever did, but in later years in particular, I liked her less. I visited her every year far more for her sake than for mine, which at the very least indicates I still deeply cared about her. On the flip side, now I don't have to.
I also shared an unusually long post on Facebook (and also as a a lengthy Twitter thread), about the differences between WHO commendations about mask wearing and vaccination rates versus those by the CDC currently in the U.S. So far, this has been met with complete silence, no reaction at all, and I do wonder if it just has to do with the length. Is the algorithm hiding it from people for that reason? Maybe the several people stupidly skeptical of vaccines on my friends list are just choosing not to engage. Maybe it's some mix of all these things.
I wrote that up after writing a shorter version of it as an email to Jennifer B here at the office, after she responded to a store staff person feeling "unheard" and as though we are putting store staff at unnecessary risk for following the state health department guidelines and removing our mask recommendation for unvaccinated people. There are still some COVID-related restrictions in place, but the vast majority of them were lifted yesterday, with the state just about reaching the threshold of 70% first-dose vaccination among eligible people. The WHO guidance and the Delta variant were brought up as points by the store staff person, and I just wanted to put in my two cents about Dr. Fauci's clarification regarding the difference between the WHO giving guidance for a still-severely under-vaccinated world versus a country like ours with a far higher vaccination rate, which is an incredibly relevant distinction. The same goes for distinguishing between the U.S. locations with the highest vaccination rates (like Seattle) versus the rural, conservative regions with dangerously low vaccination rates, where the Delta variant is expected to find pretty easy footing and flourish.
Anyway, Jennifer seemed to really appreciate it. Part of her response actually read, I always love hearing from you! You are so level headed!
Also, I love being back at the office, where I get to hear stuff like that more frequently again! Side note on the office: I'm still working here without a mask on. I feel I can trust everyone without a mask has been vaccinated, and everyone not vaccinated has a mask on. People still wearing masks are pretty low in number, and I suspect some of those are actually still vaccinated people.
That said, I took myself to see the movie Zola last night at the Regal Meridian Theater (it kind of sucked; C+) and, being the first day with mask mandates lifted, the difference in attendance was striking. Even on a Wednesday night, the whole theater complex was bustling with far more people than I had seen since I started going back to movies in May. That said, a pretty good number of people still wore masks in there—and so did I. I wasn't even eating anything and it's actually not hard to breathe in them like so many dipshits claim; I was just sitting in a dark room for a couple of hours, so I figured, well, it wouldn't hurt. Right now masks remain required on public transit too, which I'm sure I'll be riding more regularly again soon enough, so no matter what, any time I go out I'm keeping a mask handy whether I wind up needing to use it or not. I just haven't needed to use it yet today. Shobhit did tell me yesterday the Braeburn Condos board officially removed the mask requirement for indoor common spaces in the building.
[posted 12:31 pm]