sea change or tsunami
Huge news at work this week, first shared on Saturday morning: our CEO has stepped down, after all of eight months in the position. To call this unprecedented is an understatement. And although the Seattle Times has historically not been my favorite—to their credit, I have very much appreciated their COVID-19 pandemic coverage over the past year and a half—I have to say that their article about it gives a far better overview of the likely reasons for this sudden change than I ever could, especially from my vantage point at the bottom of the totem pole.
It should be noted, also, that that article is time stamped 11:45 a.m. August 7, which was Saturday. I didn't even realize that until looking again at the link this morning; Gabriel texted me the article last night, after had and I spent a full hour chatting on the phone earlier in the evening and for some reason it never occurred to me to bring it up. And do you know when I found out about this news? Also on Saturday, all of two hours before that article was published! Like, holy shit. As Claudia said this morning, "They had that locked and loaded." How much did the Times know before staff did, and for how long, I wonder?
I never check work email at home, so I really only found out about it because of Claudia. I received a text from her at 10:00 sharp:
YO
Suzy is gone!!
And I was just like, ??
Claudia replied:
She stepped down
Email just went out
I went to check work email on my phone then. Email was received at 9:43, subject line: "PCC Leadership Update - A Message from Paul Davis, Chair of the PCC Board of Trustees."
I took a while even to read the entire email, between exchanging texts with Claudia and talking to Shobhit about it. Shobhit jumped to conclusions after I read him just the introductory small paragraph of the email:
I am reaching out today on behalf of the Board to share news about your leadership team. Effective today, Suzy has stepped down as President and CEO of the co-op to pursue other career opportunities.
I read that to Shobhit and he immediately said, "That means she was fired."
I mean, maybe. It does sound like, to put it charitably, the Board and Suzy came to a mutual decision that she should step down, and so that's what she did. I kind of feel like maybe it was something more along the lines of Suzy being "disinvited" to staying on as CEO, but of course we're being met with pretty relentlessly diplomatic language about it: "to pursue other career opportunities" was repeated, verbatim, by the Board Chair yet again in the half-hour All Store & Office Staff Town Hall over Zoom this morning. As I expected, there was a lot of pointed questions that could only be met with responses that kind of danced around answers.
Anyway. Back to Saturday. I think that Seattle Times article does a fairly accurate job of characterizing, let's say, less-than-ideal morale among store staff when it came to this particular CEO. As I noted to Gabriel over text, I spent a lot of time giving Suzy the benefit of the doubt, especially after the debacle with her public announcement that PCC did not want to offer staff hazard pay (this weekend's Times article rather pointedly runs pretty simple numbers illustrating that maybe PCC could afford that "hardship" a bit better than had been let on). I've had a lot of conversations at the office in recent weeks that largely turned me around on the idea that store staff "just didn't understand" the "hardship" the hazard pay put on PCC. I did not realize until within the last couple of weeks, for instance, that stores are almost uniformly understaffed, especially in the Delis, which is leaving the existing staffed much more overworked than they would be even if you discount the effects of the pandemic. PCC is struggling to hire new staff across the co-op, and the stores are left with demands from leadership that don't adequately address their fundamental lack of resources. We just went through this huge round of "listening sessions" getting feedback from staff co-op wide about our notion of "Made from Scratch," one of our Marketing tag lines from the massive rebranding that Cate spearheaded in 2017, and which creates the impression that all of our Delis spend a lot more work on the smallest details of food production, even though they don't actually have the resources to meet that impression.
I was texting Tracy about something unrelated on Saturday at about 11:00 a.m., and I finally asked if she had seen the PCC news. At first she said no, but then she said Jess—her boss—had just texted her, and she added, "Holy fuck."
As it happens, I had gone to attend Claudia's "Going Away Happy Hour" over at Queen Anne Beerhall, which is just a few blocks from here—and is where some of us office staff were attempting to meet for a weekly happy hour back in 2019, in the Before Times. It was an indoor venue, which was slightly ironic when it comes to Claudia, as she has been staying masked at the office on the days she comes in to work, even though she is fully vaccinated. She explained to me that she was just being super careful, largely because she will be going to visit her mother in Colorado soon, and her mother has dementia and is in poor health; it was ultimately the reason she had to cancel her Birth Week plans with me quasi-last minute and had been what resulted in Tracy being part of my Birth Week this year instead. Anyway, back to Queen Anne Beerhall—Claudia kind of threw caution to the wind for that evening and took her mask off for that outing, even though in retrospect, she'd have been far safer going maskless in the office than she was at a restaurant. In Queen Anne Beerhall's defense, partly at least, it's a fairly cavernous space; there were overhead ceiling fans keeping it very well ventilated; they kept doors open; and it was not crowded.
Still, the level of precautions even amongst those in our group varied. I did not stay masked while seated at the table, right next to Claudia, and neither did most of the others, which included Kelly from HR (the one person who was like, "I like her" when Suzy was brought up, incidentally); Bridget the Food Safety Manager who basically organized the outing, inviting the Store Operations team plus a few select other office staff, including myself and Tracy; Claudia's really good friend Jamie who used to work for PCC but doesn't anymore; and Marissa from HR. Marissa was the one who kept her mask on the whole time unless she was actively eating.
Tracy did not make it, by the way. So, there were all of six of us at the group's peak: Claudia, Bridget, Jamie, Marissa, Kelly, and myself. I was a little annoyed by Tracy's no-show, as she had even told me after we went to the movie on Thursday that she would see me at the office the next day, but she didn't come to the office either. She had even suggested earlier in the week that I bus to work on Friday and she would give me a ride home after the get-together with Claudia, and that's what I did. Had I known she wouldn't show, I would have still ridden by bike. Honestly, I was kind of worried about her, as she had never blown me off like this before.
I finally texted her at about 4:15 to ask if she was still coming. She didn't respond for two hours, at which point she texted me, Sorry about tonight. I'm okay. Sometimes I fall into a depression hole and back out on plans.
Now, I made a conscious choice not to get irritated by this. Tracy and I had already had many conversations in which I had effectively warned that this could happen, in which she was open about having had bouts of depression, and being on medication for it. Besides, I still had plenty good fun at the outing even without Tracy making it, so at the very least her bailing at the last minute had no bearing on my plans actually being able to move forward. The outing was about Claudia anyway, and it was nice to get to spend some quality time with Claudia for the first time in many months.
Speaking of which, Suzy had already come up in pretty extensive conversation at that get-together on Friday, before any of us had the slightest clue that news was coming on Saturday. Suzy was a big part of Claudia's decision to leave, although it would definitely be a mistake to say she was the cause; it's been quite clear for a long time that Claudia's personal experience here, unfortunately, has not been ideal for her, even though it should have been. She also confessed on Friday, though, that she used to hate the "Wall of Fame" at the old office location, with photos of all PCC staff who had been here at least ten years; she apparently always told herself, "I'll never be here for ten years!" Well, now she's leaving after 13. Her last day is the day after tomorrow. She'll be working for the Farmland Trust as of September.
Incidentally, the Farmland Trust is not so huge a leap from PCC, as it used to be affiliated, and was started by PCC. It literally used to be called the PCC Farmland Trust. It has long been a separate entity so it could be organized as a nonprofit, but as of last year it is now called the Washington Farmland Trust. It began in 1999 as the PCC Farmland Fund and was created to secure organic farmland for local farmers. I have far from intimate knowledge of the organization but I think maybe the current focus is less on organic and more on local. In any case, when I started at PCC in 2002, the Farmland Fund staff had their office in the PCC office, and for a little while was right across from my cubicle. There was a time when Alicia worked for them and was in there just across from my desk.
Anyway, the Washington Farmland Trust has clearly distanced itself from its direct association with PCC, but they have a long history intertwined with ours. As such, it sort of feels like Claudia is just going to work for one of our cousins, rather than leaving the family altogether. Also, as she noted on Friday, it didn't really feel like "goodbye" since she's remained in regular contact with all of us who were at that table anyway, even while she has spent more of her time working from home.
Speaking of the aforementioned "Wall of Fame," Claudia may have hated it—but I always loved it. I was very vocal about my disappointment that it was not reinstalled anywhere at the new office location when we moved in 2016, and Cate's argument against it was that it minimized the contributions of people (read: her) who had been here fewer than ten years. I never saw it that way, and felt the wall was a fantastic illustration of the loyalty bred by working here, and what a great place it is to work. Well, not great for everyone, clearly.
A lot of people disliked Cate as well, although I never hated her; to be fair, I never had to work directly with any CEO because there were just too many levels of management between that position and mine. (When I started, the CEO was three tiers above me. Now, the CEO is four tiers above. I'm still not confident that extra level of middle management is necessary, especially given the complaints expressed on Friday about how office management seemed always to get more of their resource needs met than store staff did.) One thing I do trace back to Cate that I never liked, however, was her incredibly aggressive approach to growth: six new store openings within the space of her five-year tenure—okay, one of those was a re-opening of the temporarily closed and then rebuilt West Seattle store, but it still counts—plus one office relocation. Granted, the office relocation had been badly needed for many years, but I was never convinced we needed to open that many new stores that quickly, which only served to spread existing staff too thin (to a degree even myself: dealing with 15 POS emails is a lot different from dealing with 10 and it's beginning to get unmanageable), and forced us to lose sight of the customer service PCC had so deeply prided itself on when I was first hired. What else can you expect, when understaffed stores are forced to scramble to get work done rather than attend to customers on an individual basis with enough time to make any human connection?
Suzy never gave any indication that she had plans to keep up that pace of expansion, which made me more inclined to give her a chance. But, however many people had issues with Cate—and there were plenty—they were nothing compared to the resentment that quickly bred against Suzy. It's worth noting that both women came from huge corporate backgrounds (Cate from Starbucks and Suzy from Kroger), but a big difference was that Suzy did not seem to have a truly genuine understanding of how a co-op works, much less the rich cultural history of our organization.
Somewhat to my surprise, one of the POS people actually posted about the announcement on Saturday. Her post was shared to Facebook less than an hour after the internal email had been sent out, visible only to her Facebook friends:
Well, PCC is without a CEO again. Suzy Monford didnt last long and this is effective immediately. The email says wants to have more time with family...yada yada. Sounds to me like it wasn't her choice. At least we have 2 co-workers on the Board of Trustees now so we will have a loud voice on choosing the next CEO. It's a good day for the coop!
(Side note: she was clearly misremembering "to pursue other career opportunities" as "have more time with family," an easy mistake with such typical, transparently euphemistic language. Shobhit felt that the announcement coming on Saturday meant there must have been an inciting incident, although I haven't seen any indication of that yet; Suzy may have just finally gotten tired of how poorly she fit in here. Shobhit assumed there must have been an emergency Board meeting Friday night, but Tracy reminded me there had just been an all-day Board meeting here at the office just last week, like Wednesday I think.)
Anyway, that post by a store POS person was rather interesting. As of this morning it has 40 likes, mostly from fellow staff members; thirteen of those are the "love" heart variety. And the comment thread under it is illuminating: a staffer at the Bothell store wrote, "About time. She never even introduced herself to anyone except for the store leads in bothell." Another person wrote, "Does that mean PCCtv is defunct?? 🤔🙏," referencing a weekly internal "PCC TV" video that Suzy clearly had decreed we needed to be producing; it started off clunky by lately I actually think it's . . . fine. Still, the original poster responded to that with, "PLEASE remove the terms "Team" amd "Teammates" immediately!" and that one I responded to myself, with, "YES PLEASE THIS." Suzy's forced enthusiasm, and her insistence on starting virtually every conversation—in person or in writing—with "Hey Teammates!" always rubbed me the wrong way, in how it smacked of forced enthusiasm and corporate superficiality.
Another comment exchange on that post: "Well that was short lived lol. Good riddance!" And the reply: "she was not well liked at all. Cant think of one person that liked her over the top cheerleader style." Even another person posted the comment, "So glad I don’t have to hear “HEY TEAMMATES” anymore! It makes my skin crawl!!"
Oh and by the way? On Saturday I found Suzy's Twitter account. Her most recent post is on a deeply cringeworthy level: a retweet of Bill Maher—who I finally stopped watching months ago due to his persistently boneheaded old-man opinions, including legitimately stupid resistance to things like stay-home orders and mask mandates last year—railing against so-called "cancel culture." Seriously, not a good look. But, when it comes to Suzy, it absolutely tracks (and makes it make even more sense that Claudia did not care for her; one of Claudia's parents is Black). PCC started planning for social justice and equity training and education initiatives internally after the Black Lives Matter protests last year, which began before Cate left, and when Suzy came on board the focus shifted and different approaches were taken, and it was always clearly not of the highest priority to Suzy. This part of her persona was another thing I was unaware of back during the whole hazard pay debacle and I was more prone to defend her, and I am not so much now.
It should be noted, though, that Suzy's ultimately failure here is not the disease itself, but the symptom. It's nowhere near to the scale of the idea that Trump was the symptom of America's cultural disease and not the disease itself, but it's the same idea. After all, I've been told by a coworker that she made the suggestion several years ago that if PCC was going to support Pride—as we have done for decades—we should consider supporting Black Lives Matter, and at the time the idea was "shot down." PCC only changed course last year when it was something everyone else was doing. And this is absolutely fair, to point this out. PCC is known as a decades-old bastion of local progressivism, but it's doing very little to hold itself accountable when it comes to complicity in racism and white supremacy. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and it bums me out. When it comes to "Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion" (literally pronounced "JEDI" . . . I can't), PCC is just following the lead of others, when we have long been positioned to be one of the organizations that makes bold and independent decisions on progressive matters. We're really falling short when it comes to this, I think.
In other news, Saturday was supposed to by my movie and Happy Hour day with Laney, and she had to cancel. She continues to struggle with pain from her hip injury, and she just couldn't overextend herself. I was very disappointed but totally understood; she expressed very sincerely how disappointed she was as well. We already have another Happy Hour scheduled for this Friday, and only time will tell if she will be well enough to go out that day either. I sure hope so.
Shobhit took a full, extra shift at Total Wine on Saturday, largely because I told him I had plans with Laney anyway. If I didn't, he wouldn't have taken the shift. Oh well.
I spent a little time trying to come up with alternative plans, and on a whim I texted Tracy to see if she wanted to come watch the movie with me instead of Laney. She said she had errands to run but would be open to coming later. She even said she'd be happy to watch the movie and go out to dinner if I was, and I said I was. I had the theater reserved from 1 to 5, after all, and no one else had any reservation that day which meant I could rely on the theater staying available all evening.
In the end, Tracy texted back a bit later and asked if we could skip the movie and just do dinner. I was actually totally fine with that. So, we made a plan to meet at 6:30, she would park in our spot and walk the 0.6 miles to the Mexican restaurant where I want to try their rooftop deck.
In the meantime, Ivan and I started another episode of The Leftovers, even though it was after he got back from a quick shopping trip, it was already 6:00, and I told him we'd have to stop about halfway through. He said that was fine. We wound up able to watch until there were only 6 minutes left of the episode, because Tracy got delayed by forgetting her wallet at home and having to go back and get it.
Eventually she finally arrived, though; she parked, and we walked down to Mercado Luna . . . where, we found out, without a reservation it would be a two hour wait. Jesus Christ! Well, so much for that idea.
Second choice: Fogón, about a block back to the east on Pine. We got there and Tracy, who knows some Spanish due to her mother being Panamanian (her dad is Filipino), heard someone say—in Spanish—on their way out that that place had a one-hour wait. Still too long.
One more try at yet another Mexican restaurant on Pine! Three blocks back to the East on Pine: La Cocina Oaxaqueña—the place where Laney and I had our July Happy Hour, and just happens to be where she injured her hip by twisting it just the wrong way getting out of her van when she had parked. That was what prevented her from joining me for the SLGC Reunion on July 24; why we postponed the day trip to Kanaskat-Palmer State Park on July 25; and why she has to cancel our movie and Happy Hour this past Saturday. Now the next Happy Hour and the park trip are scheduled for this coming weekend, and as I said, time will tell.
Anyway. La Cocina Oaxaqueña worked out perfectly. They had plenty of available outdoor seating with no need for reservations, and I got to eat my beloved Quesadillas Fritas yet again. Laney and I had talked about returning there again this coming Friday, but I'm hoping I can convince her now to do the open-air rooftop at Mercado Luna instead. I actually already made reservations just as insurance, so, here's hoping!
Tracy and I had a perfectly pleasant couple of hours just chatting over that dinner, a lot of which was talking about the huge PCC announcement. She even told me Justine had told her, sometime around the Board meeting last week, something along the lines of, "News is coming and if you're at the end of your rope, hold on." This means plenty of people knew full well a big announcement of this sort was coming, well before Saturday or even Friday. Clearly someone at the Seattle Times was tipped off well before then.
Tracy and I walked back to my condo complex, both of us grateful we had brought a jacket or hoodie; it was legitimately chilly after it got dark, which was a truly wonderful change of pace after the summer we've been having—and we've got forecasts climbing up into the nineties yet again this coming week—and I commented that I could even have used a heavier jacket than just my hoodie. I had first suggested going to hang out at Cal Anderson Park (even though someone apparently shouted something about "butt pirates" when we passed it on our way to dinner), but I was actually too chilly and so I suggested we hang out for a bit in my complex's community kitchen. We did that for about an hour, and I even turned on the electric fireplace. But, Shobhit got off work that night at 10:15 and so right about that time she went home.
Yesterday was much more leisurely—no socializing. Shobhit and I did go do some shopping in the late morning, to Costco and then to Hau Hau Market, the Asian grocery store he likes in the International District. Then Shobhit and I watched the library DVD copy of It Happened One Night that I had originally intended for watching with Laney on Saturday, and we both enjoyed it a great deal. Shobhit immediately recognized the story from a 1991 Bollywood movie clearly based on this film, and even a lot of later American films clearly "borrow" from it, particularly the bride running away from the altar, her veil flowing in the wind behind her.
Shobhit also took an extra shift yesterday, this one from 5 to 9:15, so I had the evening without him. Ivan had an overnight shift last night, so I only saw him sporadically; he often gets some sleep in before leaving for graveyard shifts in the evening. I did watch several episodes of Schitt's Creek season two, which included when Ivan made his dinner, so he seemed to enjoy overhearing a lot of the rather funny dialogue. Ivan was a big part of my finally giving that show a second chance, I just haven't binged it anywhere near as quickly as he did.
I actually also did start working on a tribute video to Auntie Rose, which I want to have ready in time for her memorial on the 28th. Even though she actually passed away on February 19, 2020. With a memorial finally possible, this might actually be the better timing anyway. I just went through all the footage from the weekend in the summer of 1992 I spent with her in Seattle, along with Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin, basically joyriding elevators to the tops of Seattle skyscrapers for my amusement. I discovered the vast majority of footage featuring Auntie Rose herself had been left out of the video memorial I had made for Grandma after her death ten years ago, so what will be seen this time will actually be quite different.
[posted 12:34 pm]