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Well, I
thought I wasn't going to have much to share today. But! I had Zoom meetings from 10 a.m. to noon, and full disclosure, I wrote most of this during the first one, the All Staff Town Hall between 10 and 11. Big news shared during that meeting: they have chosen a new CEO. It's Krish, the guy who before today had been our CFO for just a few years, but apparently has been a PCC member shopper for a very long time. He's a South Asian guy, so I was immediately compelled to Shobhit about it. One day I may ask Krish directly where he's from originally, but after several minutes of online research I found his LinkedIn page: his earliest education listed there is at a place called Rishi Valley School in Chittoor, which is a district in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. This district is not far from the city of Chennai, though, so my guess is that he's originally from around there. Maybe not, though; lots of people go to school far from where they were born.
In any case, I'm actually pretty satisfied with this choice. The last two CEOs had been hired directly from outside, the most recent one a person with no working knowledge whatsoever of PCC history and culture, and a tenuous understanding of co-ops at best. Krish, in sharp contrast, is someone hired from within, which is actually a first in the 20 years I have worked here. Not even Tracy Wolpert, who was CEO when I was hired in 2002, had ever been a part of PCC in any way before he became CEO. This alone is a pretty radical change, not even to mention the fact that our CEO is also, for the first time ever, a person of color. I'm actually finding this pretty exciting.
Also, it's very interesting how this announcement has been rolled out. No one knew a huge announcement was coming in this Town Hall Zoom meeting, and moments after it was announced there, both internal and Membership emails were sent out announcing it, about 20 minutes apart. This was clearly very well planned and intentional.
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— पांच हजार एक सौ सोलह —
I spent my evening last night looking at screens. I mean, what else is new, right? It's all I do for the most part. I watched the incredibly satisfying (and surprisingly chill) series finale of
Station Eleven in the bedroom, then Shobhit had lentils and rice made for dinner, and we sat down to watch
Eternals, which was just made available on Disney+ on Wednesday. I always thought the movie was just okay, but figured Shobhit would enjoy it, and we talked for months about me seeing it again and him accompanying me at a theater, and we just never got around to it. Now we could just watch it at home.
That movie has a run time that's quite long, two hours and 37 minutes, so that easily took up the rest of the evening.
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In other news, one of Shobhit's supervisors at Total Wine took a rapid test and tested positive, just before he texted me shortly before 11 a.m. yesterday. He said he was near her for less than five minutes. Presumably they were both masked, but this is still Omicron we're talking about. He immediately started getting these probably psychosomatic feelings in his throat. It's probably a good idea for him to get tested again either way, and this morning I managed to get him a booking for another test on Sunday afternoon, the soonest I could find an open spot anywhere.
I decided not to book myself. As I've said repeatedly already, Ivan gets tested twice weekly at work. I'm working from home. If Shobhit tests negative on Sunday, I think I can safely assume I'm good. Plus, I have had no known direct exposures recently, and am not experiencing any symptoms of my own to speak of, so I feel it best to keep slots as open as possible for people who have a more urgent need for testing.
I did learn from Kwanteria over Instagram that she's the only one on her "Community Giving" team
not out sick with covid right now—the other three are. This would indicate that either office staff covid cases have gone very underreported, which would not be surprising, or there has been a sharp uptick in cases since Dana told me just on Wednesday last week that there had been only two, which would also not be surprising. In any event, I remain pretty convinced it's best for everyone that I work from home at minimum through January, and depending on how rapidly cases fall after this surge peaks, possibly through February. I mean, what if Shobhit does indeed bring covid home from work? Or even I pick it up from a store visit or something? The least I can do is prevent
myself from being a vector of transmission at the office. Even Scott and Noah continue to work at the office without masks on, which is making me uncomfortable, at least as long as transmission rates are this insanely high. I want to work at the office without a mask again too, but I think it's better to wait on getting back to that until transmission rates are back to, or at least close to, pre-Omicron levels.
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[posted 12:16 pm]
