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It seems our Book Club at work is likely to shift into meeting bimonthly instead of every month, which is an idea that very much works for me: it makes it a
lot easier to read other books besides just the ones chosen for Book Club. We'll probably meet next in mid-March, soon after I get back from Australia. I'm actually rather looking forward to reading the next title, one that Mel has been recommending since our very first meeting:
The Anthropocene Reviewed, a 2021 book by John Green in which the author "reviews" different aspects of the current geological age. Mel says it's really fun, she was genuinely excited to re-read it, and I kind of love the concept. It's probably perfect reading to bring along with me to Australia, come to think of it. A Seattle Public Library book will take a trip with me to the other side of the planet! Or maybe not: it really depends on when I get it, and whether I can keep it long enough to avoid having my account suspended. We'll see.
Anyway! We went over to Pub 70 for our Book Club meeting last night, and I'm finding Monday nights to be perfect for it, as Mondays are super slow so no place is crowded. I ordered the nachos, which were much bigger than I expected, and thus between that, and having a "Cider Mule" cocktail, even though I skipped lunch my weight was back up slightly this morning. Goddammit! Oh well, whatever.
We all seemed to have rather enjoyed
Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays by Minnie Driver, one of many memoirs written by celebrities with nothing else to do during stay-home orders in 2020. I've only kind of barely paid attention to Minnie Driver, though I always like her when I see her onscreen; the book makes it clear she became tabloid fodder for a while in the nineties while her career took off and she dated Matt Damon (she only refers to him as "Matt," I had to look that up), but aside from that, I can't say she was ever super famous. Just, famous enough, I guess. Certainly famous enough for it to get annoying. One of the better essays (though they are all good) details her secret boating mission to get supplies to residents who refused to evacuate Malibu fires in 2007, and I keep wondering if she managed to keep that secret until this book, as I can find no media coverage of it from 2007. Apparently she met her current partner during this event.
There are more than just the four of us who pay attention to our Book Club and even (in the case of Brandy, at least) reading along with us—but, so far to date, there has just been a core four of us who meet in person four our Book Club gatherings: Office Manager Mel, who organized the club; Executive Assistant to the CEO and Board of Trustees, Kara; Training and Development Manager Steve; and myself. The four of us have now met up four times, in September, October, November and January.
It's been fun getting to know them, especially as we are all pretty different people. The Minnie Driver book was Steve's suggestion, as he was reading it in November when we all met, and he raved about it; I said I would be happy to make that our next selection, and so it was. In the past I have had to beg off sooner than the others, but last night I stuck around until we all were done, which meant hanging out for well over two hours. We are ostensibly meeting at 4:30, but Mel asked if I wanted to walk over with them shortly after 4:00, and I was like, sure, and went ahead and left early.
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In other news, we got our internal announcement yesterday that the Pricing Manager meant to replace Eric (who is moving over to Accounting) has been hired. It appears my new boss will be my first woman boss since Stephanie.
That is, of course, assuming the Pricing Manager position will remain my direct supervisor, and I see no reason not to think it will be. This has shifted back and forth every few years between that position and the Grocery Merchandiser, and in fact, I had been told at the end of 2021 that it would be shifting back to that position, and thus Scott yet again. But then Scott put in his notice, and thus I remained Eric's direct report for the foreseeable future. And when they hired Shelley, they made the weird decision of, instead of simply promoting Noah to the Grocery Merchandiser position, hiring a co-Grocery Merchandiser. That made the idea of the Grocery Merchandiser being my boss a weirdly complicated idea (would it be Noah? Shelley? both?), and it just remained Eric—or, more specifically, the Pricing Manager.
This person was hired externally. I'd say this gives me pause, except they did the same with Shelley, and it's been fine. Well, actually, Shelley has absolutely made my job harder, but her ideas have also proved lucrative for PCC, so I can't really fault her there. She hasn't made my job harder in any personal way, only in terms of our systems limitations in regards to her approach to promotion pricing, and how I can accommodate them.
So, we'll see how it goes with this new woman. One other key difference is that she'll be the first boss I've ever had who was not already a longtime PCC institution (Eric, Scott) or at least someone who was at PCC before I was (Stephanie). And this new hire is the latest of an increasingly endless stream of hires coming from a corporate conglomerate background: just like countless others, she comes from years working at both Amazon
and Starbucks. For now, I'll just give her the benefit of the doubt.
I just had to fill out my self-evaluation for this year's performance review yesterday; I brought it up at Book Club and we all commiserated about how much we hate filling out self-evaluations. Eric's have been generous, as were Scott's before him, and I suppose on the upside this new person will have had a full year working with me before she likely has to do mine next year. Eric is doing mine just as he is shifting roles. I feel like I had to come up with a lot of bullshit, as usual, but, I also feel like I did a much better job being specific than I have in years past. I actually managed to come up with both "accomplishments" and "opportunities" that were less broad and vague than I came up with in years past.
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[posted 12:28 pm]
