— पांच हजार तीन सौ अड़सठ —
Meetings, meetings, fucking meetings! Meetings will be the death of me this week!
People in higher positions than I am in have just as many, and often more, in any average week. How the fuck do they get actual work done? I think in a lot of cases they wind up working more than forty hours a week. Fuck that all the way to the moon.
This week, I had two half-hour meetings on Monday; two one-hour meetings and another half-hour meeting yesterday; two one-hour meetings today; and tomorrow I'll probably have one one-hour meeting and one half-hour meeting. Not a lot compared to many, I know, but way more than normal for me—at least three of them dealing with coverage for while I'm on vacation. Ironically, it cuts into time I could be spending on getting work done that I have to do before I'm out for two and a half weeks! This is the eternal conundrum for people trying to use up their PTO. And yes, I am swimming in PTO. Anyone who has worked at PCC as long as I've been is.
The second of the two one-hour meetings I had today, which were back to back between 9:00 and 11:00 this morning, was this month's all-staff Town Hall, with a surprisingly large number of office staff basically filling up the large conference room—possibly a first since before the pandemic—and everyone else, mostly store staff, plugging in remotely via Zoom on large monitors mounted on the wall as usual. After the last Town Hall, the setup was much improved, so now speakers face both the in-person audience as well as the camera. Before, the camera was set up front and facing us in seats, making it awkward for any speaker to be facing either us or anyone watching on Zoom. Anyway, one part I thought was very cool: Chris, our CFO, shared an awesome chart with a $1 bill and what percentage of each dollar we get in sales goes to what, including cost of goods (more than half!), wages and so on. The actual profit margin at the end of all the things was shockingly tiny, and really put into relief what a challenge it was, for instance, for us to afford $4 extra per hour to all staff for many months for "hazard pay." People think we can easily afford something like that just because the products we sell are expensive, but it just isn't that simple.
The
first of those two meetings was with Eric and Gabby, possibly the final one with the two of them together, particularly in relation to the "goals" portion of my annual review. We got four goals laid out, and in the end it sounds like more of a challenge than I would like, but whatever. I'm not going to spend too much time worrying about it, and I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over it.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ अड़सठ —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ अड़सठ —
Beyond that, the only thing I really have to update you on is what I did last night: I left work 15 minutes early so I could make it to SIFF Cinema at the Uptown for a 4:30 screening of a movie I wound up just thinking was okay (B-minus): a Danish/Icelandic film called
Godland. At 143 minutes and I suppose a fittingly glacial pace, it was way too long; I had to wait 10 minutes for the #8 bus afterward and didn't get home until about 7:40.
Shobhit was baking a pizza when I arrived, though, and it was delicious. I sliced it into eight portions; I ate three slices and Shobhit had five. I am still skipping lunches, but even that much had me worried my weight would be up this morning—luckily it was evenly the same as yesterday, at 159.1 lbs (finally below 160 again, woohoo!). He's thinking he may bake another pizza for dinner today though, using up what little fresh produce we still need to use before we leave. If so, I think I will limit myself to two slices instead of three. It will be sufficient.
I then spent time writing my review. That was posted shortly after 9:00. I actually got into bed by about 9:30 I think. I was kind of tired. Shobhit came to bed around 10:00 probably, earlier than usual for him, which poses a patterned problem: any time he comes to bed early, he inevitably wakes up super early in the morning, then winds up coughing and tossing and turning, inspiring Guru to walk all around us at the same time, and then it's impossible for me to sleep as well. It's very frustrating. I really hope we get some quality sleep in our hotels in Australia, with no alarms and no pets around.
This doesn't mean I would ever prefer not to have pets, mind you. If I have my way I'll have at least one cat for as long as I live. Right now we have two.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ अड़सठ —
[posted 1:35 pm]
