— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
Among fans of the NBC sitcom
30 Rock (and I was a huge one), one of the most memorable (
and meme-able) exchanges was when Liz Lemon says to Jack, "What a week, huh?" and Jack replies with, "Lemon, it's Wednesday."
I am really feeling that shit this week.
This is the double-edged sword of taking PTO for vacations, ostensibly to assist in work-life balance and mental health. There's never enough coverage among other staff while you are gone, which results in a cascading effect of being behind on work for weeks after you return, both because of what you were already behind on the day you got back, combined with all the new shit coming in on top of that as time goes on. It's the new shit, really, that is the problem this week. My work load is feeling unusually chaotic and unmanageable, harkening back to the chaos of those first couple of months after stay-at-home orders started. Since I work in the Grocery industry, it meant I had a lot of work to do. (It was never lost on me to be grateful that at least I had a job, which I was never in any danger of losing.)
At the time, and for a long time after, I had a work load that forced this approach: just figure out what the highest priority task was and work on that, one task at a time. This did result in some things being put on the backburner that became critical before I realized it, but what else could I do? I'm kind of faced with that this week as well.
These are the two big time-sucks this week. I've been handed the task of processing a certain monthly report of a particular type of promotion that applies to hundreds of items and involves a lot of manual work that cannot be done through our regular automated processes. I also started designing an excel template with the intent of streamlining that work going forward, but it's not yet perfected, and just getting that done involved a lot of work on its own, was very intellectually taxing, and took up a good portion of my work day yesterday, which also had to be worked around three separate meetings (including an hour-long meeting with Eric, who did this task before he left the Pricing Manager job, and is now handing it over to me, rather than to Gabby).
The second thing is a system issue where all 153 items keyed to batch price changes to the stores yesterday did not batch, so I keep fielding emails from POS asking if there is any word yet on a resolution; following up with IT; and, more recently, exchanging emails with IT about how to go forward. This alone has been a huge pain in the ass.
On the upside, it sounds like that issue is finally nearing a resolution. The downside is all the stuff I've had to set aside to deal with these other things. Again: the cascading effects. These big issues this week don't even have anything to do with what I'm behind on due to going on vacation. I still have nearly 300 unread emails (I had more than 800 when I first got back), and I've been back two weeks as of tomorrow.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
Shobhit seems to be getting a little disillusioned with the campaign process. This sort of thing comes and goes; he might feel better tomorrow or even later today. He actually spent a while last night knocking on doors in our condo building. One older guy opened the door, turned out not to be a local voter, and chatted him up for something like forty-five minutes. But, as I said, this kind of thing goes with the territory for politicians.
The most disappointing thing in regards to thus stuff from last night also involved me, and was a bit of a waste of time for both of us—thankfully we only walked six blocks from home for it, as it was a 43rd Legislative District Democrats monthly meeting that was supposed to be taking place
at Seattle Central College. Shobhit had found that link and sent it to me; it includes the address for the college but not a room number, and was from the King County Democrats website.
Well, we walked into the college, and spoke to two different people—one sitting at a sort of reception desk just inside metal detectors; the other someone who seemed kind of like an on-campus police officer at a desk in a nearby office—and neither of them had any idea what we were talking about. Clearly no one else was arriving there for this meeting, either. The college hallways were deserted.
What the hell?
I even found
a tweet by the 43rd District Dems noting the meeting taking place last night. It included
a link for "more information," but that page has only the
February meeting as its most recent update. That meeting was virtual. Maybe we should have clicked that link at home to see if this month's meeting was also virtual, but we never did. We came back home and Shobhit did his door-knocking instead, until at about 9:00 we finally watched this week's episode of
Perry Mason on HBO Max.
Shobhit theorized that maybe these Democrats were detained with work in Olympia, nearing the end of the session. We really should have checked the virtual link from February just to be sure. Either way, why would they tweet that the meeting was last night and send a link to a page with nothing about the March meeting? This only makes me wonder if the 43rd District Democrats are short on volunteers. Theoretically I could look into that, except I am already not doing a whole lot for Shobhit's campaign; I wouldn't really have time for this either.
I did help Shobhit fill out a total 75 sheets for people to sign their pledge of support, which is part of the Democracy Voucher program. We wrote in his name and the seat he's running for on all of them, to make it easier for others to fill out the rest. Shobhit's had this longstanding, mysterious, chronic pain in his right arm, and it hurts more the more he has to write stuff. He hopes to be seeing a medical professional about it soon. It really has been going on a long time, like a couple of months at least. It's clearly something that needs medical attention.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
[posted 12:27 pm]
