— पांच हजार सात सौ चौदह —
Last night Shobhit and I finished the lentils and rice he made for dinner Tuesday. We ate while watching episode 6 of the FX on Huly show about the IRA,
Say Nothing.
I took a roughly 90-minute break from TV after that, though, so I could
finally finalize—and order—this year's calendars. I ordered a total of 16, from six different templates. There are nine copies of one template; three copies of another; and then one each of four more different templates.
Last year, I made a calendar specifically for Alexia. I didn't make one for her this year, but I did make one for another friend. So, this year and last year had the same number of calendars, and the total cost was within just a few cents of being identical. I did kind of forget quite how much it would be, though: like last year, I placed an order separately for the calendar I made for Uncle David & Mary Ann, as they are in Australia and thus the only one being shipped internationally. This is the one thing that makes up for Costco's outsourcing of calendar making to Shutterfly resulting in the largest calendar size being a bit smaller than I used to be able to make, though: I could not ship both to separate locations within a single order
or with an option for international shipping when it was directly through Costco.
Anyway. Calendar + tax + international shipping, for the calendar to Uncle David and Mary Ann, totaled $57.24. This was identical to last year. The other 15 calendars, which I was able to put all in the same single order, came to a total of $392.04. This was 77 cents more than last year. The two combined, this year, thus came to $449.28. On average, then, that comes to $28.08 per calendar.
This is indeed a rather significant, annual expense that I have every Christmas. But, at least it's part of a decades-long system that covers the gift I give to 16 different people, and I don't have to worry about Christmas shopping otherwise, except for Shobhit, and even with him I don't have to worry about it much. The thing that gets me is how many hours of work I do on this—I couldn't even say how many; I should actually track it one of these years, but I started work on this probably at least two months ago—only to still have to spend well over four hundred dollars. Yay capitalism!
I'm just happy it's finally done. I had the orders placed last year on November 7. But, the calendars arrived with surprising swiftness. So, I know I have nothing to worry about not having gotten the orders placed this year until November 20. I'll still have the 12 calendars I'm having shipped directly to me in hand by the first week of December, probably. The other four calendars being shipped direct to other people are going to Uncle David and Mary Ann in Adelaide; Christopher and the boys in Wallace, Idaho; Nikki and TJ in Spokane; and Becca in Lake Stevens.
When I had all my orders placed, I went back out to the living room. We watched Monday's episode of
What We Do In the Shadows, which was all right; I laughed a fair amount. Then we watched one more episode of
Say Nothing before I went to bed.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौदह —
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौदह —
Big news yesterday: I was selected as one of the three Q3 "PCC Office Stars."
I've actually been aware of this as a kind of ongoing thing for a few months now. I can't remember exactly when it was, but earlier this year, maybe sometime over the summer, Gabby told me Marie in IT had told her she was thinking of nominating me. My response to that was little more than a (sincere!) "that's nice," but I didn't put much stock into it, really. Even though, from the start, Gabby was half-facetiously saying she was ready to "campaign" on my behalf. I was like: yeah I don't need you to do that.
I think this process was put on the backburner a bit, because Marie had a horrible family tragedy and was out of office for something like a month, maybe even more, as a result. But then, on Halloween morning—when I was out with the Office Relocation Project Team on the new office location site visit, actually—I received a Teams message from Jameson, our Customer Support Manager:
Wondering if you have some time today or tomorrow to chat for about 15 minutes? he asked.
Some exciting news to share.
Oh?
At first I responded:
Okay, I'm intrigued, particularly as how this pertains to me personally?? At first I truly had no idea what this could be about. We established that we'd get on a Teams call later that afternoon, and in the meantime it finally occurred to me that it probably had to do with me being an "Office Star."
We got on the call, and that was confirmed. He emailed me a questionnaire to fill out, which I had filled out and sent back to him by the next morning, November 1. Of course I did; I love filling out questionnaires!
There's a few questions from it that I want to point out here, because as I expected after my verbose responses, Jameson had to cut for space.
This was my least favorite question:
9. What makes you the best version of yourself when you come to work?
To which I replied:
Maintaining a high level of self-worth is what makes me the best version of myself no matter where I am.
I was very proud of this response, and the subtext that there should never be any suggestion that our value is tied to what job we have. In the end, the question was omitted completely from the flyer Jameson put together with my answers. I would be tempted to say I'm disappointed this answer wasn't included, but honestly I think this is a question that doesn't quite work as intended, so omitting it completely is best.
Then there were these two questions, where I tied the answers together:
3. What is a food/product from PCC that you get often?
Smoked Mozzarella Pasta from the PCC Deli. I would dive into a pool of it if I could. Even though it used to be slightly better when the smoked mozzarella was cubed rather than shredded as it is now. (Deli is very aware of my position on this matter.)
10. What do you want to see in your future with PCC?
Smoked Mozzarella Pasta with cubed smoked mozzarella. I won’t let this go!
I very much amused myself with this, and was relatively pleased with the "callback" element. But, on the flyer, Jameson omitted the 10th question, and just added my "I won't let this go!" to the end of my answer to question #3. It doesn't work quite as well, but of course, nobody reading the flyer knows what's missing from it.
The other thing he edited down a little was in my list of the seven stores that we had open when I was hired in 2002. A couple more stores had parentheticals, and Jameson had to remove those parentheticals. It's not a huge deal.
Jameson messaged me images of the two pages of the flyer on Thursday last week. I felt a little bad because I had to be a bit "copy editor" and note that he had the exact same text at the beginning of the red sidebars on both pages. He thanked me for pointing it out and confirmed this was unintentional. He even updated and then re-sent the updated, first-page side bar.
I told Gabby about having filled out the Q&A during our 1:1 meeting last Friday. I was taken aback by how beside herself she was about this; she was
so excited—she told me she hadn't realized I had been selected. Given that she's my manager, I completely assumed she knew. But, the only thing from before that, that I knew for certain, was that even though Gabby had told me very early on that managers are not supposed to be able to nominate direct reports, she somehow got into the fold with this one, and in some way managed a kind of joint-nominatio with Marie. I never got minute details about that, but I wonder if maybe Gabby gently nudged Marie about it after it felt like enough time had passed after her returnto the office from her bereavement leave.
Jameson told me last week that he'd have a printed version on my desk sometime this week. So, I assumed the announcement would be sent out sometime this week. It happened yesterday: at 12:27, Jameson sent out his quarterly email with the three "Office Stars" for the quarter. I suspect he does it this way due to difficulty procuring nominations on a monthly basis, so instead of there being one person for each month, we get three people selected per quarter.
The other two this quarter are Scott from IT, a really patient and kind guy who has been a large part of the system updates that people mentioned also in their appreciation comments for my nomination; and Rachel, a very cool woman who is the Community Food Systems Manager. All of our flyers have been printed and mounted to the south wall of the office, alongside previous quarter nominees.
I think the use of "nominees" but never "winners" gets confusing. I get the disinclination to use "winner," but if you only ever say "nominee," it makes it sound like you're still merely in the running. But, as the printed flyers indicate, all three of us are "Office Stars."
Side note: back when Tracy still worked here, she told me Steven, the HBC Merchandiser, had once considered nomimating me. But he apparently decided not to bother because of my history of making it clear how much I know already that people appreciate me. (People love me! Especially brokers! And at least some of the POS staff at stores.) The way I see it, I've really been an "office star" for a good twenty years already. But, I'm not going to complain about being officially recognized.
In fact I'll happy
post to my socials about it. (You can view the flyer images themselves there.)
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौदह —
[posted 12:31 pm]