— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अट्ठासी —
I had thought I might go home first and then head downtown to meet Laney for the movie we went to see at Pacific Place at 5:40. But, then I decided, fuck it—I didn't want to rush home only to turn right around and rush right back downtown again. I decided I liked the casual approach much better, texted Laney to tell her I'd be downtown around 5:00 and asked if she wanted to come down a bit earlier to hang out for a short while before the movie.
She said: Sure! And suggested we meet at Westlake Park. Predictably, she was already there when I arrived, sitting at one of the little two-person metal tables they have arranged around the park. Apparently distractingly loud music from a speaker hung on a tree right above where she sat started right before I arrived, so we shifted over to the north a bit, closer to Westlake Center, and sat under a table with an umbrella. I tilted the umbrella to aim its shadow over us better.
And, we just sat there for about half an hour. It was quite wonderful, actually—yesterday was the last of a several-day stint of weather actually perfect for this time of year. I read through my Facebook Memories every morning and there's been a few from 2019 complaining about how unseasonably hot it was, which has to mean it was well into the seventies. Over the weekend we didn't quite hit 70° but rather got into the upper sixties, sunny, absolutely lovely with a light jacket. I actually took my jacket off when I sat down with Laney, although it was time to put it back on again once the sun set behind nearby buildings and we were again in shadow.
In any case, I was really glad we did that. It may have been only half an hour but it was sure a rejuvenating thirty minutes. Then, we walked the couple of blocks up Pine to Pacific Place, up to the fourth floor AMC Theater, and we saw
Love Lies Bleeding—a solid, B-plus lesbian noir that we were both very impressed with on multiple levels. We both docked it a few points for a very strange turn it takes for a few minutes at the end that neither of us could really make sense of.
Laney was of the mind to walk home after the movie, knowing it would be at a pace slower than my usual, but it was fine. We also needed to walk over to Pike Street so we could walk on the side alongside the Convention Center that goes over the freeway and thus blocks the view, as she's afraid of heights and can't stand walking over the bridge on Pine. It was all perfectly lovely, and we said our goodbyes at her building on Broadway between Pine and Pike, an area that seems to be getting sketchier and sketchier, which is too bad.
I walked the rest of the way home, dished up leftovers and new food Shobhit had made for dinner, went to the bedroom and wrote my review. I don't usually do this this late in the evening but I didn't want to wait until Thursday to watch this week's episode of
Shogun on Hulu, so then we watched that, and it continues to be a great show, highly recommended.
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अट्ठासी —
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अट्ठासी —
The thing that sets
today apart is my participation in an interview panel, conducting three separate one-hour interviews today with candidates for the open Grocery Merchandiser position. There was one at 10:00 and another at 11:00; my typical lunch break is at noon. There will be a third interview at 3:00, that one a hybrid with the candidate calling in via Zoom because they're out of state but apparently willing to move. There's a "debrief" meeting after that at 4:00. With all that and the half-hour team meeting with Gabby and Amy, that's how my meetings total four hours today. I'll be glad when it's all done.
Gabby came to my desk this morning, asked how I was feeling. I said I was feeling okay, which was true, even though I was slightly anxious about participating in something like this for the first time. She asked if I wanted to do any practice interview questions on her, and I said (kindly, I think) no; she was clearly disappointed. But, I have too much other stuff to work on today and all these meetings are already taking up too much time.
So far, the interviews are going okay. I think it's safe to say I am contributing to the conversation the least, having less direct relevance to the job being applied for than Justine, Steven and Noah—the other three on the interview panel—do. But, we seem to be going through the pre-set list of questions in the same order each time, leaving me to ask the same two questions in each interview, slightly paraphrased from how they are written on the document: "Talk about what it means to you to drive business and how it's achieved," and "Tell me about how you introduce a policy change to your work group" (or, as I rephrased it in the second interview, "the people you work with"). Neither of these are questions I would ever naturally ask anyone in any cirsumtance at all, and there are other questions closer to things I might. But, the interviewees don't seem to notice anything particularly different about questions I ask versus others.
I'm already slightly conflicted about the two candidates, who could both be good fits. I got a much better sense of both personality fit, and extent of relevant experience in a similar position elsewhere, with the first person. The second person has a far greater breadth of understanding of the natural foods industry and thus what our company's place in it is.
There's still the last interview to happen later. I guess I'll have to follow up about my afternoon experiences in tomorrow's blog post.
— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ अट्ठासी —
[posted 12:44 pm]
