102 Tons of 2016 Blueberries

— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन — Quite the unusual week at work this week: we had the all-Merchandising meeting most of the day Tuesday; and yesterday (Thursday) was mostly taken up by the in-person POS meeting, which was at the Redmond store. Both meetings precluding my posting a regular Daily Lunch Update (DLU), leaving only three regular weekday blog posts this week. I was thinking, and even told the team, yesterday that I wasn't sure I had been to the Redmond PCC store since it opened in 2006. That would have been 20 years ago! Cathryn gave me a ride there from the office, and when we walked into the Redmond store classroom where the meeting happened, Cathryn said to Gabby, "Matthew said he's never been to this store before." I said: "That's not what I said!" But, what I said was also wrong. I did a quick search on Flickr this morning, and discovered I was actually last there in 2018, when I partipated in the first of two "PCC Store to Farm Bike Rides." There had been four of them scheduled, but I only did two; and the first one I did myself—I drove my bike to the Burien store and no one knew what the hell I was talking about, not even store staff. It turned out the ride had been canceled due to lack of interest and no one bothered to tell me. I went ahead and rode from the Burien store out to Bailey's Farm anyway, since I was already out there with my bike. But, the first one went forward, largely because people felt bad that I wound up doing the first one alone: Jamie and Melissa rode with me (I believe neither of them still work at PCC), and that one, in August 2018, started and ended at the Redmond store. If not for that ride, it probably would have been 20 years since I last went there; my otherwise most recent photos taken there were indeed from May 2006, when the store had its Grand Opening. So, this morning I had to follow up over Teams with the P3 Team, clarifying that I had actually last been there in 2018. But! A new fun detail: I found this photo I had taken of a sign on the men's room door on the day of that ride in 2018, which mentions how many blueberries we sold in . . . 2016. That exact sign was still up on the mirror yesterday, surprisingly undamaged for a sign that has been up at least eight years. I shared that over Teams as well, and Gabby suggested I send it to the Signs team because she suspected they would ask Redmond to take it down. I wonder how many other strangely outdated signs are up in weird spots all over our stores? Cathryn actually chimed in over Teams, Also, odd sign to have in a restroom? Anyone else with me? A fair point. Gabby had suggested I send the photo to Jack, Fran, and Lexis. Because I wasn't paying attention to Outlook's auto-fill, I accidentally sent it to Jack, Frank and Lexis. Frank is one of the Grocery Merchandisers, no connection to either signs of this sort or the Produce department. Still, his first reaction was: 2016??? I mean, if the sign has been up since sometime between 2016 and 2018, that makes more sense. But in 2026, one might wonder why a sign references such an old statistic. The sign also gives it a fun reference point: after noting that we sold 204,517 lbs of blueberries (in 2016), it adds: That's the equivalent of 15 Fremont Trolls! So, two minutes after his first email, Frank replied, How do they know what the troll weighs? He got briefly obsessed with this question. But really, how much the Fremont Troll weighs is an easy Google question (it weighs 13,000 lbs). Side note: interesting that it would be at the Redmond store where this sign has been noticed, two different times, eight years apart. The Redmond PCC is 12 miles away from the Fremont Troll (and that's as the crow flies; it's a 17-mile drive). Anyway. Cathryn had come to the office first for a couple of hours, so had an easy time of giving me a ride to the Redmond store. She lives in Kingston, though, so it totally made sense for her to want to drive straight back there. Rather than driving me back to the office, she dropped me off at the Lynnwood City Center Station and I took Light Rail back from there. This took me a good 75 minutes or so; it could have been closer to 60 except for things like waiting for the train to arrive. I had looked up transit options direct from the store, and there were no direct options. I did find a two-bus itinerary that was scheduled to get me back in about 75 minutes, but that's without any delays. It likely still would have taken longer to go that route, so getting the ride to Lynnwood was likely still the best option. The POS meeting itself was scheduled for four hours, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. But, Cathryn and I left the office at 9:00, and I got back to the office at 3:45. This left me all of about 2 hours and 15 minutes combined to actually do work in the office yesterday. I did bring my laptop with me this time, though, so I did check email a few times during the meeting, and responded to a few; I actually did a few more on the train, using my phone as a wifi hotspot—a fantastic tool, I must say (this also allows me to work on travelogues while traveling home from trips by car or bus). — पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन — — पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन — Having not posted yesterday, I can now offer a record of my Wednesday evening, which was this week's Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condos theater. The movie choice this week went to Joe, the only other regular at Action Movie Night besides Tony and Shobhit and me who actually lives at The Braeburn, and he chose the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs. Most of us clocked within minutes that this was very similar to the 2006 Martin Scorsese film The Departed—both the best film of that year, and Jesse's film choice for Action Movie Night in April 2023 (so, less than three years ago). I quickly found confirmation that The Departed, while having a lot of other extra details and elements added, was indeed an American remake of Infernal Affairs, the premise of which is a cop and a mobster infiltrating as moles simultaneously in each other's groups. The Departed is a far better film, I must say. I didn't find Infernal Affairs all that exciting, and I found a lot of its overactive cinematography a bit pretensious. I was relieved to find it was a far shorter film; The Departed clocked in at two and a half hours, and Infernal Affairs is an hour and 41 minutes. It was far from the worst selection at Action Movie Night, but I've also seen better. Most interesting was that Joe, when he chose it, had no idea about the Departed connection. I suppose I should mention who all was present this week, as I always do. This was a truly rare occasion in which Tony did not make it. I wonder if we'll find out next time why? Totally none of my business but I'm curious anyway. So: this week there were eight people, including Jake, Joe, Chris B, Andy, Derek, Daniel, Shobhit, and myself. Shobhit and I brought homemade pizza made on flatbreads we bought at QFC—three flatbreads each covering two different cookie sheets. I'd say about half of all that pizza got consumed; someone else brought a medium pepperoni pizza which got completely gobbled up. Andy, for the second time, brought his waffle maker and some batter and made Belgian waffles. This time, however, he was super bummed to realize he forgot both butter and maple syrup. We had plenty of both upstairs, though, so I went to fetch them—even though I had to take the stairs thanks to the East Building elevator being out of service since Friday. The frequency with which the elevator goes out of service is pretty annoying. I should start warning prospective buyers. Don't waste your time and money! (To be fair, I still otherwise really love living in this building. So long as the fucking elevator is working. Most permanent wheelchair users would be smart enough not to live in any upper floors to begin with, but what if any resident has an injurity or something? It's ridiculous.) Andy had also made butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies. He said he made a bunch of them at home and could not stop eating them, like 12 of them he said, so he brought the rest to get them out of the house. I had oly one and it was delicious. I still ate too many slices of our pizza plus an entire Belgian waffle. It's very hard not to overeat at Action Movie Night. I was otherwise glad the movie was on the slightly shorter side, so Shobhit and I could get back upstairs and watch another episode of his Actor Awards screener of Pluribus. We watched another two episodes last night, in addition to this week's Fallout, plus I went to the bedroom to watch this week's The Pitt. Shobhit is leaning toward waiting until the season's 15 episodes have aired so he can binge them all (an understandable thing to want to do, since each season covers one of 15 hours of a single 15-hour shift). But, I have podcast coverage to listen to and I can't wait. I would much rather be able to watch it on the TV in the living room but whatever. Once Shobhit gets caught up on the other shows he's catching up on, maybe he'll change his mind and catch up on The Pitt. — पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्तावन — [posted 12:30pm]

In the Air at Rainier Square

— पांच हजार नौ सौ छप्पन — I did not post yesterday afternoon, because between 9 a.m. and about 3 p.m. we had our "Q1 All Merchandising Meeting," this being the annual "big one" in which each team presents the past year's successes and lessons learned, as well as opportunities for the new year, to the entire department. This was our first such meeting since moving to the new office space, and it was also our first time using the Rainier Tower Conference Center on the 12th floor of the tower on the south side of the block. I first toured that space with the Office Relocation Team last May. Accoding to Gabby, we are the only department utilizing that space, at least so far; things like regular Store Director meetings are being scheduled in the "Vineyard," the largest conference room we have in this office—which was listed as having a capacity of 18. I don't know how many people total sit in on an SD meeting, but presumably there would be at least one from each of our 16 stores, plus whoever from the office. It's worth noting that the Merchandising Department consists of 32 people; if I recall correctly there were only two missing yesterday (Robin was reportedly not feeling well, and Kevin connected via Teams, not sure why he didn't come in), so that must mean we had 30 people. The Rainier Tower Conference Center consists of a small waiting room area, a full kitchen that's of fair size but cramped when accommodating the conference room capacity, and two conference rooms. We used the north room, with slightly higher capacity; when I toured last May, there were 6 tables and 22 chairs in it. Yesterday, there were four rows of three tables, each with three chairs, set up; that gave the room a tight but workable capacity of 36. Even though the tables were flush against the opposite wall and this meant everyone else in my row had to walk past me, I very deliberately sat on the north end of my row so I would be close to a window. This worked just fine for me. I get a little anxious about these presentations, even though they are pretty informal and not a huge deal. The P3 team consists of 5 people and is thus the largest of any of the teams in Merhandising; we were also the only team with more than 2 people on it that had every member of the team go up to the front of the room and share different bullet points to talk about—in our case, on three slides. Gabby always insists we all share in this presentation, and I actually do appreciate where it's coming from—it's not at all about forcing any of us to do anything we don't want to do, but rather about having us all share in our success as a team. Gabby put together three different slides, and on the first she separated by the three "Ps": Pricing (Cathryn and I tag teamed on these bullet points); Promotions (Amy did most of this); and Project Management (Brandy discussed all of this). The second slide listed "Learnings & Opportunities," only one of which did I speak to. And the third slide listed "Focus Areas" for 2026, which Gabby covered entirely. I loved her last bullet point on this one: Stay Connected as a Team in our Hybrid Environment; weekly icebreakers, seasonal happy hours, P3 Teams chat​. Apparently Dave had suggested maybe she not mention our happy hours, but Gabby was set on including it. We had a lunch break catered by Chipotle, which was delicious and I ate way too much of. First I had two soft tacos, but then I went for seconds because I wanted some chips with some of the toppings on them. The lunch break was a solid hour, and at one point all five of us on the P3 team were gathered together around the kitchen island—a rare moment indeed, as usually not all five of us are in-office on the same day. (We haven't even managed to get all five of us together for our quarterly Happy Hour since last May, when I suggested we invite Marie from IT along.) The idea suddenly came to me: "I have a weird idea," I said. It wasn't actually that weird. "Should we get a selfie, over there?" I pointed over to the window, which has a lovely 12th-floor view of downtown to the north, up 5th Avenue. "We're so rarely all together." Everyone was down for it, and I'm glad someone, I think it was Cathryn, suggested we ask Eric (the Meat Merchandiser), who happened to be rinsing a dish at the sink nearby, to take a photo of us rather than doing a selfie. I think this made for an even better picture—a photo that we could not have hoped for better. He did this rapid-fire thing where he took five different shots, which is always a mixed bag because I then have to whittle down to the best one. I actually kept two; you see the best shot at the bottom of this very post. The other one I kept because Cathryn's shit-eating grin cracks me up. I sent both shots to the P3 group chat on Teams shortly after we returned to the office. I usually work in-office 7:30 to 4:30, so I had roughly two and a half hours of office work time yesterday. I headed upstairs at about 8:40, and was back to my desk at about 3:00. We all still took our laptops up to the meeting, where the RTCC provides wifi; I did very little actual work during the meeting, but did check my email and did run and send out my weekly Tuesday report of the week's discontinued items for all the POS admins. Exactly where this Conference Center is located can be sort of confusing; some people clearly assume it's directly up Rainier Square Tower, the much newer, much taller (second-tallest in the city) building towering directly above our office space. But, to get to the Conference Center, you actually leave the office, go up to Level Two of the shared lobby space of the two towers on this block, and then to the elevator banks on the southeast corner of the block—which actually go up to older Rainier Tower, the one with the famous tapered base. The Conference Center is on level 12, which appears to be the lowest floor of the tower with windows, above the pedestal, which contains 11 floors of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. It's pretty cool that even the "bottom floor" of the tower offers pretty decent views. — पांच हजार नौ सौ छप्पन — — पांच हजार नौ सौ छप्पन — Anyway, since I didn't post yesterday, I wasn't able to tell you about Monday evening until now—which isn't much anyway. Shobhit now has access to a bunch of online screeners for Actor Awards nominees, and this included the Apple TV series Pluribus, which I was very excited about: I finally get a chance to watch it, even though I'm not currently subscribing to Apple TV! And the first episode of Pluribus is very exiting. Not exciting enough, however, to keep Shobhit awake: he was sound asleep on the couch and I had to stop the episode about 40 minutes in. I tried to wait for him, I really did, but I was far too eager to finish the episode and so I took the laptop (which I had been using to screencast the show to our smart TV) back to the bedroom and finished the episode there. Shobhit still isn't quite reacclimated to sleep patterns of the Pacific Time Zone, after returning from India on Friday. I suspect he'd otherwise have been by now, except that he went to that all-night party on Saturday night, which I think put a moneky wrench into his reacclimation process. He keeps falling asleep rather early, and then waking up quite early. He slept later this morning than he has been, so that's something. — पांच हजार नौ सौ छप्पन — After work yesterday, I met up with Laney for a movie at the AMC Pacific Place at 5:00: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. It was pretty good, definitely better than I feared it would be, but in the end I thought it was the same solid-B level I found last year's 28 Years Later to be. As in, I liked it, but don't really get the kind of astounding amount of critical acclaim. Like: it's fine. I rode the bus as far as Broadway with Laney afterward, then walked the rest of the way home. Shobhit was on the couch, watching an Actor Awards movie screener on his laptop: Blue Moon. He was sound asleep well before it ended, though—he likes to blame how sleepy he gets after eating, but I'm certain it's still at least half because of jet lag. He came to bed while I was still finishing up my review, and I was like: I'm still going to watch episode 2 of Pluribus. "That's okay," he said, and was snoring within seconds. I had barely an hour to spare and was too eager to watch, both because I couldn't wait to keep moving on the story, and because I wanted to be able to start listening to archived episodes of The Prestige TV Podcast coverage of the show, and their first episode covered both the first two episodes of the show (which had been released on the same day, back in November). I listened while getting ready for bed, and finished the podcast episode while getting ready this morning. — पांच हजार नौ सौ छप्पन — Shobhit has gotten involved in other extracurricular activities over the past few days as well: he volunteered stuffing Easter Eggs with Seattle Men in Leather on Monday; and yesterdy afternoon he actually went to the "Free America Walk-Out & March," which started at Seattle Central College and went down Pine Street to Downtown. He texted me that it seemed kind of small, and I noted that this was likely because it occurred on a weekday afternoon. I might have gone to it myself, for example, if I weren't working. (And while I think all protest is important, I'm not going to bail on the Q1 All-Merchandising Meeting for it.) He's also starting to get info on the schedule and rehearsals for The Foreigner, which he'll be performing in through the month of March in Olympia. How he'll handle the commute still hasn't been fully ironed out. He may simply wind up driving back and forth a lot, which is going to take a lot of gas. He may find a room somewhere, but I'm not sure what he can find if there is not much consistency to the schedule. There's a lot still to figure out, but it'll get done. — पांच हजार नौ सौ छप्पन — [posted 12:32pm]