Here I am, just a few hours from going to bed. Yesterday I switched my daily weekday alarm from 5:15 a.m. to 5:35 a.m. An extra twenty minutes of sleep every morning, hooray! I'll get up in the morning, have breakfast, get ready, and barely do more than just coast down the hill to Downtown to get to work, at the new office at Rainier Square.
I'm feeling a little bit anxious about it. Did I feel anxious when we last did an office move, in 2016? That move was very different in so many ways, not least of which was ending the old office on a Friday and starting at the new one, entirely filled with new desks and office furniture, the following Monday. We were able to pack up our personal effects into a box and the movers moved it all for us. This time, not only was there an entire week between the last day at the old office and the first day at the new one, but we had to take all of our personal stuff home. We mostly did that weeks ago, actually.
When I went to the movie I saw yesterday, which I went to SIFF Cinema at the Uptown—ironically. until two weeks ago the theater closest to the central office—myself, to see
Splitsville (which I quite enjoyed, actually), I had the idea that I would go to Rainier Square and, like I did the previous weekend, use my new key fob to take a peek inside the office. I know the desks would all be set up by then. Thankfully, I had the wherewithal to open my Microsoft Teams app, just in case there might be something relevant in there. And, indeed, there was: on Sunday morning Lori messaged the Office Relocation Team chat with eight photos, and the text,
It’s all finally coming together! Thanks for sharing. Almost looks like a bigger space with everything in its place.
A couple of the photos were of the desks. I saved all the photos and added them to my "
PCC Central Office Move 2025" album, taking the total number of shots to 28—and I am sure to take a bunch more tomorrow. But
this shot of the desks stuck with me a little bit. I already knew the L part of our previously L-shaped desks were not coming, and all the sit-stand portions of the desks that were moving had a foot of length shaved off of them. But seeing the photo for the first time, they just look so close together. I'm not going to lie, I'm not crazy about it. The desks in the old office at least had partial walls between them, and these only have walls between the rows of desks facing each other. It kind of looks like, on days when a lot of people are in anyway, we're going to feel a little like we're in each other's laps.
I'm still concerned about what the noise level will be like. When I first walked into that open space in the center of the office, I envisioned the desks in there and commented that it's probably going to feel like a call center. And that's very much what the photo looks like to me, albeit with a "natural foods grocery" touch of the wall mural of a tractor and farmers in a field of crops. I guess we'll cross some bridges when we get to them. I do love Rainier Square overall and am excited to be going there for work every day.
That's the key difference from the 2016 move, though. With that move, I was mostly just excited about it. We were more than doubling our office space, and moving into a beautiful space in a location with beautiful views. Other people actually retired earlier than planned because the location made their commutes too much more difficult, but it was never a barrier for me. For me, that move was basically all upside. This move is far more of a mixed bag: we're losing any views to speak of and cutting our total office space in half and cramming 82 desks that each have barely more than half the previous total desk space in there. But there are definite upsides, such as having an office right next to a store for the first time in literally decades, in a space that is more humble than the ostentatious grandeur of the Elliott Avenue office, which likely made vendors assume we could afford thinner margins. And for me personally, I'll have access to a beautiful outdoor terrace in the warmer months and a perfectly pleasant indoor public space in the cooler months for my lunch breaks; the location is now all of one mile from my home; and in the winter I'll be able to use the Convention Center and the underground concourse to travel nearly a third of my commute indoors.
We'll see how much use I get with the "phone rooms" in the new office. Unlike at the old office, all the phone rooms in the new space will have sit-stand desks
and two computer monitors on them. This will make meetings where I want the use of my computer far easier.
It's going to be a much bigger transition than the last move was. There's going to have to be a lot more improvising and a lot more compromise. I'm eager to get something definitive regarding an assigned desk, rather than having to store all my stuff in a cubby when not using a "hotel desk" like most people, because I work in-office every day. All conversations about this have inferred that I have nothing to worry about, but there hasn't been a discussion about it in some weeks and nothing was ever finalized. I will likely be very close to the first person in the office tomorrow morning, if not the first person outright—unless Noah and Frank are there, and they do typically get there before me. I will have my new keyboard waiting for me in a cubby. I have no idea if I'll be expected to grab that and go sit at a desk at random, or if a desk will be indicated for me. I kind of suspect it will be the former, but I guess we'll see.
It's going to be a very different kind of day tomorrow. However it goes, I'll be taking lots of pictures.
Now I'll just run through the rest of my activities since I last posted, which was on Saturday morning.
That afternoon, at 3:00, Laney came over to watch just one movie with me in the Braeburn Condos theater:
This Is Spinal Tap, which I was far more impressed with than I was the last time I watched it, 18 years ago. I just didn't have the same kind of knowledge, or the inclination to look up information about movies, at the age of 31, I guess. There's just so much that's impressive about that movie,
and it's hilarious—something that is a lot easier to get out of it when watching with someone rather than by yourself.
Saturday night was a bonus "Naked Night" at the club Shobhit and I like to go to for this event, and we went. They do this on the second Monday of every month, but also on the fourth Saturday of the two months of the year that have four Saturdays—and that was in August this year. The vibe was a bit different at the Saturday night event, including the addition of a DJ and a dance floor. I actually danced naked on a club dance floor, a new experience for me. I also did some other things that I won't get into.
We also ran into a couple of people we know, and I also won't say who they were. But that was an unexpected surprise, and sort of awkward at first, until it wasn't. There's a whole lot more I could say about our Saturday evening, but this isn't the place for it.
I already mentioned the movie I went to yesterday. Today, Shobhit actually joined Laney and me for the movie we went to—
The Roses, which was actually my least favorite of the movies I saw, one each day, over the weekend—and that includes
The Batman at Alexia's on Friday;
This Is Spinal Tap with Laney on Saturday; and
Splitsville by myself yesterday. Today's movie was the second adaptation of the 1981 novel
The War of the Roses, the first of which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in 1989, and which I much prefer.
I was just looking at my calendar, and I have only one movie planned for the rest of the week, and I don't even know yet what it is, as it'll be at Action Movie Night on Wednesday. Shobhit and I have non-movie plans on Thursday and on Saturday, and both tomorrow evening and Thursday evening are currently free. The rest of this week is looking pretty manageable in terms of my social calendar, which I'm kind of happy about on the same week I'll both be getting used to an entirely new office space and catching up on hundreds of backlogged emails after a week off of work.
I sure did enjoy that week off, though.
[posted 8:10pm]
