I took 17 new pictures at work today, in between barely making a dent in the 400 emails I had in my inbox after taking last week off—and I was barely able to stay on top of all the new emails that rolled in through the course of the day.
I took 9 of the photos basically first thing in the morning before even sitting down to turn my computer on. I took two more over the rest of the morning, during which Gabby also took two shots that she sent to our Teams chat. I took one shot over my lunch break, and I took another 5 shortly before leaving at the end of the day. That made a total of 19 for me to add to the "
PCC Central Office Move 2025" photo album, which now contains 47 shots total. It'll get some more over the next couple of weeks as people unpack and settle in, and the space starts to turn into and feel like something normal.
I rode my bike to work today. I didn't time exactly how long it took—I should the next time I get the chance—but I would guess it was around ten minutes. Unfortunately I won't be able to ride to work tomorrow, as the loosening of my handlebars crossed a threshold on my ride home after work, so they twist far too far both forward and back. I would have taken the bike to 20/20 Cycle for a fix immediately, but they're closed Mondays and Tuesdays. So, I'll have to walk the bike up there after walking home tomorrow. But I guess as early as my second day at the new office I will also be seeing how simply walking to work and back goes.
The bike racks at Rainier Square are a bit crowded. I'm starting to see why people like paying for the secured bike rooms, even though I still think paying for that it stupid. I locked my bike, went up the garage elevators to the lobby, and the back entrance to the office—which used to be the back/north entrance to the Downtown store—was
right there. I swiped my fob to get in, and a few people were already there. Tracy, the Fresh Director, said good morning to me as I approached.
The desk I sat at was chosen for me, in a way. At the old office I sat right next to both Noah and Frank, who are the Grocery Merchandisers I work with, and they were already there. Noah was at the end of one row of desks, and I sat at the empty desk to his right, between him and a pretty thick pillar. Most rows of desks are rows of four, but this row was only a row of three because of that pillar, and at least this way I only had one person super close to me to the side, and it was Noah. Frank was sitting at the desk facing mine; and Kevin, who works on Grocery items in Category Management, sat across from Noah and to Frank's right. So this worked out quite well and in a pretty organic way.
Amy, who is on my "Pricing, Promotions & Project Management" ("P3" as we like to call it) team headed by Gabby, was in the office today as Tuesdays are the one day a week that she comes in. She took the desk in my row, on the other side of that pillar. Gabby, for her part, sat in the row of desks behind Noah and Amy and me, in the desk where her back was to that pillar. To Gabby's right was Tracy, sitting back to back behind me; to his right and behind Noah was Benny, who was for a long time the only person in Merchandising besides me who worked in-office five days a week. He actually went down to four days a week a few months ago. I think now James, the Receiving and Inventory Program Manager, is now the only one besides me who comes in every day.
Amy did ask me at one point this morning whether I thought I would just stick with that desk. I told her that if Noah and Frank continue sitting at the desks they sat at today—and they both work in-office three days a week on average—then yes, I probably would.
I kind of lay claim to that desk in more ways than one, actually. I managed to fuck up the setup of the desk itself within minutes of arriving. This desk had a rolling keyboard tray, which I didn't care for as it was too low below the surface of the desk, but I was going to get used to it if I had to. The problem was that the dual external monitors were not well centered with it. Noah noted that there's a crank under the desk I can loosen and then move the clamp holding up the monitors over, so I tried that.
I actually got it moved a bit, then decided I had moved it too far. In trying to move it back a bit, it got stuck. Soon enough Noah was under the desk checking it out, after I already had to no avail, and finally we figured out what I had done. That black plastic crank is hollow on its side facing up toward the desk, and somehow I had managed to get a knob that was part of the keyboard tray's sliding component lodged inside of it. No matter what we tried, we couldn't pry it loose. At one point Gabby came over to chat about something else, and I told her what was happening. "To be fair," I said, "Noah told me to do it." Noah replied, "I'm the bad influence. Matthew's the bad actor." Then Gabby took her
picture of Noah and Benny and me to send to the "P3" Teams chat, since neither Cathryn nor Brandy work in-office on Tuesdays.
As for the desk, I tried to let it go for the time being, but with the clamp loosened, the monitors pitched forward a bit and refused to align comfortably. Soon enough I called after Chris L for some help, immediately apologizing for managing to fuck it up. He tried to muscle the crank loose, to no avail. Later two more guys from IT came by and tried the same and also could not get it loose. This was when I mentioned that I would be totally good with them simply removing the keyboard tray altogether, which was one way to get it done. We agreed they would do it while I was away from my desk taking my lunch break at noon.
In the meantime, Gabby followed up the photo on Teams with a few "pro tips," which included "Don't mess with the monitor arms without consulting IT first or you'll end up like Matthew under your desk for an hour trying to troubleshoot." I was in the bathroom when I saw this, and I replied from the toilet: "Okay it wasn't an HOUR lol."
That was at 8:19 a.m., and that very minute, Gabby sent
her second photo of the day, of the two IT guys looking at it, one of them literally under the desk. And she added, "Someone has been under your desk for an hour," punctuating it with a goofy-face emoji.
Well, I decided to treat myself for lunch today and go over to the store and buy some Smoked Mozzarella Pasta, which I took with my novel up to the Rainier Square Lower Terrace and had a lovely lunch break in the sun—easily my favorite point at work today. Breaks are good. Breaks are important. Work was kind of nuts otherwise today, which was why I opted not to post the standard Daily Lunch Update (DLU) since I wanted to write about the entire day and include some of the photos in a post later this evening anyway.
When I got back from lunch, the keyboard tray was gone from my desk, and the monitor mounts were fixed. Whew! The rest of the afternoon went better, although I am still getting used to the new keyboard I was issued. It's much shallower, with shallow keys as well, and with my long fingernails I'm making typos all over the place. Which is ironic because the iMac keyboard I am typing on to write this very post at home is shallow in much the same way and I've been using it for ten years. I guess my hands just feel differently conditioned when I am at the office.
Speaking of keyboards, some things about the first day at the new office did not quite go as planned or expected. I had been led to believe that, once we all arrived today, the cubbies would be labeled with all of our names and whatever new equipment we had signed up for would be waiting for us in them. All the cubbies, which are mounted on a wall in the back, were without labels and all but just a couple of them were empty. I had signed up only for a new keyboard, thinking that was the only thing I needed, but when my old mouse wouldn't pair correctly I was issued a new one of those as well. In both cases, I had to go into
what eventually will be the copy room and get handed said equipment still in their cardboard boxes by three people from IT working the piles of stuff in there.
I think the IT team in particular was incredibly busy today. Every time I had to ask for help with something I felt bad about it. I guess that's what their job is, though.
I do think
the kitchen is quite nice, even if you have to use the electronic fob to get back into the main area of the office from there: coming in the front entrance from the foyer off 4th Avenue that also leads into the store, we use fobs to get through those main doors as well, of course. You walk in and come face to face with the front desk;
to the right is the glass wall of one of the 13 conference rooms (my understanding is that will will eventually get frosted so people meeting in there don't quite feel like they're in a fishbowl), with the second doorway into the desks area to the left of that. To the left of the front desk is the kitchen. I tend to go into the kitchen several times a day, mostly to refill my tea, so I am having to pull out my fob regularly to get back to my desk. My fob worked famously all day until the very last time I tried to use it, and then for some reason it didn't work at all. Shit, I sure hope it works when I get to the office tomorrow morning.
Anyway, that kitchen has windows that overlook 4th Avenue, from a few feet above the ground. It's the single spot in the entire office with actual windows facing the outside, letting in natural light. The rest of the time, we are just in a large central space under fluorescent lighting—which also does not have the sectional lighting we had at the old office. I do wish I could dim the lights in there but whatever.
I'll be playing catch-up all week, I'm sure. Kevin is eager for me to work on new items for the reset he's keen to move forward on, and which I could not get any work done on before I took last week off. I can only hope I can get some work done on it tomorrow, but we'll see; I also need to scan the rest of my inbox for anything critical. Several people booked me into meetings this week, particularly on Friday. Fantastic. Fucking meetings. I liked it better when I was less important and did not have to attend meetings.
I decided not to ask for permission to leave stuff at my desk. Today I brought back my laptop, my headset and its cradle, the mouse I wound up exchanging anyway, the plastic stand I use for printed calendars with critical deadlines on it, a Kleenex box, and a couple bottles of hand lotion. I remembered as I was writing this very paragraph that while all that was the last of the stuff I brought home from the old office, I took a shoe box full of pens and a stapler and post-its and scissors and such home the second-to-last day at the old office, and I'm going to bring that back in my backpack tomorrow. I still hope to eventually bring back stuff I have in an even bigger box that I took home a couple of months ago, although the fact that I have never missed any of it should tell me something—still, if I am going to sit at the same desk every day, I would really like to personalize it again. That includes the lovely potted plant Lynne left me when she retired from PCC
at the end of 2021. It's been sitting on my desk at home the past couple of months.
Anyway, what I left on the desk this afternoon will be there for me when I get back there tomorrow. There is a rolling box of two drawers under my desk that I am generally assuming I can also lay claim to, and if need be I can indeed still use one of the aforementioned
cubbies for storage of some things. I might as well make use of everything I can, and maybe even test the limits of it!
I think that about gets you up to speed, for now at least. I don't feel quite as anxious or ambivalent about the move now, and I didn't a great deal before anyway. Now that I have a genuine taste of what it will be like, I feel like I may learn to love it. Nowhere near as immediately as I loved the last office, but I'll still get there.
[posted 7:29pm]
