— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़सठ —
There are fewer people in the office this week, and that's the case even in Merchandising—among the 82 desks shifted from the old office to this one, Merchandising was allocated 18. I don't know how clear this is to everyone, but the expectation all along has been for an ebb and flow between department numbers depending on the day, and we're kind of okay overflowing into another department's allocated desks if they are low on people that day. So far, it hasn't been an issue. This week we had the most people in on Tuesday, and even then I think at least four of Merchandising's allocated desks never got used.
There is a key difference I have noticed so far, though. While even in Merchandising there are fewer people in today than there has been all week, there are still more people near me than there ever used to be at the old office—they are just different people. Today Noah, Frank and Kevin, all of whom sat either next to or across from me both yesterday and the day before, are all either working from home or are on store tours. So far no one has taken the desk to my left, but Elliott and Tyler, the Produce Merchandiser and Associate Produce Merchandiser respectively, are sitting across from me where Kevin and Frank were previously. Behind me are Cathryn (behind and to the left), Dave (VP of Merchandising, directly behind me), Leon (behind and to the right), and Erik at the desk at the far end—behind Erik, and to my right on the other side of the pillar, is Benny, who sat there yesterday as well. In the three rows mine is in the middle of, only Benny and I are not new people compared to yesterday or the day before.
Today I'm surrounded by Deli and Meat people, some of whom are kind of loud, but at least more than one of them, as I write this, are elsehwere in conference rooms for meetings—I have yet to see all 13 reservable conference rooms in use all at once (there is a 14th that is for CEO use only, not reservable), but they have been in pretty high demand all week so far. I was in two meetings yesterday and they were both in "The Pasture," way in the back.
It'll be interesting to see what tomorrow looks like. At the old office I was often one of only a handful of people who worked in-office on Fridays. I may find myself looking forward to Fridays even more than I used to for this reason. Mondays and Thursdays in the old office felt very similar but largely only because Frank's, Noah's, Brandy's and my desks were the only Merchandising desks on the other side of a group of conference and phone rooms, and next to us were Finance desks mostly empty on those days. I don't think I'll be next to empty desks quite so much going forward.
We'll see how average Mondays work out. Our first day here was Tuesday because Monday this week was a holiday, after all, so Monday next week will be the first Monday I experience here.
When Erik came in this morning, he handed us all an apple. He's the Meat Merchandiser and you'd expect that more from Produce, but whatever: he said, "Be sure to wash it," and also said it was a cross between a Fuji and a Honeycrisp that had been picked from the orchard only three days ago. So that was pretty cool.
Around 9:15 or so this morning, I needed to refill my tea, so I also took the apple out to the kitchen, the only spot in this office with windows. I washed the apple and, since there is a compost bin in the kitchen and I didn't want to make the noise of crunching an apple around the people sitting near me, I took a break and ate my apple, sitting at the bar seating facing that window.
I discovered a fun thing then: this is a great spot for people watching. The floor of our kitchen is maybe five feet above sidewalk level outside, so people walking by are at about eye level with your feet. They'd easily see me if they just bothered to look up, but nobody ever does. I was so interested in almost anyone who passed by: where's she going, I wonder? What's all the equipment in the cart this guy's pushing? That cyclist is hot! More hot cyclists in shorts please!
Then a medium-small dog shit on the sidewalk right in front of me. I saw a long cylinder of turd slide right out of it. I guess you've got to take the bad with the good when you're downtown. The young woman walking the dog on a leash immediately picked up the turd in a bag, so at least the sidewalk was clean again when she left. I mean: ish. The dog could have at least gone right next to the nearby tree, but it stopped right there in the middle of the sidewalk.
My apple didn't taste quite as good for that couple of minutes. But then the minutes passed and it was back to fun people watching. Also this will be a truly fantastic angle, I think, to watch the Pride Parade from next year. I was telling Cathryn this morning that at the old office several years I went there to watch the New Year's fireworks from the Space Needle, and here I'll get to come to the office to watch the Pride Parade. Not a bad trade, I don't think.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़सठ —
— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़सठ —
I don't want to neglect telling you about last night. I had no plans Tuesday night, but last night I hung out with nine other people, as it was Action Movie Night. And this one included Tony, Jake, Ryan, Ben, Chris G, Derek, Daniel, Gina, Shobhit and me. Ten of us this week; only four empty seats in the theater. Well, three empty seats if you consider that Daniel put his two big bags he's always carrying with him in the seat between him and me.
Gina was the biggest surprise. She has joined before but it's very, very rare. I think it's happened maybe one or two other times since Shobhit and I became regulars in 2022. She's the one who introduced Daniel to our group, when she was staying with her for a short while, and he continued coming back even after he found another place to stay.
Shobhit baked the veggie spring rolls from Costco this week. It freed up a lot of space in our freezer. He opened all the sweet & sour packets and put it all into a little bowl in the center of the plate we stacked the spring rolls onto, but he also made his own tomato dip. I wasn't as fond of that one. Daniel, never one to shy from doing the odd thing, mixed the two together and said it worked really well that way. I think the rest of us just kind of took his word for it. I know I did.
Shobhit was still baking the spring rolls when I got home—I walked home from the office, and it took me 27 minutes. I immediately grabbed my bike helmet and then walked my bike to 20/20 Cycle, hoping the fix for my handlebars issue would not be complicated or expensive. It was neither: the shop owner whipped out a special took, tightened a couple of levers in the handlebars, and it was fixed and no longer swiveling in a matter of seconds. I said, "Do you want me to pay for it?" He said, "You can get me the next time you come in for something." Nice!
As I was walking my bike out he said jokingly, "You can get out of my store, that's payment enough!" I laughed, thanked him again, and then rode the rest of the way back home, the bike right as rain.
I did not ride back to work again today though, much as I would have liked to. Shobhit and I have multiple plans downtown right after work today—an art showing at the Smith Tower Caffe Vita for our neighbor Mary; plus tickets to the Seattle Art Museum as today is Free First Thursday—so it'll be easier for us to just walk together. I'll ride again tomorrow.
This does mean that I walked to work again this morning. I still walked through the Skinner Hall underground concourse because I wanted to time it correctly; I knew to go straight out the back door on the
second floor of the Convention Center this time, to then go through the 2 Union Square lobby toward the tunnel. I got to the office and it took me 26 minutes that route.
Boy, am I digressing! I need to get back to Action Movie Night. Anyway, I got back with my fixed bike that cost me nothing to get fixed, and was soon helping Shobhit stack the spring rolls on a plate. We had that ready a while before we needed to go downstairs, but then we were a couple of minutes late because Shobhit was having difficulty figuring out his Outlook account prompting him to update his password using the Authenticator app he has never had to use before. He finally got it figured out, though; I made myself a rum and Coke (we still have leftover Coke from the liter we got for free with the pizza we had at Alexia's last Friday); we gathered the food and headed downstairs. Daniel was already there waiting to be let into the West Building, having been the first to arrive.
It was Chris G's choice this week. I had looked over his history of picks and saw that I rather liked a lot of his movies. And I was pretty happy with his choice this week, even though the movie itself turned out to be okay-to-good:
Late Night with the Devil, which I had actually been interested in when it was in theaters but had been unable to prioritize it over other stuff playing at the time. So now, I have seen it. It wasn't
great, but it wasn't bad either. Pretty tame by horror standards, but a fun premise.
It wasn't too long either, which is always a plus. We were back in the condo by shortly after 9:00. I washed the dishes and was getting ready for bed soon after.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़सठ —
[posted 12:33pm]
