surprise visit

— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ अस्सी — A random social engagement this morning! I saw Claudia, who was nearby and stopped at the PCC Corner Market, both to get some lunch on her way to her next stop and to see the store since she had never seen it. I also showed her the office, and she got to say hi to Steven and Noah and Adrienne. I'm not sure I saw her longer than roughly 45 minutes, but it counts. Social Review point for her! I'm the only one who cares about that. She works for the Washington Farmland Trust—in fact, she's been there nearly five years now. Decades ago this organization began as the PCC Farmland Trust, and they shifted to the independent Washington Farmland Trust in 2020—not long before Claudia was hired there. Claudia has always been way happier with her job there than she ever was at PCC, though she clearly misses some of the people at PCC. She's always dying for gossip for me to share with her, though, and I rarely have anything to tell her. Anyway, apparently once you've worked there for five years you get the opportunity for a four-week, paid sabbatical. They offer a lot of very cool benefits to staff there. I guess she's on her way to a farm visit today. She said she had just gotten off the ferry; she typically works from home in Port Orchard. She used to come in once a week, I think, when they had their office for a while at the Bullitt Center just one block from Shobhit's and my condo, but they have since moved out. I don't remember where they moved to. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen Claudia since I stopped by her place in Port Orchard on my way to spend the night with Jennifer, as usual, for my Birth Week. That's coming up again soon and I figured I'd stop by to see her again on my way. It was a lovely surprise to see her unexpectedly today, and we talked about my coming out to hang out with her sometime soon again, before my Birth Week. I should look at my calendar. We exchanged a few texts after she first texted me that she'd be in the store "in about 10 minutes." It was closer to 20 before I actually saw her; I even went out to look in the store after about 10 minutes and did not see her. When she texted me she was here, I did go out and find her, in a very colorful outfit including red overalls with a white pattern on it, and a blue beanie. Claudia was long known as among the more fashionable people around. I asked if she had any interest in seeing the office and she said yes; I showed her the kitchen first, the only place here with a window. I brought her into the desk area, which is mostly empty today because it's Friday. But, Steven is here, so Claudia chatted with him for a few minutes. Noah was back in the Merchandising Pantry that used to be the walk-in freezer when it was the old Downtown PCC store, and Adrienne was in there too. Claudia said a quick hello to her but spent most of the several minutes there chatting with Noah, talking about their respective sons who are recent young adults. Claudia and I talked a bit about Heated Rivalry, and as I walked her out to her car, I filled her in on the whole play saga with Shobhit over the past week. This was kind of funny: I had no idea where she had parked, so I followed her—out the front entrance to the office, through the Corner Market store, up the escalator from the concourse entry to the store and up to Level 2 of the Rainier Square lobby, back to the north side of the lobby, down the stairs, and around to the elevators to the parking garage—which was right by the back exit to the office. Ha! We had just gone up and around in a huge circle without needing to. Oh well. I walked with her to her car, and she continued chatting with me while she got into the driver's seat and rolled down her window. We chatted clear until she literally drove away. At one point she just up and said to me, "I really like you Matthew." I was like, "Hey, something we have in common!" She smiled and said, "I love how much you like yourself." Anyway, it was great to see her. It was an unexpected distraction from my work morning but that was totally okay. And now I need to pick a day in March to go back out to Port Orchard and see her. — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ अस्सी — As for yesterday, after work I took myself to see the Baz Luhrmann documentary concert film EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. I expected to enjoy it, but still I would say it exceeded my expectations. It was really great, and shed new light on a singer I never appreciated as much as maybe he deserved. I walked home afterward, got home, had leftovers for dinner, wrote my review. Shobhit was watching MS NOW shows while he still has access on YouTube TV. I watched this week's episode of The Pitt in the bedroom; Shobhit is waiting until the season is nearly over and plans to binge the episodes. I washed dishes while starting this week's Prestige TV podcast recap of that very episode of The Pitt before I went to bed. — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ अस्सी — — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ अस्सी — Oh right, I guess I could mention my Annual Performance Review yesterday. Pretty standard stuff really, even as it covered my getting a promotion and all the stuff I worked on and achieved. There's two key things I guess I could share from the one-hour meeting with Gabby yesterday afternoon, the only one of Gabby's four hour-long performance reviews she did that was done after our weekly team meeting, which was a rare one in which we were all in-office (because of the APRs) and which Gabby brought popcorn and Candy Kittens to, and at which the opening ice breaker was a game of "Two Truths and a Lie." Anyway, the first thing to note is that Gabby confirmed I would not be getting the annual raise on April 1 that nearly everyone else is getting, for most people probably at or slightly above a cost of living increase. Because that's being changed from January 1 to April 1 this year, though, everyone is getting a retroactive payment. But, not me—because I already got a promotion and a raise, and a significant one at that (12.3%). I really held out no hope of getting yet another raise on top of that anyway; PCC never works that way anymore and the raise I already got more than makes up for anything I might not be getting as of April 1. The second thing is related, though: the reason they pushed the effective date of any raise to April 1 is because they are tying "merit raises" to the Annual Performance Reviews going forward, and those happen in February. And Gabby made a point to note that while I keep rating myself as "Meets Expectations" when she's consistently (so far) rated me as "Exceeds Expectations," if I keep doing that it could adversely affect what kind of "merit raise" I get in the future. This system is so dumb. So I have to exaggerate my own greatness in order to get a better raise? Whatever. I don't feel like I'm being modest here; modesty is not really my thing. But, making strategic moves sometimes is. The message I got was that this stragety might be working for me now, but it could work against me in the future. I'm honestly not sure truly how much weight I should give that, but it was still a very clear message. In fact, she even said yesterday, "It's a good thing I'm such a nice manager because someone else might just be like, 'Okay, we'll make it Meets Expectations then.'" I said: "That's correct. You're right." This is something that's now going to be on my mind over the next year, though. I'm entering a phase of my career, apparently, where I have to engage in some of the expectations of ambition after I have spent decades defiantly avoiding it, at least if I don't want to lose out on what otherwise might be better salary. Whatever. — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ अस्सी — I just finished with my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen. A lot of it wound up dedicated to catching her up on the saga of Shobhit getting let go from his play, as she did not yet know anything about it. She had plenty distracting her anyway—Dave is in the hospital again. He had just gone to the hospital the last time we had a Zoom lunch, two weeks ago. Karen said he was home no more than a week before he had to go back. I guess she was having a hard time getting him to take his meds, and after a while at the ER (which he was taken to on Sunday—so that was a particularly shitty day for both our families) they found out he was so dangerously low on his sodium levels that he had to be transferred to an ICU. I guess he can't even remember being in the ER, he was so out of it. Apparently they are very slowly raising his sodium levels back up, which is a big part of why he's still in the hospital. Karen says she can't imagine he'll be back home again before Sunday this weekend. She had to take a couple of calls from the doctor's office while we were on the Zoom, which we also pushed back by 15 minutes so she'd have time to drive to a work appointment this afternoon. I did allow the conversation about Dave run its natural course, and I think—and certainly hope—he'll recover as expected and be back home soon. I did not bring up Shobhit's stuff until she asked what was new in my world; Sunday was a terribly shitty day for both of us, absolutely heartbreaking, but it's still clearly in a different class than having to be taken to the ER. That said, Karen's heart also broke for Shobhit and she wanted me to tell him how sorry she was to hear about it. I did give her plenty of details about it all, which I don't need to repeat here as I've already written extensively about all of it. And now I need to post this and get back to work! — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ अस्सी — [posted 12:58pm]

death and APRs

— पाँच हजार सात सौ छियासठ — Shobhit has pushed comfortably past Laney in the Winter Social Review points, and yet he remains obsessed with getting as many points as possible. I think he wants to pull way ahead of it, which is probably not especially realistic. Still, he suggested we walk to Salt & Straw last night for dessert, for this very reason. We went back and forth slightly as to whether to go there or to Voodoo Doughnut where I still have two free doughnut coupons to use. But, the pull at Salt & Straw is always their monthly seasonal flavors, and we hadn't gone there in February yet. So Salt & Straw it was. For the second time, we both sampled every one of their seasonal flavors before deciding on what to buy. In the end we got a single scoop cup split with two different flavors, both of which I really loved: a salted chocolate flavor with chunks of brownie in it; and a holdover from a previous month, an eggnog flavor spiked with tequila—something I had never heard of before but which I was amazed by when I sampled it. Shobhit liked the chocolate one much more than the eggnog but I really loved them both, with a slight preference for the eggnog. Knowing how much I love eggnog, Shobhit just said, "Of course. It's eggnog." We ate it with our two separate spoons while we walked back home. Otherwise we had tacos for dinner—all of the filling already prepared by Shobhit before I got home from work—and otherwise watched three episodes of season 2 of Severance, which is top notch: two episodes before going for ice cream and one more episode after we got back. We're all caught up on the current season now, with four episodes left and the next one releasing on Friday. — पाँच हजार सात सौ छियासठ — — पाँच हजार सात सौ छियासठ — I had my 2024 Annual Performance Review late this morning. It was a one-hour meeting with Gabby in the four-person conference room on the other side of two rows of two desks each to my left. She had what I can only assume was her APR with Amy in the same room the hour immediately prior. Gabby likes to send the completed form to us via email a day before the meeting, just so there are no surprises. I appreciate this. Although I have to admit misinterpreting it at first: she ban the document with my self-assessment, the "Individual Performance Review" (IPR). In that, I rated myself Meets Expectations, and at first I thought I was looking at Gabby's rating. I was kind of like: ...Oh. It was dumb. She actually gave me an overall rating of Exceeds Expectations. That was at the end of the entire document, where her pages began after the last page of my IPR. She did vary the ratings among five categories that average to the overall rating, though. There are only three options: Below Expectations; Meets Expectations; and Above Expectations. Thankfully I was not rated Below Expectations in anything, but I did get a mere Meets Expectations for "Collaborates" and "Focuses on the Customer." I'm perfectly comfortable with that, honestly. Where I got Above Expectations was for "Demonstrates Kindness" (the one part of this very corporatized APR process still reflects PCC's definitively hippie roots—not to diminish its importance, mind you); "Instills Trust" and "Values Diversity." It's convenient that these five things are given equal weight, given that the two I got Meets Expectations on are tied to the bottom line in a way the other three clearly aren't. Gabby had plenty to say when it came to "Opportunities for Improvement," none of which was in any way vicious or even unfair (I will admit to being ever-so slightly defensive when I first read the document), with a lot of specific suggestions where how realistic they are may be somewhat debatable. But, we'll see. I'll be open minded. It started with the positive, which is clearly by design. Gabby was very generous with what she listed as my "key accomplishments." She did ask me to start the meeting by going over my IPR with her, though, which I wasn't super comfortable with. I had already written it all down, after all. She did mention that I don't necessarily have to come up with five different things under both sections ("Key Accomplishments" and "Opportunities for Improvement"), given that I kind of struggled to flesh out each list. I did mention during the meeting that I'm not a huge fan of this whole process. "I know you aren't," she said. We've discussed this stuff before. And I won't even say that it's useless. Obviously there is value in knowing how well you are doing at your job. I just can't help but bristle at the deeply structured nature of it all, in a way that makes it very difficult to defend against the perception of PCC "going corporate" in the way that I used to. Gabby, for her part, has held corporate jobs since she was 20 years old. She's perfectly comfortable with processes like these, and so far as I can tell, is both earnest and sincere when it comes to her involvement and approach. I don't begrudge her or judge her for that, either. By all accounts, even where PCC is now, far more "corporate" than ever, is likely pretty lax and chill compared to the annual cycle of corporate conventions she no doubt got very used to at places like Starbucks or Amazon. I see that as a key difference, though: the kind of pointedly independent spirit that drove PCC as an organization twenty years ago is no longer the same. And I fully understand that much of that is by necessity: you have to add things like middle management when you undergo significant expansion. It's just the nature of business growth. It all comes back to capitalism, really. The thing that will one day be the death of us all. It's tempting to say that it'll be climate change. No, climate change will be the blunt instrument, the tool wielded—by capitalism. This is a little ridiculous, isn't it? This hyperbolic diatribe as a result of nothing more than my honestly only moderate irritation with corporate structures and conventions—specifically, Annual Performance Reviews (APRs). We drew up a list of "2025 goals" too: another thing I struggle to subscribe to even though they can also be genuinely useful. I don't know what my problem is. On the plus side, the evaluation is over and now I don't really have to worry about it for another year. — पाँच हजार सात सौ छियासठ — [posted 12:54pm]