APR Valentine

— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ पैंसठ — Boy, am I a dummy! I wrote yesterday all about the Social Review points Shobhit will soon be getting to pull further ahead of Laney on the next rankings, and I didn't even think to mention the dinner plans we had last night. It was Valentine's Day, for fuck's sake! Here's what amuses me the most about the fact that we actually went out for dinner on Valentine's Day this year—for the first time since 2020, incidentally (and technically that year we went out to breakfast): we went all the way across the street: to a new-ish restaurant on that corner of 15th & Pine, called Kedai Makan. There have been several different restaurants in that business unit of the Vox Apartments, since it was costructed a decade ago; our server—who informed us she's lived in the Vox Apartments building itself for three years—said Kedai Makan opened about a year ago. Kedai Makan means "Wok House" in Hindi, by the way. We asked our server and she confirmed it means the same thing in Malay. (This is a Malaysian restaurant.) This made sense to Shobhit, as he noted—and I never knew this—that Malaysia is largely made up, ethnically, of Indian (South Asian) people. In fact he posited that it's about a third Indian, but apparently it's only about 7% people of Indian descent, compared to 23% Chinese, as the major minority ethnic groups; 70% of the population is "Bumiputera" or Malay. Still, with a relatively significant Indian minority, it makes sense for there to be some crossover in language. The most important thing I have to say about Kedai Makan is about the food, which was fucking amazing. The place is pricey, with entrees all being about $18 or more, and I budgeted $50 for this dinner—we ordered one entree, one side, one salad, and no drinks: the total with tip still came to just barely over $50. They do have a Happy Hour though, which makes it possible to eat there a bit more reasonably, and I now hope to return with Laney for Happy Hour sometime. The "mango salad" was too spicy for me, but the "Nasi Biryani" dish and especially the "Roti Jala" side were both phenomenal. I want to go back just to get the Roti Jala with a side of rice. Oh my god, I'm in escasy just remembering it. We were in and out pretty quick, actually. I made reservations weeks ago, knowing that's the only way to do it for Valentine's Day, for 6:30. When we got over there the place was nearly full, the few empty tables all reserved. I only saw two or three empty tables, all of them two-tops. When we were first guided to the one on the upper level, Shobhit pointed to the one down on the lower level and asked if we could have that, so we'd have a view of our building across the street through the window. That table was already reserved but the hostess managed to rearrange information on her handheld tablet and got us the table we wanted. I would guess we were there for 45 minutes at most. We practically inhaled that food. When we were done, we went right across the street and for the first time went into the current interation of the business tentant on that corner of our building, which has also been countless different things over the years: Coche Valley Dessert Cafe. This place was last a bubble tea cafe, run by the lady who owns the unit; the same lady owns the unit now but closed the business and this other lady opened the desserr cafe, which is mostly desert crepes. I had wanted to try it for a while, so I agreed when Shobhit suggested it after dinner last night, even though, stupidly, I went kind of hog wild on pastry and cookie samples all day at work yesterday. Fucking get ahold of yourself, Matthew! At least Shobhit and I split the strawberry cheesecake crepe. It was also delicious. And, now that the Pappy Van Winkle whisley has been opened, we had some more of that. Funny how Shobhit waited four years for a "special occasion" to open it to begin with (last month we paid off the mortgage), but Valentine's Day the next month was enough of an excuse to have more of it. A coworker of Shobhit's at Total Wine said it was likely to taste better a while after the bottle was opened, as we didn't think it was that great to begin with, and it does make sense for Shobhit to want to put that to the test. He declared last night that it was indeed better. Whiskey is very much a "take it or leave it" booze for me, so I thought it was . . . fine. Shobhit, for his part, is enamored with the enormous market value of this brand of whiskey. I don't care that much. Once we finished with dessert, we found something new to watch, and we burned through half the season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+. We're both into it because the story is compelling, but damn, is the acting bad. It feels like they spent no time rehearsing and then did every scene in one take. — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ पैंसठ — — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ पैंसठ — In completely unrelated news, except that this was the first time I had one on Valentine's Day, yesterday afternoon was my first annual performance review (APR—where would we be without acronyms!) exclusively with Gabby. Last year she had just started—apparently just a few days ago Justine too Gabby out to lunch to celebrate her one-year anniversary—and she simply sat in with Eric as he went through it. Like last year, between the three options of "Below Expectations," "Meets Expectations," and "Above Expectations," I got "Above Expectations." Unlike any year or any other performance review in my life, Gabby actually sent me her completed evaluation on Tuesday so I could read over it before we met. This is the kind of thing, among many things really, that sets her apart as a manager. And you know what? She's already brainstorming ways I could evolve my role or grow what my position is, in spite of my longtime assertion that I have no ambition (I really don't), but if any role change were in the cards, I would be significantly less inclined to go for it if it meant I had to have a different boss. I suppose it would also depend on the position, but still. I don't know. I'm still not especially eager for a massive shift in my responsibilities. Although to Gabby's point, it's kind of been happening a bit organically over the past year anyway. We always also have to fill out a self-evaluation, which we send in ahead of time. Gabby seemed genuinely mystified as to why I would not have rated myself as "Above Expectations"—another first. There are actually three reasons for this. First and foremost, the way I see it, I do the job that is expected, and don't make any huge effort, at least not consciously, to do more: I never regard my performance as "above and beyond," the consistency of open love I get from brokers (and sometimes POS people) notwithstanding. That only makes me think it's sad all the other people they work with are dipshits, not that I'm genuinely some superstar. And I say this as someone with no problem whatsoever openly regarding myself as a wonderful person with a sterling personality. Second, there's the point Alexia often makes when talking about this: if she does a performance review for someone that is "above expectations," that just means a new bar has been set. If the next year that same bar is met, then from that point forward it's "Meets Expectations." I actually explained this to Gabby and she was pretty skeptical of it as a point of view. Never mind that I got the feeling she felt I actually did exceed whatever bar I may have set last year (maybe I did, I genuinely don't spend a lot of time thinking about it); I think she essentially rejects it as a premise. That said, Gabby is also just very generous. I do trust she would talk to me about anything she felt I was doing that she thought was not up to par, but I also sort of feel like we have somewhat differing definitions of what "expectations" are. That said, to the third reason: I am never above beying tactical in these matters. Rating myself lower than I can fairly easily predict my manager will rate me is simply the smarter play. But, you know, overall: whatever. Gabby had scheduled her APR with Amy the hour before she scheduled mine, and they were done in half an hour. She messaged me to ask if I wanted to start early, so I went right over to the small meeting room she was in, at about 1:35. I have already publicly noted that the upside of performance reviews is getting the chance to just sit and talk about me—in that original post, I said "for forty minutes." Yesterday we had pretty productive conversation for nearly ninety minutes, finally breaking at the actually-scheduled end time of 3:00. It went about as well as I expected, honestly—which is to say, quite well. Any evaluation form prompts for Gabby to offer "constructive criticism" was honestly a bit milktoast. And I am down with that. Truthfully, the biggest takeaway from that meeting is that I am already "growing in my role" more than I even realized. Gabby even said she's had other people compliment how much more involved I seem to be lately. As much as I genuinely have a tendency to assume people are saying good things about me behind my back (a potentially dangerous ongoing assumption to make, but take it from me, it's a great way to live), I must admit some skepticism that there have been many instances of this specific sort of thing. It's not like I think she's lying about it, because I don't. She could be slightly exaggerating. I only say this because it's difficult for me to see it, which is maybe a me problem. Overall, there is also a slight sense of relief at finally having a first full-on APR with my most recent manager (a term I never used before but which Gabby uses a lot; she certainly seems to prefer it over "boss" and I've never heard her say "supervisor"), having no idea before she was hired whether I'd get a new boss who was a pain in the ass in some way or another. I told her I debated whether to tell her about this, but then went ahead and did it, telling her the horrid experience of my six-month evaluation all the way back in 2003, when I was completely blindsided and given the weekend to consider whether I wanted to stay or quit the job, with no warning before that Friday that such a thing was coming. Gabby, whose approach all along has been the polar opposite of this, was flabbergasted by the whole story. (She also had a similar, and arguably worse, story of her own from her Amazon days.) I now have years and years of consistently great performance reviews, but because of that first one more than 20 years ago, I stil get this slight sort of ball in my stomach every year when they come around again. I think they actually have proved useful, but I would sure love it if I never had to deal with them. And it's all just because of that experience in 2003, which is a little bit ridiculous. On the upside, great as it was, the APR for this year is all over now, and we can just move things along. Onward! — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ पैंसठ — [posted 12:31 pm]

evaluating 2022

— पांच हजार तीन सौ चौंसठ — So, I finally had my twice-postponed annual review yesterday. I suppose its postponement was useful in the end, because this was Gabby's first week; she is my new boss; and this way she gets some historical context to my role here and a bit of what my working relationship with Eric was like. Come to think of it, I keep several ongoing histories of PCC, including my history of supervisors—it just occurred to me, literally as I was writing this, to update that: Gabby is officially my sixth boss, in 20+ years of working here: Stephanie: August 2002 - March 2008 (6 years)
Jennifer G: March 2008 - July 2013 (5 years)
Chris J: July 2013 - summer 2015 (2 years)
Scott O: summer 2015 - December 2018 (3 years)
Eric B: January 2019 - February 2023 (4 years) It should be noted that, through all of this, my relationship with the Grocery Merchandiser functionally changed very little. Stephanie was a Grocery Merchandiser, and so was Scott; Jennifer, Chris, Eric and Gabby have all been some variation on "Pricing Manager," and which position was my direct supervisor has switched back and forth every few to several years. It occurs to me now that going forward it will most likely stay under Pricing management, my continued focus on Grocery notwithstanding, just by virtue of my longevity and institutional knowledge of systems we use. Anyway, I meant to get to this more quickly: the overall rating on my annual review was the exact same that Eric gave me last year: "Exceeds Expectations." The only other two options for an overall rating is "Meets Expectations" (which is what I always rate myself; I may genuinely think I'm great but caution in these scenarios always seems prudent) or "Below Expectations." I don't know why I continue to get anxious about every single evaluation I get. The single terrible evaluation I ever got was literally twenty years ago now, in 2003. That sort of trauma memory just stays with you, I guess. What I still can't gauge, and of course I can't after only knowing her four days, is what the potential is for Gabby being the same. Honestly, I think "Meets Expectations" would have been fair, if we were to take, say, last year as a barometer. Or maybe not. Being forced to come up with "accomplishments" to list on this year's self-evaluation for the first time, it's occurring me now that I really have gone above and beyond what I did last year on average. I wouldn't say it's by a wide margin, but it's there. This might be a byproduct of my insistence that I have no ambition: it doesn't occur to me that I might still be growing in my role, even if I have no desire to be promoted, because I have no interest in promotion to the point of incompetence or discontent or stress, which is where I am convinced that road leads. Okay. Now I want to back up a little. If it hasn't been made clear yet, Gabby sat in on the evaluation meeting, which we had in what we here at the Central Office call "The Orchard," the 14-seat conference room right next to the front desk, with its panoramic view of Puget Sound and plush chairs. It was open and not being used, so Eric was sort of like, "Why not this room?" Plus, it made it easier to social distance, at least a little. Eric did sit in the chair next to mine, but he would have been about four feet away; Gabby was across the table, probably five or six feet away. And: we all had masks on! At my, specific request. Just about any other week, I really would not have worried about it. But, Shobhit and I leave for Australia a week from Sunday, and both Eric and Gabby had in-person, closed-door, one-hour meetings with Darrell on Monday, who tested positive for covid that very day. Gabby and Eric both assured me on Tuesday that they were testing every day this week, and on Tuesday at least, they both wore masks. But after that, their mask wearing was spotty, and I think they were both feeling confident that the virus had not spread to them. Granted, Eric never tested positive but did get super sick not long ago; Gabby has never had covid but has had several exposures without infection. Neither of those things are foolproof, and I was kind of getting the feeling of a kind of false confidence that seemed to be forgetting covid testing isn't reliable or even recommended until at least five days after exposure. You know when that brings us to? Tomorrow. All that said, to be clear: I would wager that they are indeed both fine, because odds are, they are fine. The real issue for me was this: spending an hour together, the three of us together, in a closed room still left me thinking I would only be truly comfortable if we all masked up. It was an easy precaution to make, so why not do it? And holy shit, what if we did meet unmasked and then one of them reported they had actually tested positive? I'd feel like nearly as big of an idiot as I did after going to Sherri's 70th birthday party for Easter without testing first. So, about half an hour before our meeting, I emailed them both to request that if we were meeting in person, we please all mask up. They both happily did so, thankfully. In fact, when Gabby and I got to the meeting room first, she actually said, "Thank you for calling out the masking." She went on to say the whole masking thing this week, in the wake of several exposures to Darrell on Monday, "has been really weird." I got the feeling that Gabby might have been fully comfortable masking everywhere all week, but perhaps has not used a mask in certain scenarios when other people weren't. I'm tempted to say she could have just insisted, and the truth is she really could have, but she should be cut some slack here: she doesn't necessarily know that with any real confidence, this being her first week here. All I can say is: I'm really glad I spoke up; I'm really glad we all wore masks in that meeting; I feel much safer headed into our upcoming international travel. The next thing to make me anxious will be being stuck in a plane for a solid fourteen hours. I'll cross that passenger boarding bridge when we come to it. — पांच हजार तीन सौ चौंसठ — — पांच हजार तीन सौ चौंसठ — So. Moving on from the masks. Gabby seemed slightly self-conscious about sitting in on our meeting, even though she had requested it. To Eric's credit, he gave me the option of allowing her to sit in on the entire meeting, or only the "goals" portion for the upcoming year; I said I was fine with whatever she wanted to do. She told me she had ten managers in her four years at Amazon (!) and so had multiple evaluations like this with both outgoing and incoming managers present, and so she knew what this could be like. But, I assured her, nothing about this was making me uncomfortable. Besides, I was able to breathe a pretty quick sigh of relief when Eric handed out copies of the evaluation and I saw immediately that he had given me an overall "Exceeds Expectations" rating. He proceeded to basically sing my praises, and anything that came even close to criticism was pretty bland. I have a feeling Gabby might be different with things like this. I can hardly believe how sharp and observant she is already. I already feel like she has a far more organized mind than I do—which is saying a lot, because my mind is deeply organized. And on the one hand, I feel like this commonality will keep us on the same page in many ways I find satisfying. On the other hand, I don't think getting anything past her would be very easy. Not that I'm planning on getting anything past her or anything! I was telling Shobhit about her last night after I got home, and he asked me how old she was. I actually didn't know. So of course, I tried to figure it out: she has a Facebook page, no birthday listed. On LinkedIn, it indicates college starting in 2006, and ending 2010. Assuming she was 22 when she graduated, like I was in 1998, then she's . . . twelve years younger than I am. That makes her 34! There's nothing shocking about that to look at her. She probably doesn't even think of herself as particularly young. She's just a lot younger than I am, and is officially by a wide margin the youngest boss I have ever had. I mean, even Eric is younger than me, but only by a couple of years; it's easier to think of him as a peer, in terms of age at least. But realizing Gabby is 34, or somewhere around that age at least, was a lot like when I first had a doctor who was 30 years old, and I was 40. That did not feel right. Doctors are supposed to be older than you, aren’t they? Well, not forever, obviously. At some point you become the old one. The same goes for bosses, it seems. And it's not like I have any reason to resent Gabby's age in a professional sense; her LinkedIn profile alone indicates far more professional accomplishment than I would ever even consider reaching for (not because of lack of ability necessarily, but because I simply have other priorities in life): she got a Masters Degree in Business Administration in 2019. She also worked nearly 12 years at Starbucks, apparently working her way up from an initial job as a barista. Talk about old-school ascension. Most places make it very difficult to work your way up in that way anymore, although with the right kid of tenacity I honestly think it can still be done at PCC. Oh, and this is the other thing I've noticed about Gabby: she seems very intuitive. I know it's early yet, and I could be way off base about her in many ways as time goes by, but the sense I get from her thus far is: she will likely figure out the exact ways to push me and motivate me to get certain things done, often seemingly on my own terms. In other words, I'm actually feeling pretty good about her heading out the gate. I mean, she is kind of coming in hot with the positive reinforcement (I've gotten more compliments from her this week than I have from anyone else in the past year or two probably, for things I have considered fairly simple and routine), but it's not like I'm going to complain about that. It's far better than being super critical right out of the gate, right? That said, to what degree she may wind up feeling like a micromanager remains to be seen. I want to say she'll have far too much on her own plate to have time for such things, but so far she seems to have a savant level of time management skills. She shared her Outlook calendar and both this week and next week are nuts, mostly scheduled on her own. — पांच हजार तीन सौ चौंसठ — In other news, I took the bus to the library after work yesterday to drop off a book and a DVD, then took Light Rail to Capitol Hill before walking the rest of the way home, thanks to none of the busses lining up with their schedules when I was at the library. I had a small portion of leftover pasta for dinner, and then walked down to the Egyptian to see a one-time public screening of the very good documentary about an all-woman expedition to the North Pole called Exposure. I gave it a B+. When I arrived, I was shocked by the size of the crowd (most of them unmasked, of course—not me). I had assumed this was the last-day, Thursday showing of a movie that had been playing all week and that I would have plenty of space to keep away from other people. They had the balcony closed off, but the floor had to have been at least 85% sold. I had to sit about a third of the way down the front section, relatively close to the screen; at least I still had a decent view. The seats next to me filled up, and I had no buffer of any empty seat in any direction, aside from my sitting in an aisle seat in the middle-front section. The director and one of the cinematographers was there, and even had a Q&A after the screening. What I gathered was that this film had shown at last year's SIFF, and they were bringing the film back last night for a one-time encore, public showing. It was all actually pretty cool, if far more crowded than I really would have wanted. At least I had a mask on. The movie showed at 6:30 but probably didn't actually start until 7:00. They didn't even start trailers until 6:45 for some reason. By the time it ended, it was 8:30, even though it's a 90-minute movie. I got home and spent most of the hour between 9 and 10 writing my review, taking longer than it should have because of the frequency of the "rainbow wheel" screen freezing for 30-60 seconds practically every few keystrokes. One of these days I'm going to throw that fucking computer out the window. Or, maybe actually get online with an Apple Care agent. — पांच हजार तीन सौ चौंसठ — [posted 12:28 pm]