everything all at once

— पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस — Holy Jesus Christ, what a clusterfuck of a morning I've had. I think it's pretty much all under control now, even though I may not get everything scheduled to be done today done. But, I will get everything done today that's crucial to get done. One of my newer tasks has to do with loading manufactur coupon UPCs to an app in our system, which we get in bimonthly intervals from National Cooperative Grocers (NCG—the organization, incidentally, putting on the converence I am going to in the Twin Cities the first week of August). There was a store question about the next set of coupons, which have valid dates between July 1 and August 31, and it made me realize I never input those coupons, which are supposed to start scanning tomorrow, into the app. So, I had to drop everything and work on that, referring to a Word document SOP Gabriel wrote up for me a few months ago, and which today I was using to go through the task myself for only the second time. In the midst of this, several other fires came up that necessitated my attention. Our July prmotional period at stores, for discounted prices on shelf tags, started on Wednesday, and a customer complained at one of the stores that what we were showing was on sale online was not on sale at all. This took me a while to figure out, but it turned out the person in IT who loads the information from an excel template we use, had re-loaded the first-half June Market Specials instead of loading from the first-half July tab. At least that was an easy fix once I figured it out. But, I also got multiple emails about screwy things happening in the system with an unusually high volume of items I was asked to switch the distributor for in our system, because someone found another vendor offering the same product at lower cost, and we're trying to minimize expenses whereever possible right now. Unfortunately changing distributors on items is a stupidly convoluted process (which actually may or may not be outdated; I've started a conversationw ith IT about that), and it results in stores being unable to print shelf tags for those items for a day or two. It didn't help that, after already switching the distributor on them, yesterday I was sent a list of about 25 items to switch back to the original vendor who had said they need more time to sell through inventory—after this had already caused a large amount of confusion among POS at stores. Some of these resulted in more issues this morning. I got a question about a size change on ice cream pints that were supposed to have had UPC changes but were coming in on unchanged skus, only to be told later that this was a mistaken assertion. I got a broker email about an item whose promotion was supposed to have been candeled, even though I never received any previous communication about it. I got another store asking if we could add a new size aluminum cup that they had ordered by mistake. And, I had to pivot to my weekly 1:1 with Gabby over Zoom, so I could record a demonstration of a monthly price optimization task Amy will be doing for me next month while I am in Saint Paul—and which is the other critical task I absolutely have to get done today for the current month being worked on, and which I have only barely gotten started. I had other things I wanted to work on today that I haven't even been able to think about. And, the cherry on top? My computer froze with Excel open while I was keying the manufactur coupons into the aforementioned app, a longstanding issue that forces me to restart my computer. I was in a rush and so went straight to restarting, completely forgetting the critical step of clicking the "Save" button on the coupons app, which I had not done even once since starting, and I was about three quarters of the way through the list of about 117 skus. When I restarted my computer and re-opened the app, none of the skus I had just entered were still there. I actually let out and ouburst of "Oh my god, fuck!" that was pretty loud—thankfully not a lot of people are in the office today—and was so overwhelmed in that brief moment I literally felt like I was going to throw up. I think it's safe to say that I have not had a day this stressful since the height of the pandemic. On the upside, I am still very good at what I do, and I can say with confidence that I do all of my tasks way faster than anyone else here does—we've had such high turnover over time that I am now by far the longest-running person in the Merchandising department using the item maintenance system we use, to the point that I've become kind of the "expert" by default who people come to to ask how certain things can or should be done. Furthermore, the one person in IT with greater familiarity than I have is about to retire! We're getting a system upgrade later this year though, which maybe will even the playing field a little. Anyway, the point is, even re-entering the skus went pretty quickly, it's done, and it's fine. — पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस — — पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस — I still just took my standard half-hour lunch break to go read for a bit out on the patio. I needed that break far more than I usually do, actually. Not that I have much else to tell you. I could have gone to see another movie last night, but I'm seeing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny—with an 80-year-old Harrison Ford—with Alexia tonight, and last night would thus be my only open evening if I did not see a movie. I spent the whole evening at home with Shobhit, catching up on TV shows. Most notably we burned through episodes 7-10 of The Bear on FX on Hulu, and it was pnenomenal. We also watched the season finales of both The Other Two on Max (which proved unusually moving, actually—that show is also excellent) and Silo on Apple TV+ (which had a twist I truly did not see coming, which left me genuinely impressed). We're talking probably a solid four hours of TV watching, which I don't think we started until around 6:30, as I also assisted Shobhit in making last night's dinner, a kind of vegetable stir fry with paneer added which proved to be quite tasty. I've got plenty planned for the weekend, just nothing compared to Pride Weekend last week, which will make it comparatively chill. I'm actually looking forward to it. — पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस — [posted 12:34 pm]

the default host

— पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठाईस — We had a slightly smaller crowd than usual at our Action Movie Night last night—my first in a month, as Shobhit and I did not come two weeks ago, being our anniversary night, and we went out to eat at Saffron Grill instead. That night was Tony's pick, and it was John Wick Chapter 3, which is fine, but I am not especially sad to have missed. Tony himself missed last night, because he and his wife were headed out to a vacatin to England and Scotland last night. He's also five days out from testing positive for covid for the first time. He told me over email yesterday that he "feels great," but there was nothing more specific discussed. The sense I have is that he's flying out anyway, something I'm sure tons of people are doing these days. What are the odds that someone on any plane you're flying on has an active covid infection? Probably pretty high. Someone from work admitted to me a few months ago to flying home from a vacation with a child having a known covid infection. Anyone actively avoiding flying in airplanes is not being unreasonable, in my opinion, and anyone flying without a mask on is being batshit insane. As always, these days: I'm not especially scared of covid anymore, even under these kinds of arguably stupid circumstances. I continue to wear masks in a lot of scenarios, but especially on airplanes, which are flying petri dishes, because masks work against all airborne infections. They even keep you from getting colds! Why more people don't think about this just boggles my mind. Anyway, I digress. Shobhit also opted not to join last night, even though he was actually home, citing his campaign work. I did not realize until I got down to the theater that left me as basically the official "host": I was the only one there who actually lives in the building. I was one of six present last night. The other five were Jake, Ben, Ryan, Derek, and Chris G. I learned for the first time last night that Derek, who I met at a building summer social on the roof last summer, has actually moved out, and now lives in, I think it was Northgate; he's just continuing to come to these movies. There's one other guy, Joe, who I believe still lives in the building, but he wasn't there last night. It was just me. I made pasta, as seems to be the default choice anymore (it was highly complimented, mostly because I sprinkled gorgonzola cheese on top of it), and of course my requisite four-shot cocktail (hey, I drink it slowly over a few hours!). When I got down to the space between the condo complex's two buildings, Ben was already waiting to get inside. After the others arrived, Chris G, whose turn it was to choose a movie, realized he didn't think to bring a laptop from which to stream his choice—this is usually the mode people use, rather than the far more reliable choice of bringing a DVD (but, of course, people don't keep DVDs much anymore). Unsure whether it would work given Laney and my inability to play the movies upon our last Double Feature date, I still went up to get my own, new Macbook Pro for him to use. I got back down to the ground floor in the elevator with my laptop when I realized I forgot to grab the HDMI cable. Back up I went, to get that. — पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठाईस — — पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठाईस — Getting connected to a reliable wifi network proved a challenge. Chris was able to log into his Prime account on my laptop out in the kitchen, but once we got the laptop into the theater, where signals are much weaker, it was just impossible. Also, in the middle of figuring all of this out, I fucking locked my keys inside the theater! I had to go back upstairs in the East building to retrieve the spare set, only able to get back inside by buzzing myself in through my phone. Once back down, I finally had the wherewithal to put the door stop in the way of the theater door. I also emailed Tony to ask about the wifi. I guess he's been able to play movies by using "a really long HDMI cord" with his laptop either at or outside the door where the Wave G Public Wifi signal actually worked. My cord was not long enough for that, and the "Braeburn_EXT" wifi network, I only got confirmation from Alan the building manager over email this morning, is not currently working. He's "working with the vendor" to get it fixed, but who the fuck knows when: Laney and I had our issue on June 4 and it's still not resolved. Our next movie is August 13. Maybe I should invest in my own really long HDMI cord and see if that makes a difference. I may have to try that even in time for the next Action Movie Night two weeks from now, when Tony will still be out of town. He had even asked over email whether I would be able to make it; I didn't realize until last night that he asked that because, again, I would be the only other person there who actually lives in the building. As for last night, it was Ryan to the rescue: he happened to have a flash drive with something like fifty, apparently prioted movies on it. Some were incredibly recent, including Beau Is Afraid, and I immediately asked them not to pick that one. When Chris had his Prime Video rental poised to rent, since I was in there helping set up, I saw that his choice was The Conjuring, which I really did not want to watch either. He chose from Ryan's list after Ryan explained this bonkers movie billing itself as "Swissploitation" called Mad Heidi. Think Kill Bill, only . . . not good. I wasn't bored, so I'll give it credit for that, and its use of cheese as both a weapon and a symbol of patrotic propaganda was amusing. The acting was terrible, probably on purpose. I'll never watch it again, and probably won't even remember it in six months. I don't usually do this, but as the only Braeburn resident present, I stuck around in the kitchen outside the theater until everyone left. Other people made sure all the dirty dishes were in the dishwasher, but I put the detergent pod in it and programmed it to run. Plus, Tony usually takes excess beers back up to his place. He wasn't around to do that, so now I have a cardboard box full of a hodgepodge of different cans and bottles of beer in our refrigerator for the next two weeks. Shobhit almost drank one, then decided the brand was too cheap. He opted not to dig any deeper in the box for anything of higher quality. — पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठाईस — [posted 12:30 pm]