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2. As a people manager, I am issued little checkbooks called SAND DOLLARS

When I want to recognize someone for something they did, I give them ONE SAND DOLLAR (they can exchange it for free food at our cafe, which is actually very good)

AHAHAHAHAHA

If you bike / walk / take transit to work, you can also get lots of sand dollars.

3. Our social team is AMAZING

Look at this amazing gif. It fully describes what I feel on a day to day basis

4. Marine punning is very much encouraged.

I posted this update on LinkedIn: "Hello from the otter side! I have decided I will not spend the wrasse of my life working in dreary office buildings. So, I have found my sole and plaice at Monterey Bay Aquarium, as its Director of Product Management. Thank you everyone for urchin me on."

In the public chat channels I can see many many puns all day about everything

5. This week, I was invited to a PAWSITIVITY dog walk at lunch

6, All of our internal sites and services are named after something to do with fish or the sea. All of them. Even like, our stock photography / branding stuff.

7. The guy who works with the octopus says that when he approaches the giant pacific octopus, they flash and change colors and move towards him

But if he goes on vacation and doesn’t see them for a while, they ignore him and don’t change colors the first day he gets back. Before finally doing it again

8. I was shown how much they feed a single otter a day and I said ‘I would not be able to afford this at a sashimi restaurant’. It’s true.

9. I saw a tiny decompression chamber. For fish.

10. The Hank scenes in Finding Dory were inspired by my workplace. A Pixar animator left a sketch of Hank on a whiteboard behind the scenes. There are nods to Hank everywhere. When I was getting my photo taken for my employee card, the camera had Hank on it and they were like ‘look at Hank!’

11. From some of the conference rooms, you can hear the nonstop splashes of the waves. Sometimes people stop their presentation, shout SPOUTS and everyone goes to the window to look at whales

12. The science-y people have such deep specializations. I asked someone a basic question about a jellyfish and she was like ‘well I got my PhD only in terrestrial animals, but what I know about jellyfish is..’ (tells me something I don’t understand)

13. I strained my back using a scope to look at seabirds. I realized only after that it was set up for children

14. I like having lunch in one of the staff kitchens. Someone has set up an elaborate harbor seal monitoring system there with DO NOT TOUCH signs and lots of his sketches of seals

15. Many of the fridges have signs like NO HUMAN FOOD

16. My name tag was hand made by someone in the machine shop! We have in-house fabricators and crafts-people who make the things for all the exhibits

17. I'm in a Bird Nerd channel. They share pics of birds found around the aquarium, which are.. a lot!

Today's finds: a great egret and a blue heron. A few days ago there was an osprey and a condor.

At one of my on-site interviews, someone stopped midway and said 'look out there's an albatross'

18. I have been scheduling social meet and greets with people who are on-site. Someone just sent me a calendar invite for 'let's take a lunchtime walk by the ocean'

19. Apparently, octopus can’t cling to astroturf.

20. Tino the octopus dislikes whitebait. The guy who works with him read a paper that says ‘whitebait is like cucumber to octopus’. Bland and too healthy. He ignores it completely

21. I saw a photo at work of some of the African penguins waddling around reception (before opening) and I’m certain I will lose my shit if I see it in person (they take them out for walks..)

22. All of our meeting rooms are named after animals. Fish, birds, and others.

23. I always do a leap of joy when my badge unlocks the aquarium door in the morning before we open. I run to the open sea exhibit and also say hi to the octopus.

My office is unfortunately a 7 min walk from it but I sometimes have meetings on the main campus (the aquarium itself).

24. Coworker: I hope it’s ok if we eat a brisk lunch. I’ve arranged for you to see the sea otter feeding behind the scenes.

UM, YES???

25. We are having a great taco truck come in for staff lunch. I still pick sea otters. Even though I really love tacos. I think I can eat 3 tacos in a few minutes

26. I am in a meeting for ‘sea-nior’ leadership

27. Someone on my team took me on a walking tour. There are many office buildings. I walked by the space for the seafood watch program and they had signs like ‘you’re jawsome!!’ And ‘thanks for all the kelp!’

28. I went to meet some of the people who work on the science and they were like ‘sounds like you’re really aligned with our work!’ And that’s the nicest thing anyone can say to me (my boss sent out a welcome email in which he talked about how I’m really into birds and whales)

29. There was an internal division competition called Punderdome.

The person who writes most of the puns on our social media won it

30. While standing in line for the employee taco truck catering I met a guy who has a database of best tacos around here through to Santa Cruz. He has 90 spots right now. I’m going to befriend him

31. Hallway convo.

‘Why are you so tired?’ ‘I’ve been carrying leopard sharks’

32. I attended a standup meeting among the otter people. It was otterly awesome

33. I walked by a poster. ‘There’s no aluminum in this cage. It’s not nickel either. It is a nickel less cage.’ (Photo of the actor)

35. I asked someone what a conference room was called. They said (seabird name). Unprompted, she grumbled: totally inaccurate. The room only has photos of pelicans. It’s not right. It’s the wrong bird. No attention to details.

(Did you know there is a photo version of this thread)

https://hachyderm.io/@skinnylatte/113431347101858937

36. Upon entering a room we were overwhelmed by an intense lavender aromatherapy.

Coworker: what’s with this spa treatment?
Very queer person: gurl it’s either lavender or Dead Fish smells

(Thousands of anchovies are washed up on the beaches here this season. Maybe hundreds of thousands. It is impossible to keep your windows open)

Personally I am used to it coz it just smells like ikan bilis

37. I got an invite to go watch some employees play guitar in front of the sea nettles so I’m putting on my shoes to go there (we are closed for an all hands, all fins event)

38. We took a large org-wide team photo and the photographer said SAY ANCHOVIES

39. I had to shout to be heard while presenting in a conference room because some of the gulls started absolutely screaming right outside

40. We shut down all of today and tonight we have a staff and guests only 40th anniversary party. Not only is there delicious food at every part of the aquarium, it’s also magical seeing all of this

Watching my guests (some of whom have never been here) gawk at everything is so fun

41. I posted my first question in the ‘All Staff Q&A’.

(Picture of fish)

‘What is the scientific name of this fish?’

Got a response in 1 minute (Zaniolepis latipinnis.)

42. At a meeting this morning

I asked my coworker ‘do you think people hear what we talk about, and have the same ?? Face I did when I heard people talking about gelatinous zooplankton?’

She thought probably but we both agreed gelatinous zooplankton is cooler than databases

43. I had lunch with the ‘Director of Puns’ today. She looked forward to working closely with me. I said I hope it all goes swimmingly

44. I learned that cool videos like these are shot in the office next to mine

https://www.youtube.com/live/h6VIMHKAqew?si=1owwfHl0WeHN6e4N

45. Saw someone write ‘oysters are an embodiment of queerness’ and I truly feel like I’ve found my people

46. I’ve been fascinated by ‘whale fall’ since I first learned about it here.

Here’s an incredible video of a whale fall exploration dive in the deep sea just off Monterey Bay.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whale-fall.html

47. I talked to real people about animal poop 5 different times today (I counted). Different animals too

48. I found the internal form for ‘booking an animal encounter’. My coworker said ‘usually it’s for team building or bringing your family on behind the scenes visits BUT if you want to hang out with the octopus or otters on your lunch break by yourself, I don’t see why not?’

49. She then said when she went to hang out with the octopus she got octopus hickies all over her arms and they didn’t go away for a long time.

50. Today I got stopped in the hallways. Someone I didn’t really know said, ‘hey are you the one who posted the pic of the Townsend’s warbler? I saw the same bird but didn’t have my camera so thanks for taking the cool pic’ (when I worked at a database company, all they talked about was emacs vs vim)

We then agreed to go on a lunch bird walk

51. Apparently they will pay for us to get Spanish lessons, so my taco dreams are going to be bumped up to the next level. Did I also mention I met a guy who has a database of 90 taco truck rankings in Monterey, Salinas, Watsonville, all the way up to Santa Cruz

I’m emailing him to have lunch (at a taco truck)

52. People were asking me if I got a bluetiful sweatshirt and I thought they were all mispronouncing beautiful, but there really is an employee sweatshirt called BLUEtiful. It’s blue.

53. My manager showed me a special spot in a building facing the ocean that he called the ‘binoculars corner’. There are comfy chairs and binoculars you can use.

I zipped down my jacket and showed that I already had a pair of binoculars. He said ‘oh yours are better’

Then I told him about how I went to someone’s office just before that and she had a SCOPE SET UP FOR WHALES (that anyone visiting her could use)

@lemay I’ve met so many people here 10, 20, 36.. years omg

@julie omg! Thank you!!

@marilyn @skinnylatte I really really really want to work at an aquarium now!

@WearsHats haven’t seen the anime, so thanks for the rec!

@skinnylatte You might relate more to the second half of the show. But the first half is good. I hope you like!

@summerfallwinter omg

@rooneel pretty great so far. Lots of people working. There 10, 20 even 35 years and still apparently very into it

@skinnylatte I envy you! I don't have issue being underpaid (not at a fancy tech co), but your's the ideal situation! Your coworkers probably have interesting lives too, and have topics to talk about besides work, making more money and tech! For JUST that, it'd be worth it to me!

@rooneel I don’t think we are underpaid at all here which makes it even better

@sbourne yayyy

@isol don’t be jelly!!

@skinnylatte

Oh, I am! Most definitely jelly!

My career was with (non-squishy) databases, and, while I had lots of satisfaction, and an acceptable number of moments of triumph, I never had a job which gave me the unbridled joy which you are broadcasting.

Looking forward to morays of sunshine from your future posts!

@zkat I feel like I need a balance that I found increasingly harder to find in more conventional tech. Just avoiding assholes felt like a job

@skinnylatte all your coworkers sound like such joyful, delightful people living their best fishy lives

@noondlyt it really feels like it!