Weeknote #29 [W26.19–20] - Stalking, a home café, and transitioning into product management

What do you do with disgruntled people when running a community?

Week #19 started off with me being stalked and harassed.

We had removed someone from the Cinema Next Door’s WhatsApp group. That person’s brother showed up at the screening at Underline on Tuesday and started screaming at me. He was asked to leave the venue, which he did.

Two hours later, we found both the brothers waiting outside Underline. Supposedly to confront us again over this guy’s removal

We had to call the cops at that point.

It never is possible to keep everyone happy when you’re running a community, nor should that be the goal. But I wasn’t expecting for some people to react this badly!

It’s just a film club at the end of the day; how does someone get so upset by being removed from it that it ends with us having to call the police?

Home café at Mariam & Munazzah’s

The week ended much more pleasantly.

Mariam & Munazzah organized a home café at their (very spacious) place. I baked an orange & poppyseed cake for it.

I spent most of Saturday there (and way longer than I had expected).

I tend to dislike parties with large groups of people. Or so I though. My usual goal has always been just to escape as quickly as possible. But I now realize that might have just been because of the people I’ve previously been around.

Most of the parties I used to dread were college or work parties. Loud, alcohol-heavy, and usually full of people I never really connected with. I don’t particularly enjoy being around drunk people, and I suppose I never liked most of the people I work with or went to college with.

This party, and the one before that I attended with this many people (which was hosted by Tanvi), I enjoyed myself more than I expected.

Anyway, if you had to buy a ticket for the event, that’s on me. I suggested that. xD

Transitioning into product management

My role at work has changed from being a product designer to a product manager.

Because who needs designers when Claude can do everything for you, right?

A lot of what is happening in work right now leaves me feeling perpetually frustrated. We’ve reached a stage where teams have to sneak in perfectly good ideas as “AI projects” because otherwise they are not seen as worth pursuing. I was literally told, “don’t bring projects if they don’t use AI.”

I said yes to the change because, hopefully, it ‘lllead to me getting paid better at my next job. Which, I think, is the most useful metric to make career decisions on.