Hell, I agree with Biggril.
Maybe it’s just my understanding of the situation, which is;
Tha language was a bit over the line. His reasoning for coward may stem from the fact that you couldn’t just accept the days that you were given.
Biggirl. :smack:
Wait a minnit!
You’ve worked for the company for 10 years. C is there for 6 months. And you have to ask for some schedule change to get a day off that isn’t even an actual holiday? You’re looking for a day off before or after and that’s the gripe?
I really need some clarity here.
I noticed the mention of taking holiday pay. Do you mean taking PTO for the day? If not, how do you not get holiday pay?
I have the extreme good fortune of being scheduled Sunday through Thursday. Check what day Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s fall on this year. We have a very generous PTO plan, in part because there is no holiday time off. If you work it, it’s double pay. If you have the day off, nothing.
People work holidays. It happens. Some people are lucky enough to have the day off. After 10 years I’m wondering how you didn’t know there was a chance the peon would have your day off.
And when he called you a fucking coward, well, that was just wrong. Now imagine you were planning on having the day off only to find you had to come to work anyway. I’d be a bit upset as well.
Maybe I’m not seeing the whole picture.
There are many sad and awkward souls who just never “broke the code” of social relationships. They observe the easy conversational interplay and intricate weaving of shared meals, jokes, and other experiences of people like ornithologists watch some brightly-colored and graceful species. But however long they study, and however assiduously they try, they cannot join in. They know this, but cannot see why it should be thus, and so they keep trying as long as they have courage and strength enough. Few have enough for long; to keep it up into adulthood usually requires desperation and need as supplemental fuel. The frustrating thing is that they can remember, when they were small and not so different from everybody else, that they had friends once – real ones, who really liked them – but as they grew, and their differences became more pronounced or more obvious, they had fewer. Fewer every year, and more and more people who shunned, mocked or tormented them for no apparent reason. By high school, perhaps, they had just one or two, and (to tell the truth) it was really less of a peer group than a mutual defence pact. This is when, if they finally get some physical size and strength, they might pick up the habit of trumpeting some about it: if everyone knows you can be dangerous, maybe no one has to get hurt.
But they still get hurt a lot, and they pick up some verbal defences to use against the ones who, paradoxically, hurt them the most by running away. “Fucking cowards” about sums it up. Not fair, of course, but fairness left the party years ago, if she ever showed up at all.
People who must deal with these subhuman monsters have a choice. We could just be nice to them anyway, in spite of their failings, but that would completely subvert the point that we just don’t like them, and we’re too moral and honest for that, unless, you know, it’s the boss or someone who might do us a favor. Or we could shun them, focus on their social ineptitude to the point where everything they do is wrong and even sending a thank-you note becomes improper, take the good things they luck into for ourselves if we think we deserve them more, and as unworthy as they are of being spoken to, talk about them as much as possible. Behind their backs, certainly, but not with so much care that they don’t know about it. With any luck, they’ll move on, having learned from us a valuable lesson in how to act toward others. And then, in the spring, we can have the company prom, and only the cool kids will come, and it will be just and good and perfect, the way things should be.
While I can agree that calling you a “fucking coward” was uncalled for regardless of the circumstances, I have to agree with those who are saying he has a reason to be pissed. You bring up all of his social failings as if they justify the fact that you decided you wanted a day off that was supposed to be his day off. If it had been someone you got along with really well, who had only been there, say, 5 years instead of your 10, would you have done the same thing? Granted, I don’t work with this guy, but from everything you’ve posted, it sounds an awful lot like you really didn’t care if you screwed the guy out of his day off - whether you think it is fair that he gets it or not - because you don’t like him anyway.
I just think the sense of entitlement to a particular day off just because you have seniority is just plain rude. If it were a situation where there was a day that no one would generally have off, and a bunch of people put in for that day off, then yes, seniority should come into play. But a scheduled day off that he got because of the way the schedule is designed?
Why ask him anyway if you had no intention of actually going by what he said?
My guess is that he thinks you’re a coward because you didn’t call him out in an alley behind a bar and let him break your jaw with one punch. Because that would have been fair. :rolleyes:
I’ve met men like that.
Brilliant post, The King of Soup. Very well done indeed. You should write a book.
My guess is that the new guy may have been able to fit in, eventually, but calling the OP a ‘fucking coward’ just shot that all out the window. Some people just take longer to warm up to others (the OP) and some people are not the best at creating first impressions (the new guy). Combine the two and then add some drama. I’ve become friends with a lot of people that I didn’t ‘like’ right off the bat, but I gave them some time and things changed. Or, they gave me some time…
Regarding the Friday issue, I think you should have reviewed the policy with your boss without approaching the new guy. If the boss knew how you felt and was willing to make a change, he could have approached the new guy, leaving you out of it entirely.
Pardon? Blimey, that’s creative. I reckon he thinks she’s a coward because the team got to the state finals but Joey broke his leg in the heats and died of septicaemia and Dolores doesn’t know if she can compete without Joey so sits in her darkened room getting wasted but the hunky-yet-sensitive lawyer dude who got Joey’s parents a nice settlement tries to convince her that there’s more to life and she … no, wait; he thinks she’s a coward because she went behind his back for something after pretending to ask him for it.
It is cowardly (not to mention venal, greedy, selfish and petty) to go above someone’s head to get a privilege (even a randomly earned one) taken off them. And it’s astoundingly rude to do so after asking for it, because that sure as hell lets them know how much you respect them. Sure, calling someone a “fucking coward” isn’t exactly the best move in an office environment, but I’ve got to say that extra-chips guy is bang on, as far as I can see.
Now that sounds like BS. The guy had problems keeping his emotions in check and you jump to the conclusion above. :rolleyes: right back at ya.
Jim
It is in the first post in the thread:
Sure, El Diablo might have been a coincidence but it’s also possible that C hadn’t decided where to go with so-and-so, or hadn’t really made plans with so-and-so, when the subject of El Diablo came up.
Dolores Reborn, as someone who has been trampled on because of someone’s else senority, and because I was the werid one out of the bunch, I afraid to say my sentiments doesn’t lie with you.
First, you pulled ranks avoid a potential discomfort for yourself by pushing it into an underserved party, which is totally unfair regardless of whether he’s a newbie or not. So, go ahead, heap abuse on the new people. Then when they become the senior, they heap abuse on the new ones, and cue vicious circle.
Second, he’s wrong to have called you a ‘fucking coward’ right to you in the face. Just because you have wronged him doesn’t mean that he shall be rude to you. But Dolores Reborn, you took away someone’s Friday off and you are really expecting him to be happy with that? That he won’t make a noise? You are not a fucking coward. You are something else. Trampling on people because of your senority. He shall say something else differently to you and perhaps it need to have the word “bully” in it somewhere. I
Third, he might be an annoying person, but this doesn’t justisfy you taking away what is rightfully his Friday off. Why the need to drag up that he’s anti-social and annoying? That’s a different matter all together. Just because he is a nerdy, whinny, anti-social, annoying jerk doesn’t meant that he has to lost his Friday off to a big whinny bully,which is what you are.
And if the is the norm among your company, that seniors get to trample newcomers unfairly, then I guess the sooner the poor guy quit, the better it is for him.
That was one of the most beautiful, sad and poignant posts I’ve ever read. I have a tear in my eye.
I’m going to print that out, and read it the next time I’m tempted to ridicule someone at my office.
I really get the feeling this thread is not going the way Dolores expected. 
Jim
We had our version of Extra-chip guy I’ll call him F. When F first was hired, it was immediate to all he was highly skilled professionally but highly inept socially. It is hard to exactly describe what it was about him, but it fuelled the engine of marginalization. I wish this story would paint me in a good light, but alas…
Amongst the many quirky traits F displayed, the one everyone pointed out was his tendency to just appear and insinuate himself into an ongoing conversation. I’m engaged in a highly technical conversation with a long back-story. F appears, “what are we talking about” and begins to offer opinions that have been long covered. Well meaning? Yes. Annoying? To me, very much so. It happened enough times that it engendered in me a “I wouldn’t want him to join us for lunch” attitude. I wasn’t alone.
Were it not for an exceptionally extroverted cow-orker, “T,” who truly loves everyone, my story may have mapped isolinearly to yours. Little did we know T had been taking the time slowly to draw F out, inadvertently preparing the ground for what came next.
Yet another cow-orker who had worked closely with F took a good-natured poke at this “pop-up” tendency. He cropped his picture from the department photo and grafted it into another silly pic. He e-mailed this pic to the team with the caption, “F pops up out side of work” Well! This spawned a barrage of altered photos. “Look! F showed up here too…” By the end of it over 40 clever photoshop creations all featuring F were created.
Good thing T had inadvertently prepared the ground. These pictures were truly good-natured - akin to a roast. But it could have seriously backfired. A number of us, early in the barrage, did touch base with him with a view to put a stop to it if it was causing a problem. We discovered that he was soaking up the attention - loving every drop of it.
This spontaneous and strange show of affection transformed our F. Actually, it probably transformed all of us irritated folk. His quirks became a traits of endearment - his pop-ups a lovingly shared running joke. When F left us for greener pastures, there has never been a send off like it. All of those pics were professionally bound into a coffee table book and presented as a gift. He was showered with other gifts, speeches. Even during this, he committed a rather serious social gaffe - which was met with knowing laughter. His name has been turned into a verb that continues to delight, used if any of us display one of his trademark quirks.
Why did I write this? Only because your description of Extra-chip guy just resonated so much with our F. I’m not trying to moralize. It’s impractical to suggest we should all be like T - she is just one of the rare stars in the human constellation. If there is a point: While I can’t opine on Extra-chip guy’s assholery, there’s almost certainly a personality under it that, if given a chance, may be worth getting to know.
I see I have been a bit of a dick myself. You’re right, I shouldn’t excuse my behavior by bringing up his social short-comings.
The schedule was officially sent out today. He’s on B team also, now. And he’s not my backup anymore. Yay. The bosses figured out how to handle us.
And he got written up for his assholish behavior. He also (I have subsequently found out) was written up when he had only been here for a month. He got in this engineer’s face when he (the engineer) didn’t have time at the moment for him, and said he’d get to him soon. C got all puffed up and said, “I’m a man! You should have respect for me!” Other stuff was said, but the gist is that the guy can’t control himself sometimes.
I was being selfish. Great post, King of Soup.
Damn.
Just…damn.
I feel moved to comment, but, well, your post pretty much sums it up.
I am fortunate enough to have found one or two good friends to keep me relatively sane, but this hit close to home. I too am gonna save it for future reference.
Nature’s Call
That was great, world needs more T’s.
Thank you for sharing that.
On Preview: Dolores Reborn way cool that things are working out for the better. I have met many like your C and a call a few of them friends. Odd Ducks but they have tough lives by being socially inept.
Jim
I work with someone like that… I took him up on it once, and the backpedaling was hilarious. It’s that he wasn’t sure he could take me. I called his bluff, counting on his backing down. Ever since, whenever he talks tough to someone I just snicker.
It’s good of you to acknowledge that. Now did you do the right thing and apologize to C?