All I can say is that this thread is tard paradise.
“I said this!” “No you didn’t, you said that!” “No! I said THIS!” "NO you said THAT!
I’m glad I gradeeated from grade school about 35 years ago.
Ever consider that perhaps, in spite of your “seniority” you weren’t assigned the good days because either a) your performance doesn’t merit it, or b) your attitude is tiresome, whiny, and not appreciated by management?
I read this and the first question that pops into my mind is, “why is this woman 10+ years into a career and still not in a supervisory or management role? Something more is going on here.” That’s what stands out as a career coach, resume writer, and program manager for a nonprofit.
Although I am grateful for kind words, even those I don’t deserve, my earlier post was not meant to pretend I had any insight with respect to Dolores Reborn, his/her workplace, or his/her boss and obnoxious coworker. It just seemed to me that there was a side of the situation that was being ignored, and I undertook (I can’t recall who asked me) to describe it in terms that were avowedly more colorful than clinical. Looking back, it seems I overdid it. Nonetheless, I was glad to read about the developments reported in the OP’s later posts. It’s a little unsettling, though, to see just how unpopular a relatively happy ending can be, as evidenced by the fact that post-resolution, the thread keeps on going like a Tarkovsky film.
If anybody’s a coward, it’s not Dolores Reborn (I love the username, by the way: it says “resurrected sorrows” with a warm, mysterious beauty), who has demonstrated an admirable dignity and grace in modifying attitudes assumed originally in justifiable anger. Too many people, once the initial anger fades, cling to the poisonous residue it left in their minds. Not the OP, to his/her very great credit: s/he lets her/his name be poetry, not reality.
After four pages (and I’m a pretty good reader) all I’m sure of concerning the OP’s employer is that it overworks its employees. If I had that schedule I’d be screaming obscenities with volume and vigor, and I’m normally pretty docile around people. But I’m not sure where the impulse to tease out the exact molecular structure of off-and-on-call Fridays comes from. It was something that both parties felt was as important as, well, they felt it was, and they acted accordingly, and thereby hangs this tale. To analyze the issue now in order to pronounce it important or trivial is a little like reading The Guns of August and deciding that Europe would be really stupid to go to war a century ago.
A lot of this thread seems to be about working through our own employment and interpersonal issues (and one case of a poster, bugged in another thread, coming to this one to spray the Flit – as the old joke goes, the light must be better over here), and I suppose that’s a good thing. I’m a little surprised at the vehemence with which some posters express their feelings about whatever version of the Social Misfit occupies their minds. I’ve had the visceral reaction that some people can provoke in person – icky people are, by definition, icky – but I wasn’t able to maintain that level of disdain and distaste for them once I was safely at home. As I said so clumsily earlier, it’s important, when the emotion fades, to examine the thoughts it engendered to see if they’re worth keeping. Apropos of not much, one of my favorite lessons about honesty goes like this: it’s okay to behave like a kinder, more compassionate person than you really are.
I don’t know why this thread is going on the way it is; just egos involved, is all I can figure. And in my experience, as I mentioned upthread, treating other people the way you want to be treated is a surprisingly effective way to get what you want; most people won’t fight with someone who isn’t attacking, and they will actually be open to discussing what everyone needs.
Jesus, you’re becoming a bitch, inkleberry. You leaving soon? I wish all you ‘not-reupping cuz I’m a whiny fuck’ posters would quit dropping into threads just to be cunts.
I’ve been working in my same fucking cubicle for 10 years and will never, ever, ever be management or supervisory. What does that say about me? Not a fucking thing…and it says nothing about **Dolores ** either.
Dolores, your only mistake was in talking to C about it first–you should have just gone right to your boss and told him that someone fucked up the new 9/80* scheduling and you’d like to be getting the better schedule due to seniority. Then he could tell C and C could still be pissed at him, just the way it ended up. Don’t try to make deals with your co-workers when you don’t know how they will react.
*which I’ve actually worked, so **I ** know what you’re talking about and understood what the problem was from the OP.
In case this is directed at me, it wasn’t ego, it was… Well, I don’t know what it was exactly. I honestly tried to remain civil, but obviously my posts were read as extremely hostile. That was not my intent. Nonetheless, I apologize to everyone in this thread for my contribution in turning it into a train wreck. I promise to shit in here no longer.
I meant “egos” in the Buddhist sense - basically, that people were taking things personally rather than objectively, not that people had big heads or anything like that.
You did it again! It’s not often that I “Look for all Posts by --”, but now I’m doin’ it. I’m in awe.
I’m five years into my career and have virtually no interest in a supervisory or management role. I am very interested in improving the technical skills I use. By year 10 I want to be an ultimate badass individual contributor, the one people go to when they’re stuck and they need an expert. Managers get to use their technical skills for maybe 2 years tops once they get transitioned into that role in my company. After that it’s all meetings, timelining, resource management and MS Project wrangling. Fuck, that sounds like an appalling waste of my technical talents.
What stands out to me as a human being is what a huge amount of presumption your post holds. Wow.
Speaking as a manager, Inkleberry, when I see someone who is 10 years into a career and not supervising or managing, the first question I ask is not “what is going on here?” It’s “is this person happy doing what they are doing?” If the answer is “yes” then I leave them the fuck alone to do it.
People who don’t want to be managers are a wonderful thing. In a healthy organization, there are fewer managers than workers. People who are content and fulfilled actually getting shit done are wonderful treasures, and denigrating them for not having moved into a position that they don’t want demeans you.
It’s interesting – on the one hand, you seem to be saying that simple seniority does not grant privileges, and on the other, you seem to be saying that time in position should translate into movement up the hierarchy. That sounds like the Peter Principle in action.
I’ve been in a cubicle at my employer for 12 years and apparently the only way I’ll get a promotion is after someone above me retires. The workplace can be like that sometimes.
Hey, inkleberry, didn’t you just go through a long stint of unemployment? Or maybe you’re still in it. Regardless, someone could easily think there was something wrong with you for not having a damn job. They would be wrong, just as you’re wrong about Delores. So lighten up on the whole judgemental thing.
Why do you assume that Delores Reborn is a peon anyway? Everyone has a boss, unless you’re the CEO or president. Just because she’s not in charge of her own schedule doesn’t mean she’s at the bottom of the totem pole. Obviously she isn’t, since she has the ear of her boss.
As for you, Delores, kudos. You admitted some responsibility in this (I think it was an honest mistake) and you did the professional thing by talking to him.
I have nothing to add except my admiration for King of Soup’s original post.
As far as not being a manager yet…fuck that! I’ve been in this business for 25 years. I was a supervisor many years ago, and it sucked. Hiring people, firing people, actually supervising people?? Not for me.
I’m not a peon, I’m a designer in an engineering firm. I’m not in a role that could lead to management anyway.
And how do you know I haven’t been promoted within my job description?
Jeez. Arrogant, much?
Thank you to all the people that have actually understood what happened.
Last night my boss’s boss threw a Christmas party for our department. C was there, and he was nice. And I was nice. Everyone was nice.
We had a “white elephant” gift exchange. Hilarity ensued, and we all had a good time.
Merry Christmas y’all, and quityerbitchin! 
OK, I’m sorry, but I just gotta ask.
Dolores Reborn: what’s up with everybody calling you Delores? Is it some kind of cult? A few typos I could excuse, but these people are consistent*. What the heck is going on?
:smack: Note to self: read own coding before posting. :smack: :smack: :smack:
Gotta love Gaudere’s Law!
Not when it smacks you one upside the head, you don’t.
I just chalk it up to not being very observant. I think it would sorta be rude of me to point it out, and actually, some people do spell it Delores.
My name comes from the Stephen King book Dolores Claiborne - but I changed it a while back because I felt like it wasn’t representative of me anymore.
I have been reborn since I met my husband! 
Boy, that was unclear. I meant that my user name used to be Dolores Claiborne, but I had the mods change it to Dolores Reborn.