badstar

Well...I'm not scheduled tomorrow, but I'm going to work anyway to pack in a day of overtime. And it looks like I might make a side trip to HR while I'm at it.

Unless one of my coworkers decides to swap shifts with me and work my sunday, and I'll work her friday, I'm going to have to call in on Sunday. I don't expect her too either, because she's got a fairly icky schedule all week between work and her own life to take care of, but she says she feels bad for me and will think about it.

But the situation is this...a couple of weeks ago I took a look at my schedule and realized that I'm scheduled for Sundays from then til the end of November. I can't work Sundays. 2 reasons:

1. It's just plain impossible on public transportation. To be sure I got there on time, I would literally have to leave at 6 am Sunday, and probably wouldn't get home til close to 9 pm. I'm not exagaerating the times. Hunt Valley busses really bite it on Sundays, and the light rail bus doesn't start til way late, and ends way early.

This is a fact that they don't care about.

2. Regularly scheduled religious activity. Yes, the Grove has social activity every Sunday. But we've also started holding educational meetings of different varieties on Sunday afternoons, different subjects and stuff on a rotating basis. Anyone who's read my journal for more than 3 minutes will know that this is very important to me.

This is a fact that they're going to have to deal with.

and see about getting my availability blacked out for Sundays. It hasn't been a probem in a LONG time because I've been scheduled for Saturdays. Once in a great while they'd put me on for a Sunday, but I'd swap with someone and it wouldn't be an issue. But every Sunday...this is ridiculous.

So I fire an email off to Chris asking about this, and a couple of hours later, he comes back to me saying that he talked to Brian and Glenn...and they pulled my record for the last mnth and that at this point...well, my attendance for the last month sucked (Keep in mind me having a cold, plus laryngitis for several days and therefore no capacity to perform tech support. But I never went to a doctor and got a note, so none of it was legit. I'm that good at faking laryngitis.) So they said that they would track my attendance for the next 30 days, and if my attendance was ok, then it shouldn't be a problem to set that up. Though, they weren't specific as to what "ok" meant, but what I got in writing from Chris was that "If you miss a day or two, it probably wouldn't be a problem, but if you miss 5 or 6 days, it's not going to look so good. Best to not miss any though."

Now, I AM fuly aware that I could legaly fight that. But being that I had a way around it for the time being, I decided that I would meet their terms and get swaps for a few weeks, keeping several copies of the email.

So we get to Samhain...celebrated by the Grve on Saturday. I'm off on Saturday. But not Sunday of course. Normally, I swap a Sunday for a Saturday and everyone goes home happy. This week I can't do that. I can swap Sunday for Friday, but that's almost guaranteed not to happen. If it doesn't, I have to call in on Sunday.

Maybe I should have gone straight to HR to begin with, though I really believe in trying to work things out. If Kat decides to swap with me, I have nothing to worry about anyway, and the next 2 or 3 sundays I can swap for saturdays. If not, then I go to HR and try to get things straightened out a little more um, efficiently. If it doesnt get straightened out, well...I'm not planning to be there any longer than I have to and I'll just cal in anyway. This isn't something that I would get fired or otherwise disciplined for. (OK, I KONW I won't get fired over this, I'd *almost* be willing to bet money that no one even say anything...ALMOST)

As a whole, one of the things that I HAVE actually liked about AQ is the fact that the religion thing isn't a big deal. They don't bat an eyelash when I turn in a vacation request form for a Saturday every 6 weeks or so, citing "religious observance". I got a confused look the first time I ever did so, but that was all straightened out in literally about 15 seconds and my time off was aproved then even though there actually wasn't any time off available. Since then I've just asked well enough in advance that thats not been an issue. As far as the Sunday thing goes, I don't think they're trying to give me a hard time about "church" or whatever...they have their policies and I'm getting the impression that someone "doesn't know" or "isn't thinking". That doesn't make it ok, but it's a big difference from how I would feel if I had reason to suspect that there was some sort of malicious intent.

So, tomorrow oughta be entertaining. I've had several friends and a couple of coworkers urge me to go to HR (Or further), so now I'm ready to do so if I need to.

Erf, I need sleep, lest I should be as cranky tomorrow as I was for most of today. Until Jackie, Wes and Rick started putting evil ideas into my head. And then I just started razzing people and/or getting silly.