Thanks everyone, for reading and letting me vent I just wanted to answer your questions.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
AAAAA said:

Is this the first time this situation has come up? Is there a system in place to ensure that all employees are giving equal time to these off time events? Is there a minimum amount of notice that employees are entitled to prior to being forced to change their plans? Is there a system in place that dictates the minimum amount of staffing needed for events? Certainly your co-workers are familiar with the requirements of the job, but some things cannot be rescheduled.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

This is one thing that makes this situation even more difficult and emotional, IMHO. We've had a LOT of events come up here of late, including quite a few nighttime ones through the week and a Saturday here and there, well outside of our work hours. Fortunately, most of these are a couple of hours here and there, and that's it until the next one. As for the scheduling--per our contract we MUST go to events head office asks us to go to, no matter when we're called, unless there are extreme circumstances (and they don't consider lack of staff "extreme", we've found). There have even been a few where we were asked to go to ones on less than 24 hours notice! The rule of the day, which even our supervisor said some time ago, was "NEVER say no". Even when I spoke to my supervisor (and when we later spoke to her all together), she said "well, you can't not do it".

However, at many of these events, I can honestly say that my coworkers can and would help out (they'd come with me or another co-worker if the event called for 2 people, etc.) So I will not say that they don't do their jobs and don't want to work together, because I've seen that they most definitely do. Yes, there have also been times that I've tried to help the others out with their scheduling by taking on an event, or giving the event to someone else to help them out (if they need to get their hours in early to take off a certain day, etc.) It hadn't been THAT big of a deal, and we'd worked together quite well honestly, until this whole thing happened.

What really threw us all for a loop here was that the particular event I wrote about called for quite literally an entire weekend--with the time to drive there, over two full days of hours. My reluctance was that that was a lot of time for one person to do; even when I went to the event, I was the only vendor that had just one person working their booth. On top of that, to be perfectly honest, I was a little peeved that even one of the others couldn't spare a couple of hours on just one of the days to lighten the load a bit. (Obviously, the co-worker getting married was exempt from this! ) To tell the truth, I simply felt that this was too overwhelming a request for ANY of us to do alone, and my original suggestion was to split the time between a couple of us. When I was told "no, we absolutely can't help this weekend, but you shouldn't do it either," I felt kind of trapped. It's like I was all but being told that I'd have to do the weekend by default, even if that wasn't how it was intended.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
sunrise said:]I find it a bit obnoxious that you say your job is very important to you and you take it seriously, as if it isn't important to your co-workers and as if they don't take it seriously. They may be put off by this judgemental attitude. Their jobs may be just as important to them as yours is to you. Don't make assumptions. I can see it would be difficult to get buy in from your co-workers if you broadcast this attitude. I also agree with your co-workers that the short notice from the head office is not working.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

After reading my post again, I agree that I did sound as though I was coming off a bit high and mighty. I apologize, as that was not my intention, nor do I normally show this attitude to my co-workers. In fact, under normal circumstances I do everything I can NOT to show it to them--to (honestly) be a team player ,and "suck it up" if I don't agree with something so that we can move on. I'll agree that emotion got the best of me here, and the extreme nature of this situation didn't help matters.

I do realize that my co-workers' personal lives are important, and that they do work hard at their jobs, as I wrote above. I also know that having kids takes up a lot of your free time (to put it mildly!). But also as I wrote above, I guess it wasn't the fact that they had the committments themselves...it was the fact that we were at a stalemate and could not agree to work out some sort of plan so no one would have to do the whole event alone. Their answer seemed to be, "well, no one should do it, we shouldn't be required to," when we all knew that wasn't an option.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I think the situation calls for a face-to-face meeting between your supervisor, your co-workers, and you. One question I have is, are you and your co-workers equal? Or do you supervise them? It seems from your post that you have more responsibility than they do to see that these events get covered. Is that true? But on the other hand you refer to them as "co-workers," as if you are all equals.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

I completely agree with the meeting idea, and I plan to bring this up during our next meeting with our supervisor that's next week.

I am not a supervisor in our office--my co-workers and I all have the same title--but the head office tends to contact me to ask for someone to attend the events. The only reason I figure this is because I was the "original" program member, and because I'm usually the one to attend meetings they have at the head office from time to time. I've mentioned that it might be a good idea for them to send these to everyone in the spirit of fairness--and the fact that I may be out of the office when the message is sent and we end up with an extremely short notice,which has happened more than once--but I still tend to get them.

Anyway, when I do get a request I usually forward the e-mail. For very short notice events or ones that may be a bit more difficult, I also verbally mention that I got a message from them to work an event. So I guess in a way, I do feel that I'm being put in the position as an "enforcer" and "mouthpiece"--weither that's a valid feeling or not, and in hind sight it was what drove me to call the supervisor myself even though it wasn't the best thing to do!

Also about that, It's also a bit frustrating that we don't technically have a supervisor in-house at our office--our supervisor is actually stationed in another of our offices a few hours away, and we don't usually see her except when she visits our office about twice a month.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I don't have any friends outside of my husband. In my closet, I have very little "non-work" clothing. Work is my life.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> </font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Are you dissatisfied with this? If so, set some goals to change it. To make some friends, to join in some recreational activities, to not work so much. If this means changing jobs, or transferring to another group within your agency, then start working toward that.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

I also agree with this. I'm trying to take steps to improve this, but it seems to be slow-going.

Again, thanks to everyone for listening!! This is indeed a crappy situation all around.