Coup Fourré!

As a kid I remember playing the card game "Mille Bornes" and getting a thrill out of using a Coup Fourré move. I don't remember all the rules anymore but I do remember using this was like a counter-strike against your opponent. It basically cancelled out the offensive move your opponent had attempted to hit you with and gave you advantages to advance. But it was a tactic of serendipity...you had to have the right card to play at just the right time.

But putting vaguely analogous children's card games aside, I have a feeling that last night I was a victim of a "Coup Fourré" style gambit.

At work, we (The Night Crew) had another of Susan's general touch-base "meetings", which really are only scheduled when she has some chip on her shoulder. (Makes me think of the line in "The Sixth Sense" when Cole tells Bruce Wills that "They don't have meetings about [pictures of] rainbows.")

Susan ticked off minor issue after minor issue relatively quickly and without much substance so I started wondering what this was really going to be about. Then she dropped the bomb.

The new guy, Eric, was hired on as 40-hours full time, all night shift hours. She needed to fit him in the schedule. Her bullshit shpeel was in tones of "in order to fulfill our commitment to our mission statement" and "working together to come up with a solution" but she was implying that we had some empowered abilities to accommodate this promise to him while still maintaining our full-time status.

Basically, we were being told that June and I were going to need to give up hours. Or agree to a chopped up hack job of a schedule where we'd work hours on other shifts.

I don't think June could see, initially, beyond the smoke and mirrors Susan was trying to use to glaze us over, but I, for one, am certainly no virgin to this kind of rodeo, boys! June and the new guy both agreed to work out something. (Why was the new guy agreeing to accommodation for himself? I have no fucking clue.) I held fast and rather tersely declared to Susan that I would not be willing to either decrease or manipulate my schedule, period. She then got all defensive saying "Who said anything about decreasing hours?"

The meeting was very soon over since she had done what she came to do, and that is, give us a heads-up on a soon-to-be revamped work schedule. And despite my grumblings and assertions, I'll be forced to accept it, or else hit the pavement.

June later said to me that she was going to email Susan to let her know that she'd not accept any schedule modification either but we all know that she probably won't. And if she did, Susan might feel backed into a corner and left with no option but to fire one of us. Before last night, I would have thought that would surely be June before me.

But why I have a feeling this has been a Coup Fourré move is that both June and the new guy seemed totally un-phased by this bombshell. And they were acquiescent so readily.

What if it's a ploy to get rid of me?

Quelle horreur. C'est dommage.