Standing, Codependency, and Personal Responsibility

I've recently had two situations cropping up in the workplace (where I work is immaterial to this discussion) when questions of mandated overtime and off/day staffing came into play.  In one instance, I (and others) were told to stay late a couple of hours overtime one morning...something that annoyed me when it happened but in the long run was beneficial due to the extra money coming in to me.  A co-worker also having to put in the extra time decided that we should see a union steward the next day because a different crew on another shift was unjustly being deprived of the overtime that they had signed up for (unlike us).  I ignored this proposal, because I didn't feel that I was the aggrieved party.  Maybe I was a little annoyed at the overtime, but it's hard to feel the "victim" in a situation when people are essentially throwing money at me.  No, the potentially aggrieved party were the other workers who had sought out the overtime and didn't get it.  They were the ones with "standing" in this circumstance, not me.  Simply informing them what happened was enough...they could then decide for themselves what, if anything, to do about it if they wished.

Similarly, the duty schedule for this weekend's Labor Day holiday was posted a few days ago.  One co-worker was incorrectly scheduled in for two days while I got both of my desired days off.  Once again, someone else had "standing" to address the problem with management, not me.  She didn't, though, and I thus have a long weekend coming up.

In order to avoid codependent behavior, I have to take different situations concerning others and determine, if a possible injustice has occurred, how much it actually negatively affects me...or whether someone else adversely affected wants me to take responsibility to fixing "their" problem for them.  A codependent personality will habitually take on the burden of fixing others' problems for them, instead of expecting them to speak for themselves, as they should...

Standing is an important legal concept in our system of justice.  Appeals are often thrown out of court by judges because the party filing them doesn't have a direct relationship to the cases involved.  Standing is established when a party to a case can demonstrate how it legitimately affects them.  But standing is a more universal principle that ultimately demands that we individually demonstrate responsibility for handling our own affairs without passively always expecting others to take them up for us...