Took my new board and pegs, with all the stickers already in place (red pegs for the III grade, blue for IV, and the green for the new programme of "direct vocational schooling", which was the reintroduction of the old 3-year trade school through a mouse door; because of the colour of the pegs they were called "the little green ones" (mali zeleni), as if they were some SF aliens). Took her yellow bike and held it horizontal on the handlebars, my bag with the bag of pegs in it (the first bag being my leather bag, the other being the nylon sack) hanging on the left one.
Got to Đole's, sat across the table with him, had spread my papers and the holy board on my side of the table, he poured the loza and then asked for my wish sheets, already holding his in his hand. I produced them out of my bag. He lumped them together and dropped them in the waste basket. To my WTF look he said, very calmly and slowly, "Look, there's no point to it. No matter what you do, how good or bad you do it, one third will think they got exactly what they wanted, one third will grumble for a week or two and get used to it, and will complain only if you start changing it much. The rest will never be satisfied, even if you did what they told you to. So it's futile and the result is always the same."
There was a lesson from a senior colleague, and it actually fit my two years of experience. And about there I devised a strategy - I would just bring the dissatisfied colleague to the big sheet (which was topologically identical to our boards combined), and started eyeballing it vertically and horizontally, scanning for a solution. For a minute. And then I'd say "I just don't see how can I help you without screwing three other guys... but maybe I'm a bit off my wits today... if you see a variant, let me know and then why not". To which the guy would respond on the next break with "look, it's easy, you move these two of mine to tuesday 3. and 4., and you move this guy back." "Can't do that, he works in the other shift that day. But maybe you can swap with someone else."
Nobody ever came with the third suggestion, and few came with a second. The last line of defense was my double hole in the middle of friday - I'd have 1., 2. and then 5. and 6 class, with hefty 100 minutes between them. So I obviously wasn't rigging the game for myself. I was promising drinks to anyone who finds a swap which would fill that hole of mine.
Though, it was rigged, doubly. First as a defense. Second, this was my pre-weekend break. I'd buy NIN, Politika and the local newspaper, and read them thoroughly and at ease. Twice I even volunteered to make the coffee for everybody before the big recess, which fell smack in the middle of my window. The pot was huge, two liters (for about 40 cups) and I asked how much coffee to put in it. The recipe said "pinch this 200g bag here and let the rest drop into the boiling water". Well, I poured all 200g of it. Finally the coffee was strong enough (even though it was only about 10% stronger). Never got the chance to make my third one - one of the female colleagues, who didn't have any classes before that, started coming 40 minutes earlier to do it. I've noticed at least a dozen cups covered with platelets when my coffee was in them - which meant "don't take away, I'll finish this later". It was too strong for some.