 <p>This is happening because the user 'sarin' is the actual owner of the database "dbemployee" - as such, they can <em>only</em> have db_owner, and cannot be assigned any further database roles.</p> <p>Nor do they need to be. If they're the DB owner, they already have permission to do anything they want to within this database.</p> <p>(To see the owner of the database, open the properties of the database. The Owner is listed on the general tab).</p> <p>To change the owner of the database, you can use <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178630.aspx">sp_changedbowner</a> or <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187359.aspx">ALTER AUTHORIZATION</a> (the latter being apparently the preferred way for future development, but since this kind of thing tends to be a one off...)</p>