Hi there,

Yesterday was a bad day shopping... I was ready to go out the door, and I couldn't get on a site to download the paperwork, so I send the scheduler a request to get my account corrected so I could get online later.


Well, bless her heart, she got it taken care of... and I was able to stop at a library and print out the report and was ready to go on my merry way.

Then I saw it.... two assigments I had requested that had due date of that day. They had been unassigned for days, but here, after lunch time on the due date, sits two jobs assigned with deadlines.

I emailed the scheduler and said I can't get these in today at last minute, cancel the shops. The scheduler was so accommodating... she said I could do them today. I said... sure... I can cancel all my shops in a city 120 miles away that are scheduled in advance for today, so that I can return to the city where I was yesterday to do two shops and lose money.

I said, NO, cancel the shops. Those shops sat in limbo for days without being assigned. I told the scheduler if there was a good excuse such as she was sick, hospitalized, or a death in the family... I would go out on a limb for those shops.. but failing to assign shops in a timely manner... that doesn't justify me going out on a limb to get your shop done.

Desperate to get the shops done at this point, the scheduler said they usually don't allow a third day, but in this case, she would extend the shop another day. Again, I said, my schedule if full in a city on Friday in a city that is over an hour from those shops, and that I wasn't going to cancel shops because they neglected to notify me in a timely manner. Notifying me after lunch time on a due date... isn't timely when the shop has to be finalize by 4pm.

Do other shoppers tolerate this type of behavior from schedulers? Do you do shops with less than 4 hours notice that you just happen to see assigned because you stopped at a library to pick up a scheduled shops forms???

I'm just curious to know where the audacity comes from with a scheduler that thinks like that???

I set a time limit after applying for shops. When my schedule has to be finalized and shops have not been assigned, my apps get deleted. Lately it has been anywhere from 24 to 48 hours from the time I apply or at least 48 hours prior to the due date.

I agree, I wil go in that morning before I leave and delete all pending shops if still not assigned to me.

I also delete apps if they haven't been assigned and the shop no longer fits into my schedule. It does drive me insane when they takes days to assign the shops.

To all the application deleters... How do you remember/keep track of which applications are pending so you know to go back and delete the applications? I don't add a shop to my Excel spreadsheet until it is assigned to me.

I've color-coded my Excel spreadsheet.

Yellow is a shop applied for but not yet assigned.
Green is assigned.
Light blue is completed.
Medium blue is paid
Red is over 90 days.

These are fill colors rather than text colors, just easier for me to see that way.

I don't often have so many that I can't just rely on my memory. When there are more than a few, it's the same method as GMooneyhan, good old color coding.

Most of the companies I work for have sent emails requiring me to confirm that I will do the shop. But I don't think all of them do. I don't do a lot of blanket requesting -- mostly I'm building routes and I have a specific area and type and number of shops that I want to do. There have only been a few times I've requested something and not gotten assigned to it. I deleted a couple when I requested a certain date and no longer could do that date, but I'm only working about a dozen MSC's so far so it's not that hard for me to run through and check all of them. But other than Maritz I think I've always gotten an email telling me if a shop I asked for had been assigned, and they let me know by phone.

Are there a lot of them that don't tell you if you got the job? It never occurred to me to see if I had been secretly assigned something.

When I apply for a job, I enter it on my job schedule as an application. Until I delete it, I consider it a commitment. If I get the job, I change it. If I don't get the job, I delete it.