@bgriffin wrote:
@SteveSoCal wrote:
Emails from shoppers demanding shops when my hands were tied on assigning them.
In what way were your hands tied on assigning shops?
I can't go into too much detail on a public forum about all of the issues, but there are forces beyond the scheduler's control; some of them being client driven and others being management driven. It's also a complex process.
I mean, c'mon, if you have 2,000 shops that need to be assigned and applications in for each of them, do you really think it's as simple as going down the list and assigning each shop to the first applicant? That would take about 2 hours of the scheduler's time and then wreak havoc at the company for the next 90 days.
Consider that this is a company that does not employ contractors outside of the shopper base. Editors are employees and have certain hours they work, have scheduled vacation time, need to have work available each day when they clock in, need to have consistent work throughout the month, etc. On top of that, you have a variety of different shops offered, and some have a considerable amount of narrative. Some editors might specialize in restaurants, with others on a certain hotel brand. Newbie shoppers always take more in editorial time so you also need to have a good balance of vetted shoppers mixed in with the newbies.
Then you have client requirements. Clients require the completed report to be submitted to them within a certain amount of time, but some hotel reports might take 8 hours of editorial and require a particular editor, so those have to be parceled out over the quarter. Many clients need the shops rotated over the days of the week so that they hit a variety of staff members and that has to be considered. Others might limit a demographic of shopper, or have maximum rates allowed, and then you get into the travel expenses. If you have 100 hotels that offer up to $100 travel, there's not $10k allocated for travel. There's probably $2-3k and that has to be allocated to the shops which require it, with the majority having low or no travel.
Last, you have the shopper requirements. You are drawing favors from different shoppers throughout the quarter and promising certain assignments in return, and all of that has to be considered. You also have to make sure that all of the regular shoppers get SOME assignments. You can't give 20 to one shopper and 1 to another, so the requests all have to be considered and divided up amongst the known applicants...and one person is doing all of this. That person is going to be careful about adding new shoppers to the group because each new shopper comes with a new set of demands, and you ned to feel assured that they can do the job.
While it may seem more professional from the outside to simply give away all of the shops to anyone who applies, consider the repercussions if 40% of the shops were declined, took longer than expected with editorial or required the company to offer a poor quality submission. Management deemed it more professional to put shoppers through a vetting process, rather than just give them shops, let them fail, and have all that grief to contend with. The grief from the spurned shopper that didn't get an assignment hurts a lot less than the grief from the one who just put $1,000 on their credit card and is having their assignment declined. That is something I struggled with every day on that job.
When i was scheduling, I had posterboards with shopper names and requests covering the walls of my office. I had post-it notes covering my desk with special requests and multiple databases where i kept track of editor hours and the number of shops each shopper received. It was a daunting task! Once I had everything worked out to the best of my ability, I'd assign the shops and of course there would always be some phone call or email from a spurned shopper who did not get the assignment they wanted and felt burned. That's how my hands were tied in satisfying that particular shopper.
If it makes you feel any better, BG, 2 of my 4 hotel requests for that client were declined for the room rates being too high and another was declined for travel being too high, so I'm left with one local hotel that has zero travel attached.
Yes, there are times where I get pissed about how things operate and fight the urge to send that resignation email in. Then I go through my photo albums and see the trips I've taken all over the world, the memories I've made with friends and loved ones on assignments, and I bite my &^%$ tongue, put my big-boy pants on and go about my day, because I know the MSC would continue to operate perfectly fine without me! The ability to shop os a privilege...and not a right!