I received the following email from ACL for 3 high paying senior community shops near me: (cut and pasted)

Shoppers, as you know, I have been working from my hospital bed. I was informed that If I don't have 98% of my shops filled and completed, I would lose my job. So may shoppers have flaked and cancelled and that gets held against us.
I don't have bonus money left I am haging by a thread. If there is any way you can help me ... I'd would be indebted. This worry is not helping my healing process.
Yes, I am serious.
So, this month, do it for ME and my family.

I wrote back, letting my compassion overrule my senses, saying I would do all 3 if I could use a fake name for 2 of the shops. I also asked why these were hard to get completed (according to her email)

The reply: These are not hard to fill. They're a new client that just posted on Thursday. ????

I again wrote back questioning the panic in the original email and if ACL approves of this type of recruitment.

The reply: Because I still have 57 shops to fill in my territories. I fill 500 shops a month even though they were just added, I have to fill them ASAP.

MY QUESTION IS......Do schedulers use unconventional and perhaps untrue means to recruit? Is this acceptable by the MSC? Why not just pay a decent wage for the job done and the schedulers will not have to resort to such unethical behaviors? I am sorry I took one of the senior living shops, even though it pays $75, I don't like to be lied to.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2019 05:21PM by lbtweety47.

I don't see that you were lied to. From what you posted, they were not representing that the 3 jobs mentioned were their last to fill or that they had been hanging around with no takers. I suspect that if the whole thing was a lie ACL (or any reputable MSC) would be outraged at the deception. It is likely that the scheduler IS hospitalized and who knows about the melodramatics? No schedulers or editors are well paid. They can get their pay to decent if they meet/exceed quotas. Forget the sense of outrage, do the job and do as you like with future offerings. For some schedulers at ACL and others, life is always an emergency. With those schedulers I just don't bother opening emails. I may peruse the job boards and select what I want, but I don't need to get drawn into their angst.

Actually since the scheduler posted the 3 senior shops with the email, it would be acceptable to assume those shops are in need of filling or she will lose her job - which could or could not be true (maybe just lose a bonus, who knows?)

Not sure if this is the same scheduler but one of the schedulers in my area has sent me emails about an upcoming surgery and asking for jobs to be filled for the past week. I have no reason to believe she was lying. I think she just wanted to go into this surgery with no worries about open jobs. Evidently she still has some worries and now the deadline is looming. Kudos to her for trying to get the job done from a hospital bed. This business has lots of flakes and there is a lot of pressure I am sure on the schedulers to meet their monthly quota of jobs filled.

That’s a new low.

I guess she’ll be looking for another crappy job once she’s out of the hospital?

Amazon and Target both pay $13 -$15 nation wide. That’s more than she’s getting at ACL.

Hopefully she will not lose her job. She has been a scheduler for quite a while and seems very nice. I am just wondering if her surgery was not a biggie so they expected her to be able to fill her quota. I did not feel the first two emails she sent were out of line at all. I did not get the email the op copied on the top so perhas that is someone else. In any case, any surgery at all, small or big seems like a big deal if you are the one getting it. But your employer might look at a "small" surgery as inconsequential. Don't they get sick leave?

@SoCalMama wrote:

That’s a new low.

I guess she’ll be looking for another crappy job once she’s out of the hospital?

Amazon and Target both pay $13 -$15 nation wide. That’s more than she’s getting at ACL.

Pretty sad if you believe the scheduler having surgery and have to beg for a few jobs to be filled...wonder if their the "fun,easy" ones or other. I don't like scare tactics, we all have problems, don't use them to better yourself.
I may be cold, but personally, if it were a hassle to do them, I'd politely refuse.
afterthought..can't that company assign her jobs to another scheduler...geez!!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2019 07:43PM by Irene_L.A..

This whole situation seems really sad

I guess we all have our own ideas about what is annoying. My scheduler mentioned she was going into surgery soon and wanted to fill all her jobs if she could ahead of that. It was nicely posted I thought. No pressure. Whether it is the same scheduler the OP wrote about above I do not know.

Below is a subject line that I personally take offense to:
Subject: Who Cooks On The Weekend. Be Free Eat Out Then Just Walk Away

I was planning to write the scheduler and ask if no report was due on this job but it turned out the jobs were all 2000 or more miles away so I did not bother.

Seems pretty unprofessional to me. Hope shes alright but its a bit much.

It's this part that I didn't like:

"I was informed that If I don't have 98% of my shops filled and completed, I would lose my job."

Now if that's true, I really don't like the MSC for threatening their schedulers. That's horrible.

Maybe this is why california felt the need to investigate.

It makes me feel like I should be asking someone at the company if that's true, but I fear that they would know who it was and she would get canned for telling shoppers that.

Maybe the company is a pressure cooker to work for, idk. Terrible if i'ts all true and terrible if it's all been exaggerated.

Well for one thing, editors and schedulers with them are ICs. I was an editor for them and the pay was chite. I can't imagine being a scheduler is that much better.

It is pretty hard to know what the situation is. We are getting all this out of context. I do agree that the scheduler should not be telling shoppers her personal business with the msc such as a threat to be fired. This might be something that has happened month after month for this person and this is the final chance, or it could be the first month of many where she has met her goals that this person has fallen short. I have no doubt the schedulers are under a lot of pressure to perform and probably for little pay. All jobs have goals that have to be met or there are consequences. Since we really do not know anymore than the sos that was sent out it is difficult to speculate whether this situation is a unique one, a scheduler who would be better off in a different sort of job or a msc that is unfair or really anything else.

But I remember this same situation where a scheduler did this last year, and it was an ACL scheduler. She was not having surgery but she emailed her shoppers that she was going to lose her job if she didn't get her shops filled. I will have to look and see if I can find that thread later.

So... thinks out loud... some hypothetical scheduler does not fill the shops and, as promised or threatened, goes away. How does that help to fill the shops?

Anyway, I hope that actual schedulers are well and filling shops.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2019 10:25PM by Shop-et-al.

Or shoppers end up feeling alienated against the MSC who does that to their schedulers and even less shops get filled.

@Shop-et-al wrote:

Anyway, I hope that actual schedulers are well and filling shops.

Amy S, my ACL scheduler (one of them at least) is camping with her husband, kids, dogs and pig. She seems OK.

I was glad to see whats-her-name go, the one who constantly wrote, "Go Team!!!!"

Unfortunately it is true that this happens. I have been fortunate to have luck in that I work for good companies, my shoppers rock, and I think I’m pretty decent as a scheduler, but I know of two colleagues at one company and one colleague at another company who were penalized or fired. In one case they had two months to make 98 percent with 77 shops. Meaning they couldn’t miss more than 1. She actually filled 100 percent but 2 shoppers flaked at the end of the month. They canned her the first day of the next month.

I have also used “scare” tactics as a scheduler. For me I knew that I was having my 3rd baby at the end of April. So I pleaded to shoppers if they could help me get my shops done by the 15th. I certainly didn’t mean to scare anyone, I just wanted to explain my situation and most shoppers were happy to help!

TBH, I pretty much only do ACL shops to help out. That email wasn’t the most professional though.

I think this kind of thing can be okay. It comes down to framing. I learned too recently how to ask without begging. However, I never doubt that people who play things this way need the help.

I think you should count this as your good deed and send good wishes. It’s better to be a fool sometimes than to become uncaring. You’ll likely have a new scheduler next month anyhow.

Thank you for saying so. Were you more proactive than threatening?

Anyway, I do not like scare tactics in real life and in the mystery shopping world. In real life, I told someone off [politely] for dealing in such a nasty way and wrote them off [in a manner of speaking]. Fortunately, I am on hiatus and not encountering any issues or appropriate transactions. The last time someone chided me-- before it was the day and time for a mystery shop-- happened many months ago.

I appreciate gentle reminders and thanks. Scolding innocent shoppers, or at least those who have not attempted the shop and have not incurred an opportunity to become guilty, is like berating a kid for perpetrating bad behavior that they have not heard of yet.

@krattner wrote:

Unfortunately it is true that this happens. I have been fortunate to have luck in that I work for good companies, my shoppers rock, and I think I’m pretty decent as a scheduler, but I know of two colleagues at one company and one colleague at another company who were penalized or fired. In one case they had two months to make 98 percent with 77 shops. Meaning they couldn’t miss more than 1. She actually filled 100 percent but 2 shoppers flaked at the end of the month. They canned her the first day of the next month.

I have also used “scare” tactics as a scheduler. For me I knew that I was having my 3rd baby at the end of April. So I pleaded to shoppers if they could help me get my shops done by the 15th. I certainly didn’t mean to scare anyone, I just wanted to explain my situation and most shoppers were happy to help!

What the schedulers do or how they get paid does not matter to me. They do their job and I do mine. I pick and choose what is best for me, that is why I Mystery Shop. I get the job done, don't flake, reschedule when necessary, do my best. In 12 years I have had a few problems with editors/schedulers, most never.
I really don't care how they send the jobs, I just delete what I don't want.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2019 06:05PM by shopper8.

@krattner...Ouch! That is rough to get fired even though she did her job and got them all filled. That said, was she part-time? 77 shops is not many to have to schedule at all. Maybe it was in an extremely hard to fill area, but I assign close to 1,300 per month, and quite a few are in areas not always easy to fill also. I'm not trying to accuse, but it sounds like she was not putting in the time necessary to fill them early in the month.

I'm lucky to work for a company that gives me the time off if I need it, and someone watches over my accounts if I cannot. I feel for this scheduler here, but I find the email to be a bit unprofessional as well.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2019 12:22AM by KSSPete.

Hi Pete,

She was a scheduler for two other companies so she had just started contracting with. They are given two months to hit that percentage and since she didn’t hit over 98 in the second month they canned hit. Had she hit 98 percent she was to receive an additional 50-60 shops.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2019 02:26AM by krattner.

@krattner wrote:

I know of two colleagues at one company and one colleague at another company who were penalized or fired. In one case they had two months to make 98 percent with 77 shops. Meaning they couldn’t miss more than 1. She actually filled 100 percent but 2 shoppers flaked at the end of the month. They canned her the first day of the next month.

That just really makes me sad. It was the shoppers, not the scheduler, who ended up costing her job.

Wow. I did not know that it really could be this brutal for schedulers in some MSC's.... This also tells us exactly why schedulers are so hesitant to give new folks a chance or forgive shoppers who flake... It certainly underscores the value of having an established reputation as a reliable shopper.

@krattner wrote:

Unfortunately it is true that this happens. I have been fortunate to have luck in that I work for good companies, my shoppers rock, and I think I’m pretty decent as a scheduler, but I know of two colleagues at one company and one colleague at another company who were penalized or fired. In one case they had two months to make 98 percent with 77 shops. Meaning they couldn’t miss more than 1. She actually filled 100 percent but 2 shoppers flaked at the end of the month. They canned her the first day of the next month.

I have also used “scare” tactics as a scheduler. For me I knew that I was having my 3rd baby at the end of April. So I pleaded to shoppers if they could help me get my shops done by the 15th. I certainly didn’t mean to scare anyone, I just wanted to explain my situation and most shoppers were happy to help!