I get what you are saying. That said, I completely disagree with you in regards to you thinking that schedulers don’t get what shoppers are dealing with. Forgetting about the typical “empathy” that most people have, almost every company I know will only hire schedulers (particularly new schedulers) who have shopping experience. In fact, the only reason I wound up getting into scheduling was actually a random email I got from one of the companies I shopped on the side for while I was still teaching full-time. There are at least two companies I’ve worked with that not only required you to have past shopping experience, but required you to complete at least a few of their shops before you could be hired or work with them. So while you are accurate that most of the time when I’m scheduling I am home in a warm room (though I try not to be on the couch because I don’t focus as well), I assure you we are not some type of millionaire NFL owner who has never played football.
I’m not sure what type of email interactions you’ve recently had with schedulers that were so awful, and I hope I wasn’t one of them, but other than the occasional email from a shopper who may be upset or angry that their shop wasn’t accepted (which actually has nothing to do with me), all of my interactions with shoppers are generally pretty pleasant. If a shopper requests a higher amount in an email I usually sent that to the account manager (it’s their decision, not mine), and then I let the shopper know what they said. I’m not sure if you can share here how these conversations with schedulers have been so nasty without naming anyone or giving yourself away, but I would actually be curious to know.
You are pretty on point when you can the schedulers the middle-man, we really don’t get to make decisions that much! Our job is just to find more people for the “other end” of the middle-man scenario for the client. I promise you no scheduler (or scheduling company, or most mystery shop companies in fact) are not giving you a $50 bonus because they are pocketing it for themselves.
That said, if you really think scheduling is a cush job, why don’t you just do that? I don’t even mean for that to sound sarcastic, I’m legit. Some people LOVE doing gas shops, bank shops etc, and they find the pay decent enough to do it. I personally wasn’t that person...gas shops were my least favorite type, probably for most of the reasons you listed, and they just weren’t worth it to me. Honestly I probably wouldn’t have been happy doing them even for a good pay rate. I’m much happier scheduling now, and just choosing the few shops I want to do (which are food and hotel in normal times, as well as the occasional bank shop).
One other thing, when you mentioned your friend who married into the wealthy family with the gas stations, how much do you think that family pays their employees? I’m sure it’s less than $35 per hour, in fact I’m confident it’s probably less than half of that. And I’m not saying that’s right. I’m just saying trying to find people who will do the most work for the lowest pay is pretty much the way the world works (at least our country). I have a friend who works in a hospital, he has for several years. Obviously his job became much higher risk this year (works as a tech in the ER, so the ones that do EKGs etc). One would think his salary and all of those in a hospital would have skyrocketed based on the risks that were taken this year, but he actually shared with me that his W-2 was lower than the year before. His salary was frozen but they required more for benefits.
Heck I even worked as a waitress for a year (I honestly think every single human being should be required to do that because it taught me SO much about the “other” side of food service and how to treat wait staff in general. Waiters don’t even make minimum wage, restaurants aren’t required to pay it. I received around $2 per hour, plus tips. I remember a particularly slow Monday night when I think I made a total of $11. I have to imagine the restaurant owner and overall franchise owner still did fairly well that year, and new people came in when I left who were paid the same way I was.
In the end, we all just have to do what works best for ourselves.