I was a scheduler for 6 months. It is a hard job looking at a screen all day, and picking up the phone, with weather problems, crew duty issues and general not so good news.

1. Do not call at the crack o dawn on monday mornings. Schedulers hate mondays, are groggy and in a mood, they only have the weekend to do all their personal stuff.

2. Do not demand a trip, or tell the scheduler that they owe you because you did a pop up in 1997 for them. There 10 flight attendants behind every tree. They can and will get someone else.

3. Do not tell them how broke, sad, and depressed you are. If you tell them you cannot pay your amex or feed your cat, it just means you are not good at handling your life. This also means if you are so sad , depressed and broke, that you cannot perform duties in a professional manner.

4. Thursday is a perfect day to call. They are gearing up for the weekend, with charter and possible popups. Call after 2 pm, after the BEASTt has been fed,(they are a hungry bunch) and their blood sugar is normal. Thursday is so next to friday, so they have hope in their hearts, that in 24 hours, they will get sprong from corporate misery.

5. Do not have weird fly songs on your phone. They just hang up. If you want to maintain contact, do not put your cell phone in the nacho bucket while you are doing tequila shooters, do not scuba drive, or do libraries, churches, red sox games, bungie jumping, horseback riding, or any activity that thwarts you from answering that darn piece of plastic.

6. Try to maintain a working relation with the taskmaster, Know the names of their kids, what college that are going to etc. Do not gossip about divorce, who is sleeping with who, pestilence, greed, sloth, envy etc. That is what the a/c is for.

Hope this helps!
Betsy Dwyer Loomis

To read more from Betsy, please visit her blog
___________________________________________________________________________________