Originally Posted by
tsquare
Reserve should be transparent, obvious as to what's happening at any time of the day.. ALWAYS, and respect seniority. If I WANT to fly, regardless of raw/croc/buckets/bullsqueeze, or whatever other Rube Goldberg system they come up with, I should be able to pick up a trip out of open time if my seniority will hold it. Period. I've said it before and I will say it again, the reserve system is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge as the root of all scheduling problems.
/rant
I dont mind the idea of picking up flying at will. That I would be fine with. If someone wants to fly then have at it, especially when it gets holiday time. I see this all the time, say guy #466 flies a lot because he has child care reasons to work weekends and has a raw of 160 going into thanksgiving, and guy #467 who bid weekends off has a score of 45. Now let's say both will fly for sure and both try to YS into the choice trips, well, guess who gets it? The guy who has worked the least. I think I'd be happier if that was straight seniority on a YS pick up.
As dirt said spreading the raw score spreads the pain more fairly when determining who has to fly when neither wants to.