I was called by the crew desk to take a trip (in the 90s) that was a flight from DEN-ABQ with a 12 hour layover and fly back to DEN the next morning for 10 hours of pay with about 2 hours of flying. I took it.

The Captain found out and complained to me that I should have refused it and the company would be forced to hire more pilots. I informed him that we were hiring 24 a week and had been for months. I couldn't see the direct relationship between that one trip and the overall hiring. It would have been staffed anyway, that was just the easiest thing for the crew desk to do at the time.

Its never made sense, actually. We think it does, but in fact management doesn't care how many cancellations we have. We think completion percentage is important, they only look at profit. They won't sacrifice profit for anything.

Our hyper-induced sense of over importance has led some of us to believe that we can make an impact to staffing by our daily actions, which isn't the case.

Either the contract requires it, or it doesn't. If we want fatter staffing, lets make it contractual and not from tying to guilt-trip other pilots.