huh? That’s not true. However, the situation isn’t great.

you can drop reserve days if the “pool” is green. But that means you may get to drop a day here or there. You certainly wont be dropping a whole month of reserve days.

as far as picking up, you put in to pick up open trips or assignments (short call/ FSB) and those are awarded at 11am the day prior, and in seniority order.

lots of people on reserve try to “aggressive pickup” trips so that they have some semblance of predictability and don’t have to sit around a crashpad.