“I’ll give you $30 to cover for me” is something we all heard working hourly jobs. Hourly workers pay each to find someone to cover for them. I found the following on a message board that is popular with baristas yesterday that reminded me of exactly why we’re here: I’m trying to get half a shift covered and I’m having an issue gleaning any help from surrounding stores. The time I’m trying to cover is from 10-2 pm tomorrow (Friday) if you can help me out, PLEASE let me know at my email: *****@**.com. I have an opportunity to get
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As you may know, HaveMyShift recently added features to record who’s working your shift. We’ve gotten some great feedback on this setup, but we keep hearing about the single biggest problem when you need a shift covered: finding someone to work the shift! Drew, Randy, and I, the HaveMyShift team, are super excited to solve this problem and continue to build tools that help you get your shifts covered and earn extra money. We would like nothing better than to see HaveMyShift continue to be the best way to get out of a shift, and to focus more of our
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Today’s post isn’t directly about scheduling or trading shifts. It is however a topic that I think is very important to many of our users, whether they know it or not. Crop To Cup, a Chicago and New York based coffee importer, focuses on maximizing the social impact of drinking coffee. Jake and Taylor who founded it are passionate about making a difference for small farmers in the developing world. They go to great lengths to purchase their coffee directly from farmers in Africa. This post/photolog is about their effort to use modern geo measurement technology to help protect farmers
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Awesome advice from the Instigator Blog via A Day in the Life of Your Customer.
The hourly wage for a Starbucks barista could increase $3.00 (or 35%) by picking up an extra shift for a friend. Do I have your attention now? Good. How do I know that …. ? In 2010, over 1,400 Starbucks employees in the Chicago area posted 13,500 shifts on HaveMyShift. Of those 13,500 shifts, roughly 8,000 offered extra bonuses as incentive for someone to work the shift for them. The average bonus amount per shift was $18.00. Based on that average additional bonus and normal shifts being 6-8hrs long, that equals an extra $3.00 per hour for a barista. Guess
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Rest easy knowing that your shift is covered. We talked to employees and managers around Chicago. Overwhelmingly they wanted to know how HaveMyShift could better help them get their shifts covered. You asked for it and we delivered accountability for your shifts. Now when you trade shifts you will have a permanent record that someone has agreed to cover for you. You can use this record to show your manager that your shift was traded. Store managers agree, this is the responsible way to get your shift covered. This new feature costs the shift poster $5 when a shift is
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I adore all forms of social media. From Xanga, MySpace, Facebook, Yelp and Twitter, just name the website and I was probably a member of it. As with most people, I had this notion that social media could only be used for social purposes. You know, sharing the pictures from your latest vacation, looking up restaurants to go to dinner, raving about your newest crush, etc. But, let me tell you – I was completely wrong. To my surprise, I found that social media could be used for a ton of professional purposes, as well. You see, back in August 2009, I began to actively look for a
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The Wall Street Journal posted a story about Starbucks yesterday. To sum it up: Starbucks is looking into ways to make more money. No surprise there! With a quarter of every dollar that crosses the counter going towards employee pay (we are talking about $2.5 Billion per year!), it’s also not surprising that they are looking for ways to sell the same amount of coffee with less time spent behind the counter. Finding ways to work efficiently is a good thing, it’s the core of how we are all able to live more enjoyable lives than our ancestors did. Imagine
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Communicating with the network of coworkers that have registered for the site is the backbone of how HaveMyShift has been able to help employees get their shift covered by coworkers who want more hours. Word of mouth has, for the most part, been able to get many of your coworkers in your area on the site. For that, we thank you for making the site so successful for everyone using it! When we first built the site, relying on having nearby coworkers sign up for the site was good enough. Today, we want to expand how many of your coworkers
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So, i’ll admit. One of the most important reasons HaveMyShift exists is to build tools and a community around a group of people who are often handed the short end of the stick. We have a TON of pride knowing that we originated from my experiences as a Starbucks barista and love telling our story to anyone who would listen. Some of you may have noticed that we released some new functionality into the site that may have barred you from actually using the site! We thought this would actually make the site better! Obvious, FAIL. The problem that we
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