Obvious Fail

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 were trying to solve by restricting some users, was that some people were signing up in states like California or Tennessee and had a bad experience using the site. They would go through the process of registering and posting their shift only to see later that not even one person had looked at their shift! So the idea was to restrict people in those situations from posting shifts until there were enough people in the area. Unfortunately, some of you who were genuinely using the site, ended up not being able to post or pick up shifts and then sent us feedback. Thank you all for your feedback, we really appreciate it! Without it, we wouldn’t have known that we screwed up. As a quick note, if you need help growing your area, hand out these fliers in your area and get activated!

To prevent things like this happening again, we are forming a small group of “beta users” that we plan to ask what they think BEFORE we do something like that again. This will help ensure that we only work on the most important, most useful features for the site as well as getting new ideas on how we can better improve the site. You all really are the most important resource to us, we will make sure not to take that for granted again! Send me an email (stephen [at] HaveMyShift.com) or comment on the post if you want to be in the beta user group! Thanks for all of your support!