I simply admit it, I have asked for favoritism and have received favoritism.
Well, I have stories to tell too, and more on point than one about a missle silo. I have asked for dispatch favoritism and have NOT received it. Our early requests were made when we were new in the business, before we fully understood the corporate norms and issues involved.
As fleet owners sometimes do, our fleet owner suggested to us that he had connections at FedEx. When we asked him to pull strings to help get us moving, he could not deliver. It seems that while he and his wife knew some of "higher-ups" at the company, and some of the dispatchers, that did not translate into anything that could be leveraged into special dispatch favors.
Do you remember the
Expediters Helping Expediters story? Not told in it is was a favoritism request I made that was not honored.
After their accident, Glen and Janice Rice were told by several high ranking people at FedEx "If there is anything we can do, let us know" or "If there is anything you need, let us know" or words to that effect.
Given the household moving help the Rices needed at the time and the lengths two FedEx Custom Critical teams were willing to go to provide it (along with other amazingly generous expediters from other carriers), it did not seem unreasonable to me to act on those words. On behalf of the Rices, and invoking their name, I asked for help getting the two trucks to Florida, one from Los Angeles and one from Denver.
Some of these higher-ups were people I also knew. This was a request made by me, personally, to others who knew the Rices and the other team.
The other team was older than dirt with FedEx Custom Critical, well known and well liked by many in the office, and was a company poster child by virtue of being a national competitor in the Chairman's Challenge. At that time, Diane and I were far enough along to have made some friends of our own at FedEx, had established ourselves as top producers, and had done a fair number of favors (crap loads they needed help with) for dispatch.
You would think that if anyone could get a favor granted, it would be these teams under these circumstances. What happened? Not a darn thing. Dispatch had several days to find freight that would have moved us toward Florida and we got not a whiff of any.
The other truck deadheaded all the way to Florida at their own expense. We got a run from LA to Chicago and deadheaded from there. That run is one we have done a few times and it came to us as any other truck in the order would have received it.
So, readers, please note that while the good Reverened claims to have asked and received favors, I'm here to share that we have also asked and received squat, and I don't need stories about missle silos or human nature to make the point.
There is absolutely nothing in my near five years of experience with FedEx Custom Critical that leads me to believe that dispatch favoritsm there is a regular occurance. I will grant that it is a rare occurance, perhaps owing to human nature, but when it is discovered, it is the company's nature to fire the errant human. In such an environment, it is human nature for employees to not engage in dispatch favoritism, but to resist it.
I simply admit it, I have asked for favoritism and have received favoritism.
I do not know what carrier you are affiliated with, Reverened. I can say with reasonable confidence, that if it was FedEx Custom Critical, and you shared the details, and the details could be verified, the dispatcher in question would fear for his or her job.
Beyond the times mentioned above, Diane and I have not asked for dispatch favors. First, we now understand how doing so would be unfair to others (early on, we did not know dispatch favoritism was not a corporate culture norm). Second, we have learned it is a futile request.
