[Rich]

Originally Posted by Tru_in_Blu

We have a small group (16) of umpires for which I serve as the assignor for our league games.

Most of our guys are very flexible in terms of their schedules and communicate well regarding high school schedules for softball, lacrosse, or volleyball. As long as I know their game schedules, I work around them to cover our league responsibilities. The HS schedules are primarily April/May in our area, then a week of playoffs.

I have one guy, however, who has declined to work 67% of our leagues and of the remaining ones always asks about game fees and then has an obvious preference for the games/league w/ the higher fees.

This all came to a head in the past few days. As I work on the next 2-week schedule of games, I ask all our officials for their availability or unavailability. This would be in addition to standing off days some guys give me which might include their golf league days, church band practice, or no games on Friday nights for whatever reason.

I got a response from "this guy" who claimed he was available on a certain date. Two days later, I published our umpires' schedule for the next couple of weeks. The day after I sent it out, "this guy" responds telling me he now has a conflict on the day he originally told me he was available. Now it seems, he has to work 2 lacrosse games at a school several towns away.

I told him I wasn't pleased that he was stiffing us, primarily due to the higher fees for the HS lacrosse games compared to the "mere pittance" of working three 2-umpire system games for significantly less $$$.

I reminded him of the first item in the Umpire's Code of Ethics:
Honor all contracts regardless of possible inconvenience or financial basis.

He was clearly unimpressed and un-moved. He said he would finish out this month's schedule and then I could remove him from my list of available umpires.

I know he'll be lobbying to work tournaments, but I don't schedule those. If it were up to me, he wouldn't be working very many ASA games the rest of the season.

I don't mind losing his selfish, greedy attitude, but the loss of a warm body, especially while trying to juggle the balance of HS schedules and our league schedules makes things tougher.

How have some other assignors dealt with this type of situation?

One thing you have to do is make sure you *never* use him again. I have a guy like this and I have been tempted once or twice, but remind myself I'd be better off in the long run simply not providing someone in a rare case than bring that drama back.