Scheduling a pickup

Once a center lead has approved your request, the next step is yours: pick a 30-minute time slot from the center's published hours. This article walks you through the slot picker, what each slot label means, and how to change or undo your pickup time later.

If you haven't gotten an approval yet, see Requesting lawn signs first.

When you'll see the picker

There are three places the slot picker can open from:

1. Your dashboard — at the top of My Paint The Province signs, a card titled Pick a time to come pick up your signs appears as soon as a request is approved. Its single button — Pick a pickup time — opens the slot picker.
2. The approval email — every approval email has a button labelled Pick your pickup time. Tapping it takes you back to your dashboard and opens the same slot picker automatically.
3. The active-requests row — in My active requests on your dashboard, any row with an Approved status badge shows a Pick pickup time button.

You can also reach it from the request detail page (click the row to open it) — same Pick pickup time button.

Reading the calendar

The slot picker opens in a dialog window. At the top is a horizontal strip of 7 day cells starting from today. Each cell shows the day-of-week abbreviation and the day-of-month number; today's cell has a small Today caption underneath. Days that have at least one available slot have a small dot under them.

Use the chevron buttons on either side of the strip to jump back or forward by a week. The picker covers the next four weeks; if your center doesn't publish hours that far out, the later days just won't have any dots.

Tap a day to focus on it. The focused day's heading appears below the strip in the format Friday, June 5.

What the slots mean

Below the heading is a grid of 30-minute slots — every half-hour from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM, labelled with one of three statuses:

• Available — open and waiting; tap it to pick this slot.
• Booked — another volunteer has already claimed this slot. Not available to you.
• Outside hours — the center hasn't published this part of the day. Not available to you.

If the whole day shows Outside hours, that means the center isn't open for pickup that day. Try a different day from the strip above.

Picking a slot

Tap any Available slot. The cell shows a dashed border to mark your choice, and a small box below the grid summarises your selection — Your pickup time, followed by the full day-time stamp ("Friday, June 5 at 10:00 AM MT").

If you change your mind, just tap a different Available slot; the dashed border moves with you.

When the time is right, tap the Confirm pickup button at the bottom of the dialog. The button changes to Saving… while it submits, then disappears once your pickup is on file.

Confirming your pickup

Two things happen the moment your pickup is saved:

1. The slot picker closes. Your dashboard refreshes, and the Pick a time to come pick up your signs card disappears, replaced by a new entry in Your upcoming pickups with the time you just picked.
2. A confirmation email arrives at your inbox titled "Pickup confirmed: Calgary Center on Fri – (request #abc123)" — the center name fills in from your pickup, the day is abbreviated to three letters, and the short ID at the end matches your request. The email includes the full pickup time, the center's address, and a link back to your request. Anything the lead wrote in their approval message stays in the earlier approval email, not this confirmation — keep that one handy if you want to re-read their note.

Rescheduling

Plans changed? On your dashboard, find the row in Your upcoming pickups and tap the Reschedule button. The slot picker opens again, this time with your current slot pre-selected — the cell already has the dashed border, and the button at the bottom reads Update pickup time instead of Confirm pickup.

Tap any other Available slot to move your pickup. Tap Update pickup time to save. You'll get a new confirmation email titled "Pickup rescheduled: Calgary Center on Fri – (request #abc123)" with the updated time.

You can also reschedule from the request detail page (click the row in My active requests to open it) — same Reschedule button.

Cancelling your pickup time

If you need to free up your slot but want to keep the request alive (so you can pick a different time later), use the red Cancel pickup time button on the row in Your upcoming pickups. A confirm dialog opens titled "Cancel this pickup time?" with the explanation "Your request will go back to 'awaiting pickup time' and you can pick a different slot later."

Tap Keep it to back out, or the red Yes, cancel pickup time button to drop your slot. The button changes to Cancelling… while it submits, then disappears. No email goes out — this is a silent action.

After cancelling, your dashboard updates: the row vanishes from Your upcoming pickups, and the Pick a time to come pick up your signs card slides back in so you can choose again later.

This is different from cancelling the whole request. To cancel the request itself (so it's withdrawn entirely), open the request detail page and use the red Cancel this request button — see Requesting lawn signs for that flow.

What if there are no slots?

If you scroll the calendar and every day shows only Outside hours slots, your center hasn't published any pickup windows yet. The center lead is usually working on it; check back in a day or two. If a week passes and there's still nothing, contact support and we'll nudge the lead.

If a day has windows but every slot inside them is Booked, all the openings for that day are taken. Try a different day from the strip — most centers publish multiple days a week.

The slot just filled up

Slots are claimed first-come-first-served. If another volunteer picks the same slot a moment before you tap Confirm pickup, you'll see a small message at the bottom of the dialog: "That slot just filled up. Pick another." The calendar refreshes automatically and the cell flips to Booked. Pick a different slot and confirm again.

A similar message — "That time is outside the center's hours. Pick another." — appears if the center edited their hours between you opening the picker and tapping confirm. Same fix: pick another slot.