Yeah, linked servers require elevated permissions, it's one of their drawbacks. For data of significant size, ddl_admin is pretty much required on the remote side or your plans could suffer:...

I know this is delayed, but I just tangentially heard about this problem.

I bet it's permissions.

From MSDN:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187354.aspx

"Only members of sysadmin can modify a schedule owned by another user."