That interval for querying schedules is the Processing Delay in System Agent Maintenance. Is yours set to zero? You can set it to whatever number of seconds you like. The larger the number, the less responsive Task Agent will appear. For example, if you set it to 60 seconds and a user prints a report, than they have to wait an average of 30 seconds before Task Agent will check (60 seconds divided by 2) (I was a math major, can you tell? 
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Give that a try and let me know.
