on call rota
When both a new father and junior diagnostician for a Mainframe manufacturing company I was on the on call rota 1 week a month, in reality IO was called out 3 out of 4 weeks as the out of ours centre knew I'd always pick up the phone. At my leaving do the true reasons for my unscheduled calls were revealed. One senior colleague used to go out every Thursday on call or not and just wasn't fit to take a call after 8pm, another just didn't really want to do standby overnight and would literally wrap his pager in a jumper, out it in the washing basket and put the washing basket in the wardrobe when he went to bed (we were on call all night and our managers could see if a pager was turned off). The team consensus was 'we don't really need the money and we know you do'. This was actually true, the extra payments for out of hours calls when I wasn't on standby paid for my car payments each month
Biting the hand that feeds IT
