Reply to post: Re: Not office hours? No contact

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Not office hours? No contact

"My work life balance is quite simple. If it's not office hours, and not some agreed and planned well in advance exception, then I'm not available."

It used to be the norm in field service that if you were on-call, you promised to have your pager on and answer calls. There was pay just for being on-call and more pay for doing work. Companies would limit bring in on-call techs so the added payroll wouldn't pile up and labor laws regarding overtime and maximum number of hours worked in given time period weren't violated.

I used to be able to do on call stuff, but I can sleep pretty soundly at times now and even with my phone on it's "MineCraft" volume setting, it might not wake me up quickly enough before it stops ringing. A big pet peeve of mine is people blowing up my phone since I can't always answer immediately. They get one warning to never do that again and just leave a message. So far, it's never been an emergency on my part or the opportunity of making a huge amount of money or a case of really good scotch. If that were the case, I'd give them a pass.

I see too many companies that expect their employees to take their phone with them and return calls when they are on holiday, maternity leave, etc. Not only return calls, but within a short period of time. All for no extra pay. To me, that's a failed business plan. Larger companies need to have overlap so any one person not being available isn't a huge emergency. They also have to plan if several ladies are going to be out on maternity leave around the same time. I've seen that a few times. It gets reported when some moron manager wants to require notification from staff when they are looking to start or add to their family. Small companies need to be agile enough to cover responsibilities when the need arises. Employees need to be keeping journals so the status of what they were working on can be found. It's a good practice all around to keep a work journal. It's bailed me out a couple of times.

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