Jeez, 15 min? I get a whole hour.

Though half the time they skip the on-call number and just call me directly, whether or not I'm on call

 

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This is frustrating.

I've been called at 6AM by an ISP partner because they were having issues. I don't answer. I'm not oncall, you woke me up...

And then they leave me nasty VMs...


Great way to start a day.


The newest 'oh great' moment is because techs started handing out my number to clients, and just any joe who wanted help. Gotten about 15 calls this week from random people...I'm like "Who are you? How did you get this number?"

 

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We have never been read the riot act, yet, about actual time, but our international counterparts say they have a 15 minute time frame too to be actually working the issue. So they indirectly expect it from us, but that is some BS, that means you are essentially imprisoned at home during that period.





Why is the phone even on or near your bed to wake you up then? When I am not oncall mine is nowhere it can bother me.

 

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One of our 'rules' here at work is everyone must have their phone on and with them 'JIC' the bosses need to contact you.

I've gotten in sh** multiple times because I think this is garbage. I'm not picking up after someone else...yell at them if they're incompetent or not answering their phone.


I was even supposed to take my phone with me to Mexico so that if there was an emergency I could help them. I LOL'd and left it at home.

This year I draw the line. They can fire me if they want. I'm done being walked all over.

 

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Man it sounds like lots of IT peeps have some crappy hours. Meanwhile I can't find an IT person for an easy 9-5 office with no tech support that shows up and gets *&*( done. I think our work is too boring or something. We never have any problems here, it's all just about doing new crap.

Yeah, that is some real BS! Lol, keep it by the bed every night. LOL!


I semi-fixed that with my bosses once, every time I got a bogus call, ie false emergency, or even a wrong number in the middle of the night, which happened often. I would call me boss just to let him know I was up and now so is he.


To top it off one of our more worthless managers likes to pull the "well my battery must have died in the night so I never got the call". I use that now too.

 

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Your bosses boss just messed up.

If you are required to remain within a restrictive specified distance from your job site during on call time, you are entitled to your full regular hourly pay during that time according to FLSA.

This came up years ago when I worked for lifelink and it was eventually resolved...in the employees favor.

I don't get that luxury. We work at the absolute top level, so the only way we usually get a call is if senior management/VPs have visibility on the issue or it's stopping production work on a massive scale. If someone calls me directly, I've gotta take it.

 

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This is one reason I love being a consultant. We work on the projects, don't contract for on-call support (escalations go to the vendors). I may get 1-2 very high level emergency calls in the course of a year, so there are rare exceptions.

Regarding the policy above, It sounds like it is meant to be formal clarification of what was already expected from on-call personnel (and they don't sound unreasonable for an on-call position that could require on-site work to resolve). If it is really a change that is introducing further restrictions, then use it as a reason to discuss an increase in compensation (or at least point it out at your next review). If nobody pushes back on changes imposed by management, they'll keep taking more and more over time.

 

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Some history...I work IT work for a Texas college. I am an exempt, salaried employee. I know right before last xmas my boss's boss called him at like 7PM one evening, while we were on scheduled holiday time off. My boss was on-call at the time. the big boss told him some stuff was going on, and demanded he remote into the network immediately. My boss told him he was at a party about 15 minutes from his home, and it would take that long to get home, and check on the issue. Big boss got pissed and jumped my boss' ass. My boss said basically FU, you don't pay me to sit at home. He said show me a policy.

Today this came out. It is significantly more than the policy for all of IT. I just can't see any legal way they can force some imaginary boundary on employees, and demand they never be any further away from campus than the distance they live. If my compensation begins when I get paged, then before that time I am on my own time. How can they legally tell me where I should be? Note, I'm not a moron and wouldn't be hours from home while on-call. Still....I get a bit testy with this new isht. No other department has this type of restrictions.

I mean, the hospital I work for is based on a freakin island. By this policy, when I'm on-call, if I lived on the island I could never leave it.

 

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