I never did on-call at my previous company, but I did have to contact on-call people during nights when I worked graveyard, and weekends. Our policy was this.

You could be anywhere you wanted to be, as long as you could perform the tasks necessary for your job. For some people that meant they had to stick close to the city, because their job involved having to come in to do something but that was extremely rare. I knew a lot of people that would get wasted as eff when on-call. They were required to return their page by phone or email within 10 minutes. They'd be paged again at the 10 minute mark (although generally we gave them 15-20 depending on the time/day.) If they don't return the second page, their backup on-call gets paged, as well as their boss with a notification that we've paged the backup.

Of course, we had urgency guidelines depending on what was going on as well, we wouldn't page someone on the weekend for a job blowing up that wasn't mission critical.

Now that they laid off all the people in Seattle, the people in LA have to do this stuff, and they fail at it 90% of the time. Their data center is ancient. They still use tapes with live data on them that have to be changed out constantly all day and night.

 

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I am pretty sure a company can dictate your work schedule as they see fit within reason, sadly. IT today is just becoming a huge sh%^ sandwich, you either eat it or go somewhere else and they want you to so they can hire someone cheaper who will do it.


If you find some legal stipulation, please let us all know. Also, do you have time and money to invest in a lawyer to pursue this? Most do not.


I agree it is complete BS.


It sounds like the main problem in your specific situation is your boss pissed off big boss by telling him to F himself and not at least patronizing by saying I will be home in a little while and take your time. I bet this would not be an issue if your boss had not taken that stance. I agree with your boss, but here you are.


* I have finally realized despite the effort it takes to withhold, just pacifying the bosses or big bosses on the phone and then move at you own rate is best. Plus, yes it sucks, but being oncall for IT means just that and it can really inconvenience quality of life.

Btw, if you ever get pissy and go HR/Legal serious about this, use words like "quality of life" and such.

 

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Yeah...the office is all abuzz over this. I mean...when I'm on call I'm not gonna go spend the night out of town. I am also mostly not likely to get totally hammered somewhere and not be able to drive. I have done that, but always think I'm lucky and I don't like pressing my luck. My problem is I'm the sole engineer responsible for this 2,500 wireless access point network. No one else knows dick about it, so if they get a wireless call while they're on call, they call me.

If this isht sticks, I'm demanding a pay raise.

 

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lol.

IT is non-productive work and generally higher paying than the productive jobs at most companies.

Stop profanity whining.

 

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this place currently has minimal after hour support. Typically if I'm upgrading a domino or BES server or something, that has to be off hours.. and I tell my boss I don't start the work until I've had 6 beers in me lol.


A previous place had off hour support policy like that.. they expected you to be within 15 minutes of a computer if the need arises. More than once one of the remote office managers would ask if that was a beer they just heard me open.

If this was true then no one would care if things were not working and there would be no oncall.

IT productivity is about making other people useful.

 

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quit your job and become your own boss, then you can do whatever you want with the money you pay yourself

until then, grow a pair. You're an adult now, aren't you?

This same guy tantrums when his email no worky.

 

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U jelly?

 

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My union protects me from this!

 

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