For those of you working.....

[gimmethesimplelife]

What is your stance on being called in on time off?

Gotta admit these days I pick up the phone for work as I'm grateful to be out of hospitality and for and.b.

When I was waiting tables I often had a policy of not picking up the phone until the end of the day unless not possible. In other words, I made myself unavailable to spare my sanity.

I don't feel this way about the grocery biz though. Rob

[Tradd]

I’m salaried. If I’m on vacation it’s out of the area and I’m diving. There is no being called to come in on a day off. There might be coworkers or customers trying to get you not to go on vacation (happened in December), but not being called in to work on a day off. We work M-F 8-5. We don’t work weekends. Way different than people who work retail or manufacturing where people work 7 days a week.

[Simplemind]

Back when I was working if I got called it was for an extreme all hands-on deck emergency. No way would I not answer the call and go in.

[Yppej]

Never happens in my current job.

[happystuff]

With this job, we basically get called in for inclement weather. It's happened a couple of times - snow/ice on Friday, so get called to come in on Saturday to start clearing lots and around doors, etc. So far, I haven't been asked to come in for anything else, but apparently there may be summer sports on weekends that require a custodian's presence.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I don't get called in on time off, truthfully I have never really had a job where I do.

The closest I did was a job I had for like 5 years where I was on call one or two weeks a month every month. I really hated that. They would call at 3 am and I'd have to to attend to it, I'd have to stay close by on the weekend when I was on call etc.. I think I paid a very heavy emotional price to get out of that job, since leaving started a long line of abusive job, unemployment, contract work precarity etc., way too much times spent in the school of hard knocks, until I landed at a good full time job again. But leaving that job was never about the on call, although I'm so glad I'm not, but about it being the most dead end job ever.

Then I've had OTHER jobs where I had to work a Saturday once or twice a year or so for something big. I didn't really mind that much. Sure I really hated giving up the Saturday, but there was something exhilarating about accomplishing some big push with others at work as well.

[Alan]

The first half of my working life I got called in all the time, on top of working shifts, weekends & holidays. During the second half of my work life I was no longer an hourly employee but rather a salaried manager with responsibility for specific functions within my organization. That's when I learned that responsibility didn't go away during evening hours or weekends.

I've noticed that lots of people don't get the responsibility part of their work life.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Parts of evenings and weekends are always spent on chores anyway. Buying groceries and other things as needed, cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.. As always it would all be worse if I had kids, that's part of why I didn't. So the resentment is that people have ANY down time at all? They might use it to think too much or maybe even worse enjoy something?

I saw some self-help article (the point of which seemed to be that money is not the be all and end all of life, so ho hum) that said most lives are:

It listed 5 things people choose to focus on:
- career
- family
- friends
- health
- hobbies.
And said: pick 3.

No chores are not the purpose of anyone's life, they are just always there in the background. I laughed at it at first as I think most women are probably trying to do far more than just those 5, I know I am. But it probably was pretty realistic there, in pick 3 out of 5 (i'm sure some very altruistic sorts will choose being of service to their community in their free time as 1 of the 3). Of course I feel career one is non-negotiable because if I don't put some focus there I end up on the streets. But it wasn't pick one: career.

[ToomuchStuff]

Well, in the last decade, a whole bunch of c happened, that I normally have been the one to deal with.
In 2017, I actually had a vacation scheduled, four days, just across the border in Iowa, for a shooting class (skills and drills, tips, etc). The week before, the bosses stepson quit and they had a bitter fallout, the week of, the boss had to have emergency surgery and was out for months and my vacation went out the window and I was averaging 80 hours a week.
2020 hit and I volunteered/asked to be surplussed. Didn't happen, then his sibling and I got the call in August, the boss above was dead.
The boss left really isn't a good business person, IMHO and has been screwing up quite a bit and I get the calls to fix things. When I am off (today), I tend to have to do so much of the running for work (what my old job entailed), so the "kids", do try to limit actually calling me in, to actual emergencies, unfortunately the other boss tends to be the cause of.

Until I get it through his head, we need another me, it isn't my stance, but our bankers, CPA, tax man, state licensing people, etc. that I am the one to deal with/keeping the business open/kids employed.

[rosarugosa]

Well, in the last decade, a whole bunch of c happened, that I normally have been the one to deal with.
In 2017, I actually had a vacation scheduled, four days, just across the border in Iowa, for a shooting class (skills and drills, tips, etc). The week before, the bosses stepson quit and they had a bitter fallout, the week of, the boss had to have emergency surgery and was out for months and my vacation went out the window and I was averaging 80 hours a week.
2020 hit and I volunteered/asked to be surplussed. Didn't happen, then his sibling and I got the call in August, the boss above was dead.
The boss left really isn't a good business person, IMHO and has been screwing up quite a bit and I get the calls to fix things. When I am off (today), I tend to have to do so much of the running for work (what my old job entailed), so the "kids", do try to limit actually calling me in, to actual emergencies, unfortunately the other boss tends to be the cause of.

Until I get it through his head, we need another me, it isn't my stance, but our bankers, CPA, tax man, state licensing people, etc. that I am the one to deal with/keeping the business open/kids employed.

Wow, I hope you are well compensated because you certainly have an awful lot of responsibility!

[ApatheticNoMore]

Sounds a bit like the stuff my bf gets sucked into. I just have a job.

In a situation like that you never really have the upside of the owner or their kids. But they want you to run things, until they don't.

At my boyfriends place ENDLESS interpersonal drama as well, and they aren't actually remotely good at running a business, I mean they hire people for one job and have them do 3 unrelated jobs (who thinks that things should be that way?). But then the kids have never had other jobs, so are totally clueless about how the world works etc. In his case there are only so many ways and so many hundreds of times one can even say, try to find something better, after another day spending time being glum or worried because: work.

[Teacher Terry]

I never applied for a job requiring being on call because my husband worked nights and weekends and we had 3 kids.

[bae]

I'm on-call 24x7 unless I go into our scheduling/tracking tool and mark myself as unavailable. I am expected to respond unless I can't :-)

We use the same tool to sign up for duty shifts where you are also on-call, but guarantee to be available to respond no matter what.

This makes it easier for the on-duty officers to predict available resources, and to make arrangements to deal with periods of time where we might not have sufficient people on-deck.

[saguaro]

In my early working days, when working retail / restaurant, those were times when I got called in.

My last couple jobs didn't involve being on call, however there were a couple of project rollouts where I was expected to be available for emergencies but only for a specific period of time. Didn't have an issue with those situations.

[beckyliz]

I do have my work email on my phone, so I'll check it very occasionally when I'm off. the only time I can recall being called in was when I was on maternity leave (so almost 23 years ago). A beneficiary of a trust that I was the admin on was threatening to sue us and I had to come in to answer some questions. Different employer.