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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the put-in-a-ticket dept.

Hey Soylentils,

One of my least favorite parts of my job is on call work. I'm wondering if there are any standard practices when it comes to afterhour on call work. At the moment, I am on call 50% of the time. (I share it with one other person). When I am on call, I am expected to answer the ticket within 15 minutes, which means:

- I can't leave the city
- Going to a restaurant/movie/etc is a gamble.
- Sometimes I have to drop whatever I'm doing and answer a call.

Thankfully, I don't get many calls -- Maybe one per week that I can resolve in 30 minutes. In exchange for carrying the pager, I am paid a flat rate of $250CAD/week. After taxes, it works out to more like $150. I am sick to death of carrying the pager. I hate being restricted in my movements on my time off. I like to get out to the mountains, and because of pager, I can't.

Now, there are rumors that the company might remove that $250/week because of "the economic times". That basically would mean that I am giving up my freedom 50% of the time for nothing, and that I should be happy to have a job. Needless to say, I'm a little upset at that prospect...

So, Soylentils, what are your pager practices? Do you get paid for on call work? What happens if you miss a call? Do you have a backup on-call person? Do you get time off in lieu?


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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:03PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:03PM (#274583) Journal

    I know because I'm the jerk at the call center that provides the proof, which is never believed, is never good enough, that the page did go out.

    A lot of pagers are still unidirectional (one of the reasons to use SMS over a pager is that you get the acknowledgement back). It doesn't matter if you can prove that a signal was sent, there's still no guarantee that it was received.

    --
    sudo mod me up
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:39PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:39PM (#275412) Journal

    That was my theory many moons ago. Just about everybody's switched away from those things to SMS. There are still a few beepers and alpha pagers floating around.

    In any case, my one weird old trick still works with SMS. Just claim it was never received. Remember to delete the SMS from your phone's history/log/whatsapp/whatever for maximum effect!