On call duty

[Bazooka Joe]

I was in a situation that was somewhat similar, but may not seem so at first.

As a salaried employee, I took on/was assigned so much work that I was coming in at least an hour early, staying at least an hour late and working both days every weekend without additional pay. After 6 months or so, I was starting to burn out and thought that I should be compensated for all the extra work I was putting in. I asked for it, and got it without a hitch. However, now I was expected to do all this work, and I began to feel even more pressure as I felt I would never be able to get out of it. I quit within another 6 months or so.

I took a new 9-5 job with paid overtime, and loved it for a while (eventually got bored and took on extra work - but that's a whole other story).

I guess the point I'm trying to make here, is will you feel any better with extra money, or will you feel more obligated to work and have even less personal time? You might want to consider that before asking for more money. You may want to consider asking for less hours or help (someone else to handly off hours calls for instance).

[Firebot]

You are supposed to be compensated for your on call time, and extra (or other benefits) for those hours where you do actual on call work. If your company doesn't recognize that, they are not gonna be able to keep that position filled.

[direct-x]

I think the problem here is the companies priorities and expectations for on call work.

Nobody should be calling you at 11pm at night for help with a spreadsheet.

It should be made clear that on-call support is clearly for business critical events such as network failure, failed server, etc.

It should not be for routine level 1-2 type issues.

If they need 24/7 support for issues like that, then they should invest in resources to cover the hours.

I work on-call, and am not shy to tell people to buzz off if they are trying to sneak in a request that is clearly not in my "on-call" mandate.

[ullyeus]

So I had to go into work THREE times on my Sunday today..10 minute drive there and back....and 10 minutes in office...but got me thinking again about this oncall and lack of any form of reimbursement.

so *bump*