Exactly…
Well if I were in your shoes I’d take the phone if they forced me to, but I would give them a memo or email in exchange stating that you will be going about your life when not working but will do your best to provide support without a computer when you are not home. That whey when the after hours support blows you can say “I told you I would try my best. It’s your policy that is flawed.”
That doesn’t really carry any legal weight, but it’s what I would do. That and find a job with reasonable management.
ughhh POS customers you should throw the phone, quit the job, and start shooting people you worked with…
then you dont actually HAVE to do anything if its not “working” lol.
Well actually I did leave one part out. There is a two hour response window. It still makes it hard to go out except for like shopping or something.
I was more concerned about being hourly and taking the exact same calls that I would be taking at work, except at home, for $200.
Find a real job?
what is your service agreement? we are on call and have a slight window. they dont expect us to be at our computers 24/7 but just able to take a call and go and troubleshoot something if need be within a appropriate time frame.
you are getting paid $200 to carry a phone. if you take a call and answer it and not do anything, you are not working. if you are taking a call, you were already paid 200 dollars and 1/4 vacation day to do so. deal with it. its part of the field. stop making it seem like you are forced to work in a call center for 35 hours and constantly unable to move or do anything other than work on your computer during that time. you even have it nice since you have hours. i get woken up at 3am because a T1 took a misframe somewhere.
Have your work buy you this, so when you are not at home & you are on call, you can use it.
since they’re pay extra money I’d be surprised if you can’t find somebody who wants the cash to take your rotation.
we have a similar deal for my team, it’s optional and people fight over who gets to take it. however, in a typical week they’ll only do 2 hours of work at most for like $250-500.
I don’t do it because I don’t want to be tied to a cell phone.
The laptop idea would work really well, if they bought the broadband tether and service for the phone! high speed internet anywhere FTW.
See if they are willing to change the policy to be more flexible, by supplying a laptop and getting that service?
yea have them get you a laptop
i’m going to be starting on-call type thing with my work next week, should be fun!
nys will tell you any employee is able to be terminated unless there civil rights are violated
they are actually willing to pay you to solve work problems at home? shit i gotta do it for free.
they will not give him a laptop because they know that 90% of the time, it is not a time critical call that he will have to take. Most of the time you will just be entering a new problem ticket into some sort of tracking system and waiting till the next day to troubleshoot it.
we rotate on call every week. the week someone is on, they get paid 3 additional hours no matter what for the “inconvenience” of having to be accessible. if you get a call out from an alarm on a system, it gets read to you by the caller system so you can know if you need to do something or not. if you do then you can bill out the hours you work on it as pure over time.
my company really takes care of us 
how am i not working if i take a call and answer it? i don’t know what kind of calls you think I am taking but 90% are all 15+ min calls. when i’m not taking a call at work i’m not doing anything so how is it any different? where did i say i was locked in a call center for 35 hours and constantly unable to move? i said i was tied to a computer for some of the calls.
its different becuase you are on call for 35 hours a week but you are only on the phone part of it. you are not sitting at your desk working for 35 hours.
its legal. its part of the job. you can deal with it or change fields. only argument would be if you are on the phone a long time each week, then you can ask for a larger pay or a per call type pay versus flat rate.
Personally Im not seeing a big issue here… your getting paid an extra $200 a week to answer a cell phone, “IF it even rings”. If my work gave me that option i would jump at it.
They have a right to change your job description at any time, so if you don’t like the policy find a new job.
you think your offer is bad my buddy does dispatch for noco and he gets an average of 3-4 calls a night, usually around 3-5am, and has to be into work for this 7-5 shift m-f. and he’s salaried. ugh.
ask for a phone AND a blackberry.