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superbus.livejournal.comAnother weekend on call has reminded me of the last time I was on call, which happened to fall on the second anniversary of my relationship.
Being on call during the week at my company isn't too bad. That's not because of less tickets or whatever - if anything, it's worse because I'll get home, and some idiot from the west coast will call in - but the crew is much better; I know that if they're calling me, they don't know how to do it, or they've done what they can, but it's generally not for a lack of effort.
On the weekend, the typical hell desk takes over, and they're more or less a combination of being incredibly lazy, and pants-on-head retarded. A few of them are good, but most of the people that call me only do so with the intention of getting whatever it is off their plate so they can go back to not doing their jobs.
I'm fairly sure I've talked in the past about one hell desk person who has a nasty habit of not researching one bit of information before calling me, and then prematurely turning them over to me ("OK, don't turn them over yet, I'm still loggi--" "Thank you for calling, I have $ME on the line for you! *CLICK*"). This morning, she got me good, by waking me up... because someone wanted their email quota increased.
"Bus, why the hell are they calling on call about something that stupid?" Good question; I always was under the impression that on-call was for emergencies. Customer isn't getting email? VPN server is down? Yes! You can definitely call me for something like that! But they say "increase my quota!"? No, that's something that can wait... or better yet, if they need more space, troubleshoot. "Are you running low on space? OK, has your end user deleted items in their sent folder and trash? Are they receiving email now? Great! I'll go ahead and put this in for our team to complete on Monday when they're in, and please remember that there are additional charges applied for extra space!" Nope. The troubleshooting went as far as to say "OK, this goes to that department, call him", and click. Now I've got to call the customer, ask for a call back to confirm how much space they want and to confirm charges, and wait for a call back. It's bad enough that I'm essentially tethered to my home, or the area around my office, because I need to be within 15 minutes of an active internet connection and they don't give me a laptop.
While I'm doing this, the same person calls my MANAGER over a VPN issue. Good job! Panic her, because "he's working the mail quota issue!". It couldn't wait fifteen minutes? Oh, wait, if you'd have done your job, you'd have done for her what she eventually figured out before I called her back (disable Norton Internet Security, look for a way to make exceptions)!
But the worst was two weeks ago. As stated, my girlfriend was over for our anniversary, which I spent handling tickets at home. Not important stuff, but stuff like quota changes, and routine tickets that were being sent in. VERY routine, and nothing that couldn't (and eventually didn't; one customer was like "you're calling me back now?") wait. I finally asked the tech that was calling me constantly, over jabber, if they were mandated to call us for every ticket. He explained it, saying that even if it's something stupid and they let it wait, the customer could call back and go "why hasn't this been done!? You're 24 hour support!" (which technically is true; we don't sell "6-6 support with on-call help", we sell "24 hour support", so to hell with Sales, and I've seen this, while working a major issue, we had someone call in at midnight wanting to know why we didn't respond to a ticket he put in at 8PM, and it was nothing more than a simple question about something that happened at 2), so then, they're calling on-call, AND they have a pissed customer. I said OK, understandable, then I made a casual remark that all these calls were effectively destroying my anniversary.
The next day, I got blistered by my manager, saying that the technician reported me. He reported being "intimidated", and that he "cringed" calling me from that point on (to which I said "they don't want to call me? Mission accomplished!". That didn't go over well), and of course, the 20 lecture on professionalism and communication skills that come with it, because my managers love to hear themselves talk. He completely misread what I said, and for that, I got hammered... with them forgetting to mention the fact that I'm 24 hour on call with no laptop and no extra pay. What the fuck? And how much of a pussy is that other tech!? I have never reported someone to management in my entire time as a working adult for perception, or even a personal disagreement; I bring it to the person in question, and we hash it out like adults. I didn't know I went back to Year 1 of primary school all of a sudden!
I decided to go on-call to help my supervisor, who was doing it every day after a co-worker left the company. I said I didn't mind helping out. That's turned into a weekly rotation with absolutely no perks (save an extra checkmark on my evaluation), and weekend calls about every stupid issue known to man. The moral of this story: no good deed goes unpunished, and I can guarantee that when I move departments (something else that should have happened a month ago), I'll be a lot more demanding of adequate compensation should they try to talk me into going on-call.
EDIT: It should be noted that the tech that called me this morning is getting promoted into another, more technical department within the company, one that I wasn't allowed to move to because - and I'm not making this up - I made too much money. I'd say something about that, but the first three things that come to my mind are VERY chauvinistic, and for the sake of the females who post here, and whom I respect immensely, I'll bite my tongue.
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