On Call

[klytus.livejournal.com]

So I get this great new job, right? I'm doing mor ewhands-on tech support than just talking to folks on the phone - which I still do, BTW. Anyway, my 4th week on the job, I get to be the "on call" guy. You know, the one who gets calls after hours when the manure hits the windmil? Well the other guys on the desk led me to believe it was fairly light duty.

Liars.

I thnk there were two night last week where I did NOT get a call after hours. On Saturday, I get a call at 6:45 AM. And today (Sunday) my phone started ringing at 8am and only stopped sometime around 7pm. Some kind of server/power outage at HQ. No, I didn;t have to go into work, but I needed to call the folks who did, and then all the other calls and pages from the folks who couldn;t get work done. Yep - there are THAT many people in our company trying to get work done on a SUNDAY.

What have I gotten myself into?

At least I'm only on-call for a week at a time - and my next turn isn't for another 4 weeks.

Comments

[jecook]

Heh.

Background: I used to work for a company that did on site support for small businesses and high speed internet installs for appartment complexes. I'll refer to them at Company A. The customer that we did the internet installs for also had us do the tech support for them as well. I'll call them company P.

I was the unlucky bastard the week that Company P A decided to change their ISP over. We had exactly 24 hours notice. Dispite our efforts, (We put up a PBX on the line and setup an IVR system to tell people how to change their settings over) the phone rang from about 5 pm to 2 AM. I let it go to voicemail the entire week. At the end of the week I demanded hazard pay. the CFO went ballistic when he saw my time card for handling the 50+ calls per night. (normal volume was maybe one or two calls per night.) We then made arrangements with Company P that they give us a minimum of a week before they do that in the future.

[jecook]

_tell me_ you got paid for that, right?

[trayce.livejournal.com]

My helpdesk has a total of 3 - count em - THREE staff to cover 24/7 7 days a week. How do they do this, you may ask? They do it by rotating the guys between an 8-4 shift, a 11-7 shift and a 3-11 shift (it changes every single week).

How do they cover graveyard and weekend? Whoever is on 3-11 then goes home and is on call the rest of the night (til 8am), and is on call all weekend 24-7.

Bear in mind this isn't just "emergency" on call either: we have clients and staff in the middle east, so get NORMAL support calls at all times of day n night. When I was on call, I'd usually get at least 3 or 4 calls a night, and sometimes upward of 10 or more each weekend day/evening.

I was the fourth one on the team. I quit in November (moved sideways to admin), they still havent replaced me.

Oh and we only get a generic 20% loading for all that extra work. No actual per-call oncall hourly rate or anything...

mmm, and they wondered why I quit.

[klytus.livejournal.com]

Not any more than normal. Welcome to the wonderful world of being a salaried employee.

On the other hand, I don't get nickle-and-dimed to death for being late in the mornings thanks to the typical morning commute in the DC Metropolitan Area.