Tag: on call blues

On Call

Back in the olden days of this here blog I used to regularly complain about having to be on call for work. There were a bunch of different varieties of on call-ness and I didn’t enjoy any of them. They all stressed me out. The good part though is that they usually come with some form of compensation. That was something I could get behind, and that was why I took the on call shifts when they were available to me.

When I was promoted, almost 10 years ago, I made the decision to make the on call shifts available to my staff whenever possible. I wanted them to receive the compensation and I pledged to myself that I would only take shifts when my entire staff were unavailable. As it turns out, I haven’t had to take many on call shifts since. There was one where I was covering a customer’s catastrophic system failure and I knew I was going to be working around the clock for a whole weekend. I took that one to protect my staff. That was a, “the buck stops here” kinda thing. It was awful, but I handled it. Every other on call shift, and the pay/comp time/whatever compensation was involved went to them. I feel pretty good about that track record.

Well… looks like I am on call this weekend. Sort of. Not exactly, but close. I’ve been the go to contact for the last couple of weeks anyway. It just seems easier to have me be the off hours contact too.

Yeah… I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like being on call. Memories, am I right?

Long Confusing Week

I mentioned the other day that we had a slight, one time schedule change.  We swapped a kid day with the kids’ dad.  He took our Thursday and we took his Tuesday.  The result was pretty catastrophic to my internal calendar.  I spent all of Wednesday convinced it was Friday.  I then spent all of Thursday convinced it was Friday too.  This morning when I woke up I was pretty sure that it was Saturday.  Spoiler alert:  It wasn’t.

After having less than three hours of sleep on Wednesday night/Thursday morning I was toast by early evening.  I tried to put the Bruins game on the radio while I was laying in bed.  I missed the first period and it was early in the second when I put my headphones on and put my head on the pillow…  And that was all she wrote.  The Bruins won 4-2, and I didn’t actually hear any of it.  Yippee.

It’s a good thing I got that sleep last night though because today has been the most hectic day in human history.  I’ve been bouncing around like crazy all day.  I was looking forward to a quiet weekend.  Now I am even more than before… I just found out I could be on call for most of the time.  Urgh, indeed.

Hanging in There

I went to bed last night at about 3:30 or so. Maybe a touch later. Our alarm clock goes off at 5:00. I managed to sleep through the snoozes until a bit before 6:00.

I’m an idiot.

I put in for a couple of hours worth of time off in the afternoon and it was granted. Thanks, boss. So I get to sign out at 3:30. It’s not as good as it looks on the surface. You see, I did something today that I have not done in the past. Ever. Today is a telecommuting day. I dropped off the kids and then stopped at a convenience store for some caffeine and was back home by 7:30. Ideally those 90 minutes between getting home and starting to work are spent working on recording projects. Normally it’s spent either writing useless blog entries (like this one!) or watching the tube.

Today was different. Today I logged in and started working. Yeah. I think something is wrong with me. Stupid responsibilities and stuff and going a little above and beyond and things.

I’m an idiot.

Now What the Hell Do I Do?

So I volunteered for some on-call duty tonight. At first it wasn’t an off hours thing. At first it was just needing to validate some data before going home. The customer was running something that would wrap up around 5:00 or so.

When that plan fell through it turned into off hours coverage with everyone needing to log in probably between 8:00 and 9:00. Despite the “call” part of the word on-call, we were told to wait on an email. Right.

Well 8-9 turned into 11:00-12:00, which tuned into 1:30-2:00, which at 2:22 AM turned into we found another problem and now we don’t know when we’ll need you. Still, all of this communication is via email.

So I, being the literal dumb ass that I am, have been staying awake this whole time. If I’d just ignored the whole email communication concept and assumed they would call my cell phone when they need me, I could have gone to bed at a decent hour, but no. Not me. I stayed awake with the gmail app’s notification sound turned on and the volume on my cell phone cranked to make sure I can log in as soon as I’m needed. I’ve been sitting here like a schmuck watching Star Trek Voyager and Archer (the Burt Reynolds episode rules) on Netfix while I should have been sleeping like a normal, non-dumb-ass person! Now I’m probably going to have to take a vacation day or a sick day tomorrow because there is no way I’m functioning on this tiny amount of sleep.

Sonofa…

Unexpected On-Call

There are several flavors of on-call terror. Tonight is a new and special brand.

Tonight is the:

Unexpected On-Call!

Terrifying, eh? A customer had something come up today that requires a bunch of day staff be available after hours. It’s my customer so I took it.

No calls yet. Just one email sent to about 100 people.

May all of your phones be silent tonight, said one on-call guy to all of the others.

On Call Update #4

13 minutes left.

My phone did not ring since my last post.  I was able to sleep, all though not very well.  Being on call tends to make me nervous.  I usually fall asleep, but I end up waking up a number of times through the night.  At least I didn’t have to work through the night.  I am very thankful for that.

On a normal day I would have left for work half an hour ago.  Today I am supposed to be available until 8:30, so I have to go in to work late.  Makes sense.

I have the mini van today and the leaky tire is almost empty.  I have to go fill it before I do anything.  Maybe we should get one of those air compresser things that can fill a tire just in case there comes a day when we have a flat that we don’t expect.  Who knows.  They are probably way too expensive to be worth it though.

My laptop is in my room right now, connected to my work network, and still remoted to my desk.  The plan is to wait until exactly 8:30 and log off, then hit the gas station for some air, then get my fat ass to work late.

Eight minutes left.  I will be so grateful when this garbage is over.

Seven minutes left.

On Call Update #3

It’s 11:31pm. Your humble narrator is exhausted. Only nine more hours to go. It’s nice that the hours are down to single digits, but it blows chunks that I still have more than a business day remaining.

I was just speaking to one of my fellow sufferers and he was sure that the third shift folks would be punching in shortly. I was hoping for that, but I didn’t know if they were off tonight or not. Hopefully they will take some of the sting out of the overnight.

I hope so…

Because I really…

Really…

Want to go to sleep.

Please let me go to sleep?

On Call Update #2

This has been the worst on call experience I’ve ever had.  As soon as I get close to catching up I get something new sent to me.  I had an hour and a half or so, just after noon, when I wasn’t working.  The rest of the day I’ve been working and generally not having a clue what to do.  One of the things that makes this type of on call situation awful is that I am not just covering my application.  I’m covering seven others as well.  Most of those are apps that I have never even seen prior to today, but I have to be one of only two members of the staff who handle all issues for those apps on my platform.  It’s not even my platform anymore, it’s the platform I used to work in.

I get paid for this crap, but I still hate it.  I tried to get some one to take this off of my hands, but everyone else in the rotation was smart enough to stay away.

This sucks.

On Call Update

My on call started at 8:30am.  Everything was quiet for the first half hour.  Then it stopped being quiet.  Between 9:00 and 11:20 I got five tasks.  Four of them are complete.  The fifth is with the customer now because I haven’t a clue and asked a couple of questions for clarification.  I suppose I could be hopeful that the customer contact has gone home for the day and won’t see the task until tomorrow… but that’s stinkin’ thinkin’.  Really, it’s dreaming.

Four hours down.  20 still to go.

This BLOWS!

New Years Day

2012 went out not with a bang, nor a wimper, but a cough and a kleenex.

I haven’t been posting those daily plague updates, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still feeling it.  I’ve had a couple of coughing fits since coming home from work last night.  My nose has been running pretty much constantly.  If I had to estimate a percentage for how well I am vs how sick I am I would say I am 90% well.  That 10% sick is just a little annoying.

Jen and I went to bed a little after 11:00pm last night.  She went to sleep almost immediately.  I managed to stay awake by surfing on my iPad and writing a post.  I’m a little pissed off though because as I was finishing up I was watching the clock closely, adding a line each time the clock ticked a minute closer to midnight.  You can look at what I wrote, it was the post before this one.  When the clock struck 12:00 I wrote the last line really quick and hit publish.  When the page published it gave a date/time of 12/31/12 @ 11:59.  My iPad clock said 1/1/13 @ 12:00.  Stupid dumb inaccurate clocks.  I don’t know which one was wrong, and I don’t care.  I’m just sad that my goofy posting plan was foiled by father time.  That jerk.

I, along with one other poor soul, have been officially on the on call clock for 23 minutes.  Only 23 hours and 37 minutes to go!

Urgh.

Happy Freakin’ New Year.