"Has your phone given your boss the idea that you work a 168-hour week? Anybody had to set boundaries with a boss, friends, co-workers? Anybody too afraid to do that?"

I've never had to do that, but even for my pretty limited number of phone calls, I find Google Voice to be invaluable.

I give everyone my GV number, and I can tell GV to block some people or some groups entirely, to ring through others only on certain phones at certain times, or to let my kids through on all my phones at any time.

And GV takes my messages, transcribes them, and then lets me read/skip/archive/forward them. And it can text me, or email me the transcriptions as well as the audio.

I also have my phone set so the default ringtone is silence, and work is one kind of ringtone, friends another, and my kids are another, and so my phone only rings at after midnight from my kids, only rings after 7 from friends and kids, and only rings during the day from workers, friends, or my kids.

Everyone else can leave a message.

Every job I have an interviewed for in the last 2 years has said that I will need to be reasonably available 24/7. The one I am currently interviewing for said the specific position generally only needs to respond between 8-5. one person from the group is oncall at all times just in case - there is usually only a few out of hours a year. Other positions available the larger group are expected to be available 24/7.

My last job it was a real struggle and my boss was supportive of it, his manager was too, but the real higher ups weren't. His manager did think we should be available from 8am eastern to 6pm pacific weekdays because thats when the company was open for business.

I think you can see the change at my job in the mid to late 90s. I was a support tech so every fourth week I was only 24/7 - yes, we got a tiny bonus for being oncall and any hours worked the same as any other worked hours. Most workers were not expected to have phones or pagers...we had both and were expected to always respond if possible even if we weren't officially the oncall person. The other employees where expected to have a regimented day and only do personal stuff on your lunch hour (which is at a set time, no moving it around). We got a lot more flexibility. Take your breaks whenever just long as we were there most hours between 9-3...if we worked most the night on a call we could sleep at home.

Every job I have an interviewed for in the last 2 years has said that I will need to be reasonably available 24/7.

24/7? And I take it you aren't a doctor doing liver transplants.

Disgusting. So, if you're out to dinner with your wife or having sex when the phone rings, you must answer? (Or lie and say you didn't hear it ring?

My hubby is salaried and though they don't tend to call him on off hours he is supposed to be available. He is the only one at his place of work that can do his job.. They have called at weird hours.. Not often though..

I live in the Washington DC area. I'm the only person I know who isn't hog-tied to a smart phone. All of my friends work at a variety of places - congressional offices, trade associations, law firms, etc. They are all expected to answer any email or phone call at any time, be it 2 am or if they are at their child's babtism. I cannot remember the last meal I had with any of my friends where the phone was not answered at least once, and it pisses me off to no end. It's not just the rudeness of them stopping a conversation with me and the other people who are actually there, it's this whole attitude of "I'm so f*cking important that if I don't answer this email, the world will come to a screaming halt!" I think all of us need to take a step back and realize the world ain't gonna stop spinning if the email isn't answered for 4 hours.

Has your phone given your boss the idea that you work a 168-hour week?

No. I doubt the current boss would care enough for that.

If the subject came up, I'd ask a) for a bump in my salary, and b) that they buy the phone and the service.

The only time I got an odd hour call was a couple years ago from a different supervisor who woke me up early. When he realized he'd waken me up, he wanted to me to call back when I was more ready. I said no, you woke me up and I'm wide awake now, so let's fix your problem. I was pretty snarly, and I think got the message across.

Overuse of cell phones, etc, both reflects and contributes to poor management, specifically through undervaluation of delegation.

If you're a manager or executive and you're getting multiple phone calls, text message, and urgent emails every single night and weekend, you seriously need to think about how you have designed your organization, whether you're hired the right people, and whether you have sufficiently empowered them to make decisions.

Not very many people have my mobile number. Spouse, kid, parents, sibling, friends (a small handful of them) and my kid's school. That is it.

I don't even turn on the phone unless I am leaving the house. I opted out of voice mail so I would never have to listen to a message.

I see what number is calling and answer those I choose to. I call back others at my convenience.

My phone is not my umbilicus. It is a tool I use as I choose.

I'm a system administrator for about 10 companies. I work when they work. And being small businesses, they have a knack for odd hours at times as well.

But it's a fair tradeoff for being able to cut out at 2 PM on a weekday and go snowboarding.

Well, right now the temp job I'm at is for a doctor. She's the interim chief of Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care at Yale School of Medicine. She gave me her cell number, so I gave her mine. She uses it rarely, and usually only to ask me for something she can't find. I don't mind, she never bothers me at home or on weekends.

I find a cell phone is so much work. To keep it charged and located is most days a little too much for my ADD addled mind. It's not like I really ever get much for phone calls, if it's that important the family will e-mail me or call my husband's phone.

When I lost this last job, the supervisor was for lack of a better word, a twit.
He wanted to call it insubordination for me not answering his calls, actually had it on disciplinary sheets. He had expected me to call him back on the day of my father's funeral...I worked nights and I wasn't even taking the evening off after my father's funeral. If I had known they were going to be such asshats I would have taken the last day my father was alive off of work, but I was attempting to be a good employee.

Not that they were the most honest of characters, they actually had in writing violations of Missouri's labor laws in their employee handbook. Refusal to pay overtime, and a couple of obvious things. So I'm sure they'll be go down eventually.

When I first started practicing law over 20 years ago, I remember working late one night with a senior partner at my firm. We were trying to send a fax. He commented on all the technological changes he'd seen since he started practicing -- computers, fax machines, FedEx -- an how they had sped things up. He said that it was nice to be able to FedEx a brief across the country overnight, instead of having to mail it three days earlier, and before computers they had to send briefs to be printed and bound, which took another few days.

"But you know what?" he said. "We always got the work done and we never missed deadline. And the people who were scrambling to get things in the mail at five o'clock are now scrambling to get thing to the FedEx box by seven -- they just scramble three days later. The briefs haven't gotten better. Technology just lets procrastinators procrastinate a little more, and it lets inefficient people get away with being a little more inefficient."

I've seen the same thing with PCs, email, cellphones, etc. For those of us who are already efficient and organized, they are tools we use occasionally to make us more productive. For most people, they are just excuses to procrastinate and to remain unorganized.

Team lead, system administration. I am on call 24x7x365 - minus vacations. If we do a good job, and have good luck, we don't get too many calls. We do a good job - but it does run in cycles.

Redundancy and monitoring usually keep the phone from ringing. I can get people to cover for me sometime, but I am basically available. I suppose this is most of the reason I have no patience with those who want to spend the money I earn for me. When the phone rings, they never answer it.

You cannot control: customers, weather, or single points of failure. Oh, or the copper thief who stole a live power cable leading into an office building in South Dallas.

So, if you're out to dinner with your wife or having sex when the phone rings, you must answer? (Or lie and say you didn't hear it ring?

Or have it on vibrate.

After reading these horror stories, I can only conclude that I must work for a pretty good company.

Even our VP gets 24 hours to return messages and emails.

The salaried managers in my office get treated pretty well, too. They get lieu time of 1.5x if they work a holiday, and there's only been one instance in the last decade where a couple of them had to work through the night to fix a technical cock-up.

Of course, I don't know what it's like to be one of our IT people. Maybe they really do have to be on call 24/7

about 17 years ago we got pagers at my photography job at the time... previously we got assignemnts the day before, called in early in the AM to see if there were changes... checked in at noon, and then evening for changes and such. Even THAT was prolly a bit much, but it was good.

Once we had pagers?

Everything was a freakin' EMERGENCY!!!!1111

And it was a pain, because you had to quit what you were doing and go find a phone. I'm sure it's a million times worse now that everyone has a phone in their pocket.

Now that I'm Tech support, yes there is an expectation that I will immediately fix stuff, even though it's not totally in my job description. Even BETTER? Not the company, as a cost savings, is asking if we will take calls on our personal cell phones, rather than the company giving us one. If you have an unlimited plan I guess it's OK, but still.

My boss calls blackberries "cowbells", and they take up a lot of his time...

I'd bet this will get much worse as we get closer to getting implants, where people will contact you realtime...

and that was one of the most important takeaways in IMHO of the movie Wall-E, NOT the environmental bat they hit us with. That we interface with a ton of technology, and not with each other as much...

And this overshare with our worklives is just one facet.

Brilliantly said!

I resisted the "cell phone revolution" until mid-2006, when I became the Academic Dean for a junior-college. My cell phone access after hours consists of either students of my classes or faculty who may need something (mostly my Department Chairs), but rarely the Campus President (and I have even told corporate that calls will not be returned in off hours).

With our 8-second attention span and text messaging society at large, it is sad to see this face-to-face contact that you speak of is dwindling to nothingness. Glad to see that you're still keeping the spark alive :-)

Ian

24/7? And I take it you aren't a doctor doing liver transplants.

Disgusting. So, if you're out to dinner with your wife or having sex when the phone rings, you must answer? (Or lie and say you didn't hear it ring? -- Amy

I am a tech guy and for most of my career worked in the banking and finance industry.

It depends on the job. I would guess that most of them would expect me to answer the phone if I was out to dinner unless it was a special occasion (e.g. Anniversary) and to return the call instead of having an after sex smoke. If I am the official oncall guy for that time I would be expected to answer or call back promptly.

When I think about it...every one but the physical labor people I know are expected to respond outside of hours. My friend who works at a restaurant is -- he has got called about where something had been put because they needed it now while we were headed out to eat. Our condo manager called a contractor at 8pm during a meeting when there was a question about a bid that we were considering.

I don't have to take calls outside of work but have a smartphone (Samsung Fascinate running Android) and love it and I'm addicted and I facebook and text and stream Pandora and NPR and record videos of my dog and send them to my sister, etc. I *don't* take calls or otherwise fiddle w/ the thing when I'm out w/ friends. It stays in my pocketbook on vibrate or silent. If I were asked to take calls outside of work I'd need more money and they'd have to buy me a dedicated work phone and pay for the service.

I will never, EVER, EVER!!!!!! have my only mobile phone be synonymous with a work phone. If your mobile is connected to your office's Microsoft exchange servers (for Outlook) they pretty much own your ass. This isn't just the conspiracy nut in me talking. They can do a total remote wipe and shut your phone down. My data backs up every night automatically but I don't need my work having access to personal messages on my personal device. If they want access to my emails/call logs/texts...that's fine, but it'll be on a dedicated work phone and nothing "bad" will beo n there.

My husband and I don't have a land line so our mobiles are always on and accessible. When we're home together at night we don't pick up (turn them off or put them on vibrate, etc.). If it's an emergency my mom knows to text 911 (which she's never done). If Dave gets a phone call from a client or his boss he will not answer it unless he and the client had set up a phone call. He works 9-12 hours a day. If a client can't get him via phone or email during that time period they'll have to wait until the next day.

Another problem is that too many people think it's no longer rude to show up late on any given occasion because they can always call from any location and SAY they'll be late. Huh?

If only parents would have the sense to stop the next cycle of rudeness from happening. Hint: Do not let kids carry video games with them wherever they go. If it isn't polite on a certain occasion for the kids to bring along books and to ignore whomever's there, it isn't OK for them to bring any other distractions.

At my last job, I was a lowly office worker. I got transferred and was working under a 72 yr old woman whose job was her life. Everyone hated her at the office but her clients loved her because she was always reachable. I was hourly, working 8-5. I woke up one morning to pee at 445am and noticed an email from her. Of course it was marked urgent and she typed in all caps. I forget the content but it could easily wait until 8am when I got in. I emailed her back saying I would get on it first thing and that my normal hours are 8-5. She gave me attitude about that for weeks, that I wasn't available to the clients. HELL NO I'm not being paid $13.50 an hour for an insurance agency to expect that from me. I ended up getting transferred again then laid off.

My current job is super secure because of SSNs and other reports we run and they won't let us have work email on our phones, thank god. I am actually getting on an "on call" team but they pay me for that. When a truck driver gets in an accident, they have 8hrs to take a drug test per DOT regulations, so we have people available at all times to set up these drug tests so the companies stay in compliance. My company pays us well to do it, so I'm really excited to be on the team. I can increase my pay by about 30-40% easily by being on call 2 nights a week.

Dh is on-call a lot (less so with the new job thank god) but even when not, he's a slave to the phone. No matter who is calling. It drives me batty. I'm as likely to not pick up as pick up, and I feel no need to jabber on like a preteen girl when I do pick up.

I have a smartphone (DroidX) and I am obsessed. My phone is not just a phone. It is also a tiny laptop with constant internet access, a GPS, a MP3 player, a radio, a 8.0mpx camera, and, most recently, a Kindle. All of these devices would cost $100+ on their own, and be bulky to carry around, but I can have them all in just 2x5 inch rectangle for a $30/month data plan. I can't say enough good things about it.

I'm somewhat like Shannon in that I love my iphone4, but I use the actual voice phone part less then just about everything else. At one point I had an mp3 player, pager and cell (and camera sometimes). Now it's all in one package and works very well. I have a good holder in the car so that I can listen to my music in there and it helps it stay charged all the time.

I get a lot of use out of a lot of the apps too, like the calendaring (for work meeting info), I use motion-x gps to track my walks/runs, remote email is nice, facebook and twitter occasionally, etc. Even Safari on there is nice in a pinch, but I've got an iPad for my real browsing anymore. Small screen is just too hard on my eyes for any long term reading.

When I quit one job it took me two weeks to realize why I was sleeping so well. I was not listening in my sleep for my cell phone to ring. I swore I would never be in a position that required me to be on call again. But here I am in a job the I am on call 24/7, luckily this time they really don't call unless it is an emergency.

I cut my land line 11 years ago (cell phone only).

My standard approach is that I don't answer a number I don't recognize (I figure that if it's important enough to call me, it's important enough to leave a message, most don't, imagine that).

Now, the work I do does require me to be occasionally available for emergencies or outages (and is usually rotated among the team), so I can't just skip out on 'em.

On balance, though, it works out okay, since, in return, I get a flexible schedule, as long as I put in the normal number of hours (for example, if I was up late working an issue, I can sleep in and come in at noon), and I can also work from home, pretty much as often as I like (I do like to go to the office a couple of times a week, to avoid being a hermit, and getting face time in).

That said, I do still enforce a separation of 'duties' between work and home (supported by my company). If I'm called, off hours, for something that isn't an emergency, the caller will get a hit on their reviews (which affects bonus money, so they learn their lesson pretty quickly ).

And, despite being a complete techno geek, I am entirely able to go on a vacation (skiing, usually), without ever once answering, or even turning on, the phone. I'm on line enough that I'm entirely happy to skip it for a week or two.

My boss was not my problem, but I had to draw the line with family and friends about a year ago. I took on the midnight shift at my job and could not get it through people's heads that just because I am home during the day does NOT make me available. After a few very curt, short phone calls with a few of them at noon, when I am in my deepest most enjoyable sleep, it has pretty much come to a halt. I only have one relative who occasionally forgets and I have to forgive her -- it's my dementia-suffering grandma, so what can you do? My boss knows my schedule and she is very respectful using email whenever possible and if she does need to speak to me directly before 4pm, she makes it as short and sweet as possible and I usually find a meal ticket for the hospital cafeteria in my mailbox when I get in that night.

You know what I hate, voice messagesa that say nothing more the 'Call me'

WHY?

Why cant you take 5 goddamn seconds to tell me why you called so that when I call you I can have an answer ready instead of finding out the question just so I can call you again later?

You know what I hate, voice messagesa that say nothing more the 'Call me'

I hate that too...my dad is the worst. He will leave these long rambling messages that are nothing more than to call back. One was soooo bad I timed it and it was just over 10 minutes long.

Oh gods, my ex does that too. Yeah yeah, you'll be late picking up the girls, what else is new, leave me alone already!! Egads.

o.O

This is a very interesting conversation and I'm enjoying reading the responses...

>>"Has your phone given your boss the idea that you work a 168-hour week? Anybody had to set boundaries with a boss, friends, co-workers? Anybody too afraid to do that?"

I'm lucky enough that my job will not call you on your off-hours unless it's to tell you something super-important (like "don't come in tomorrow because of the hurricane or broken A/C"). This may change in the near future, as they've decided to give limited access to keys, safes, and other vital job stuff, so those with access may be called in to unlock something in a pinch.

My husband, on the other hand, got promoted to Assistant Manager last year, and it's getting increasingly difficult for him to ignore his phone. He used to be the type of guy to ignore it if he didn't want to, but lately he can't stop himself. And what sucks is that the two other managers are counting on him to answer his phone, so they don't answer theirs. So if the ADT guy needs to reach someone to let them know the alarm's gone off, it's my husband who has to get up at midnight to go and tend to it because he's the only one answering the phone. I don't mind when they're just calling for important stuff, but quite frankly, some of these calls are just silly. "Hey, do you know if that thing is on sale this week?" Seriously? There's a print ad, two other managers PLUS a "customer service manager", and you're calling him on his day off for that?

As for phone "binkies" in general, I'm finding it a struggle to teach others good manners in that dept. Admittedly, I love my iPhone and use it for tons of stuff. And when I first got it, I was terrible about tuning into the apps/net/distractions and tuning my social group out. My hubby yelled at me for it, and I've gotten way better. Now, if I have to respond to a text or something, I apologize, let everyone know what's going on, and make it quick. I only whip out the apps when we're having a debate and want an answer (who's the guest star on that show?). However, some of my friends are terrible! I have one in particular who feels the need to bring up a video on YouTube for any subject we're talking about, or instead of telling you the story about his kid's day at school, he plays a recording of his kid telling the story. He's pulling up pictures, surfing the net, and no matter how many times you give the FakeSmile-Nod, he keeps going. And my husband is getting pretty bad, too. A lull in conversation? He'll go check the news! And he was the one who told me to quit being rude doing that two years ago!

The worst are texters. I'm sorry. But it drives me absolutely batty to watch you dive for your phone every two seconds because its buzzing and then you're not even sharing who you're talking to or anything. I just have to watch you leap like an Olympian for the damn thing. Then you giggle or sigh and the fingers start going. It's frustrating to suddenly be cut out of a conversation. Like that person had suddenly turned around and start talking to another table at a restaurant in Chinese. If I have to text in front of a friend, I try to make them part of the conversation. "Oh, hey, it's Jerry. He wants to know if we can meet him tonight. Did we say seven or eight?".

I work as a Level III tech on a support line. If I can't fix it, your issue is going to a developer.

I essentially sent this message out to the rest of the rest of the support staff:
----------------------------------------------

When you take a call -- get residents, 

dates and users. Give me a little more info 

than "It's not working".

You have to understand, I can't see your 
screens, your error logs, what is happening
(or failing) when you run the application.
I haven't developed mind reading as an 
extended skill.

This gets even worse when you are asking the
end-user. If you give some detail in the 
ticket, I might be able to solve the issue.

Saying the user is having an issue with all
residents is not informative. Saying they are
having an issue with these three residents when
trying to change . I
cantroubleshoot that.

Not a single person came back and said a word. They understood they had been scolded. I did not here a word from my manager either.