Being asked to be on-call when it wasn't part of your original job description

[RadiclDreamer]

If its not part of your original job then they should pay you. If they want to change it thats fine but they need to compensate you in some form or fashion. People need to stop giving their employer all of the power. Its a 2 way street, you are doing a service for them, they are paying for that service. They do not own you.

 

[ultimatebob]

I had no idea that my old job had on-call support hours before I started it. Hell... I didn't even know what my job was going to be until the four weeks after I started! All I was told was that I had a generic job title of "IT Specialist", and was given an address to report to on my first day after new employee training.

After the 3 week new employee orientation class that taught me almost nothing about my actual position, I was told that they hired me to be a Lotus Notes developer. Mind you... I never even USED Lotus Notes before I started with this company! They also gave me a fairly cool two-way alphanumeric pager (cool by 2001 standards, anyway), and told me that I needed to carry it with me all the time for 24/7 support coverage. The good news was that I got to bill 4 hours of overtime for the "privledge" of carrying that pager with me all the time... the bad news was that I was a salaried employee and that I never received a dime of extra income for those extra hours until 2007. Even then, it came in the way of a settlement check from a class action lawsuit against the company, and I only got a fraction of back salary I should have earned.

The good news was that the pager never went off that often, but that's usually because I ended up having to work late in the office fixing servers most of the time. I doubt that I developed more than 1 or 2 Lotus Notes applications while I worked there, and ended up spending most of my time building and maintaining database and web application servers instead.

Anyway, that's my story about on-call support. I'll give bonus points to anyone who can tell me which company I worked for.... Odds are that you'll know if you ever worked there!

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: KrillBee
I'm contemplating whether I should mention this to my boss at all.

I took the pager for this weekend because no one else could do it, but I made it very clear with my coworkers that this was a 1 time thing. Then one of them mentioned the rotation, and that's where I got the idea for this thread.

I already emailed my boss letting him know that I was taking it for this weekend, but from what I understood this was not something that I was expected to do on a regular basis.

I haven't heard back about that email yet, but he gets hundreds of emails daily.

If I speak with him in person, then he might try to get me to do it. If I ignore the issue entirely, it might just blow over. decisions, decisions....

Don't expect to be considered for a raise when it's between you and a coworker. This kind of thing gets you nowhere up the ladder. Writing something like that to your manager makes you sound like a contractor. Maybe you're stuck in that mentality. If that's what you mean to be, then by all means continue this behavior.

You say there are plenty of 9-5 jobs that don't make you work extra. I'd say go find that... because this is a dead end for you... why bother staying? I mean, you're not even equal to your peers in duties and you refuse to be so.

The alternative is kindly ask for a salary reconsideration. If they refuse then at least the ball is in their court and they are aware of where things stand and why you shouldn't be doing it. Don't flat out refuse duties already shared by your peers.

 

[Boztech]

Originally posted by: ScottMac
Ponder the following phrase:

"Be flexible, or be unemployed, you get to choose"

Agreed, heading this is much of why I was promoted.