Called by work for emergency during vacation

[vi edit]

If you can't go away without being contacted your documentation/info sharing blows. Unless you're a one man shop, there should be someone else able to take over in 99.999% of circumstances.

If not, something is wrong.

That said, two days of compensation for the time you took away from your vacation is way more than fair.

While that sounds nice in theory, you simply can not replace years of experience working with a particular application or system with documentation or training sessions.

 

[JoPh]

thats why you go away on vacation and leave all work things AT HOME or THE OFFICE.

 

[Vonkhan]

Generally, hourly workers = non-exempt (have to pay for overtime). Exempt workers are usually peeps with higher levels of responsibility, decision-making or skills.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Talk to your manager about it.

 

[acheron]

Fuck working while on vacation. Is your name Barack Obama? If not, whatever it is can wait until you get back.

 

[hanoverphist]

completely different situation since it seems like you have your own business

nope, i work for a fairly large electrical contractor. i am the senior programmer, so i usually delegate work to other people regardless. some issues i will handle myself, because thats how i roll. i get the emergency calls regardless of time of day or whether im on vacation tho, its not a big deal to me and it gives the customers a sense of security. also, a lot of our customers sites i know better than anyone in the company, so the jr programmers dont spend nearly as much time backtracking if i give them heads up on quirks/ set ups. it also helps spread the knowledge around for next time. i also get paid OT (im salary) if its an after hours or weekend emergency.

 

[Jeeebus]

I don't think I've ever been on a vacation - except for my honeymoon - where I didn't have to spend at least a few hours working.

 

[RagingBITCH]

If you can't go away without being contacted your documentation/info sharing blows. Unless you're a one man shop, there should be someone else able to take over in 99.999% of circumstances.

If not, something is wrong.

That said, two days of compensation for the time you took away from your vacation is way more than fair.

There's some truth in that, but depending on your position, sometimes you're not able to. The higher up on the foodchain, the less people there should be that should be able to do your job.

 

[Krazy4Real]

You should get at least one comp day.

 

[vi edit]

There's some truth in that, but depending on your position, sometimes you're not able to. The higher up on the foodchain, the less people there should be that should be able to do your job.

And then there's the situation where it is documented, but if I don't know my way around the system very well it could take me hours to track it down. My job could have potential direct impact on the health of a person (I'm healthcare IT) and my boss is going to put a call into somebody that can fix it in minutes instead of dicking around for hours trying to fumble their way through.

We try our best to cross train, but the simple fact is that we have highly specialized systems and it's just easier to call the application specialist in an emergency than waste time time trying to dig through documentation.

 

[Gunslinger08]

My company would probably give me 9 hours of PTO.

I think you should ask for at least 2 days.

 

[BUTCH1]

This is why I screen all of my calls and emails while on vacation... fuck working while on vacation, I do enough of that every day

Ding!, Ding!, Ding!, winner solution here...

 

[JS80]

If you're salaried, 1 hour of work = full day's work.

I would not enter PTO for the days you had to "work."

 

[Spineshank]

Around here we would count each day spent working as a day off no matter how much time was actually put in.

 

[daishi5]

And then there's the situation where it is documented, but if I don't know my way around the system very well it could take me hours to track it down. My job could have potential direct impact on the health of a person (I'm healthcare IT) and my boss is going to put a call into somebody that can fix it in minutes instead of dicking around for hours trying to fumble their way through.

We try our best to cross train, but the simple fact is that we have highly specialized systems and it's just easier to call the application specialist in an emergency than waste time time trying to dig through documentation.

I have been called 3 times now for problems where I have documented the solution in the correct place. It annoys me so much, but at the same time I do get some satisfaction sending the email back with the the link to the documentation, and a copy of the solution from the documentation. But yeah, even with the exact situation documented, experience can make fixing the problem so much faster, because most of the time they only know symptoms not the problem.

 

[SacrosanctFiend]

How do I know I'm exempt, or non-exempt?

Your job description, manager, or HR should have that listed somehwere, and should have notified you. There is a salary-basis and duties-basis test your position has to pass.

exempt from what?

paying overtime...

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

If you're salaried, 1 hour of work = full day's work.

I would not enter PTO for the days you had to "work."

If you're exempt 1 hour of work = full day's work for pay purposes. His leave bank can still be deducted on an hour by hour basis with no threat to his exempt status. Now, if he takes vacation and his PTO bank goes negative, he still has to be paid for a full day.

 

[KingGheedora]

Boss mentioned that time i worked would not count as vacation before I could bring it up, so now we just have to work out how much time. I suggested 2 days and haven't heard back.

 

[waggy]

My last manager's policy was that if I was compelled to spend any time at all working on a vacation day, that counted as a full day of work. That's the way it should be IMO. You're supposed to plan vacation days far enough in advance so work can be planned around them. If the company needs your help so badly that they have to interrupt your vacation, they should pay for it.

At my last job I always gave plenty of advance notice of vacations and suggested not planning releases during that time. They usually planned releases for the week before my vacation, and they'd invariably be pushed back to the week of my vacation.

/this.

if we had someone going vacation we would make sure they were not on call. As a manager sometimes shit happens and you get called (i would always forget my phone..hehe) you were given a full days work for anything.

personally i think if on vacation you don't call the person.

 

[guyver01]

I was out of the country. I was contacted by emergency email address, which only my boss had.

If it woulda been me, i woulda been in a country where i had no internet access.

At least that's what my boss woulda heard when i came back to work.

"Sorry.. no internet access.. i was in the mountains of nepal"

 

[FoBoT]

if you are paid a salary
and you worked on a day
then it shouldn't be counted as vacation

 

[amdskip]

I traveled to Alaska about a month ago and had work emails come in that couldn't wait. I remoted in to work 3 or 4 days of my trip and did not receive anything for it.

 

[AlienCraft]

We don't get vacation or sick time.
Consider yourself lucky.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

We don't get vacation or sick time.
Consider yourself lucky.

Thats not the norm. You choose that job.

 

[DrunkenSano]

Where do you all work, my company doesn't give extra comp days if we get called in. That's why I always screen my calls, screw them.

 

[bruceb]

This is best

When I go on vacation I'm unreachable. I don't travel with my work cell phone.

And I don't give my personal cell number to my boss. When I am off,
like after work hours 4PM / 5PM or the weekend, I am off and the job
can wait. Also, I do not login to, or check my work email until the next workday.