On-Call

[dcarver]

Sucks when the call comes in at 0133.

Just Sayin'

 

[Bugnatr]

Bathroom call?

 

[PhilJet09]

Been there, it does suck. We were supposed to get 10 hours of "rest" between trips and the dispatcher would call after 10 hours and 1 minute. This sometimes lasted for weeks when the freight was running. Kept an overnight bag in my truck, filed flight plans on the way to the airport and didn't bother checking the weather, because it didn't matter.

 

[fjrob1300]

Especially when it's a drunk I have to pick up on the side of the highway.

 

[Bounce]

If it keeps them from behind the wheel...

 

[Niehart]

The last five years of my working life, I was on call all of the time. After while, it just wears you out and screws up your real life.

Mr. Don, I feel your pain my friend.

 

[Geezer]

I take it this 'call' was not your wife waking you up for a little late night attention.

 

[dcarver]

Definitely NOT a booty call!

 

[HotRodZilla]

I've spent probably 13 years on call for Traffic, SWAT, investigations, and ERT. Sometimes it was two if those units at the same time. They keep asking me to go to units that have on-call status and I keep telling them no. If I'm NEVER on call another day of my life, I'll be happy with that.

If I ever needed the hours and wanted my pager to go off, all I had to do was gear up for a ride and touch my motorcycle. Within 5 minutes I'd get a call. We used to have this smartassed dispatcher that would wake me up at 0300. She would laugh and giggle, " And what are you doing??!!" I finally started hanging up on her until she got the hint that I was sleeping, I knew she knew I was sleeping, and I wasn't happy to hear from her.

SWAT on-call was actually fun, unless it turned into a 15 hour stand off.

 

[gregory]

Did call for almost 10 years. Week at a time. Hospital would call all hours of the night and back and forth you went. Counted my call backs for 2008 (last full year of call) and I had 215.

Nope, aint gonna do it no more!

 

[dcarver]

If I ever needed the hours and wanted my pager to go off, all I had to do was gear up for a ride and touch my motorcycle.

EXACTLY. I had planned to go for a ride today, my first one since working nightshift for 60+ days, then.....

 

[FJRay]

You still got time for a candy butt ride.

 

[lonerider]

Did on call for a few years at my present job, till they decided to use it as a justification for mandatory weekend work on non emergency jobs, if no one else wanted to work them. At that point, I said no more, wasn't worth the little extra it paid.

 

[gixxerjasen]

Did that for a while. Eight of us, you started out as OCA8, meaning you'd be the 8th guy to get called. Next week OCA7 and all the way down to OCA1 and then back to 8. OCA2 meant you'd get called a couple of times a week. OCA1 meant you'd get called at least 5 times per week working through most of the night. Sucked.

That said, we had a guy we hated so much. He got moved to be our night shift guy. Then an incident happened and he got fired. That meant OCA1 worked night shift and OCA2 was basically the same as a normal OCA1. We were ok with that just to get that guy out of there. It still wore on you and I left that job.

Went to a job where I was the only admin. Yea, that had a different kind of suck. I got called less per week, but it was always just me, my cell phone, my email, and my alert system.

But now....gotta brag. We've got a day shift that I'm on, an evening shift, and then our night is covered by the day shift at our UK office. ZERO on call. It's so nice to be able to leave work and not think about it till my shift starts the next day at 7am. Took me three weeks to stop checking my phone for alerts all the time. Of course, there were the two doubles in a row I worked this week thanks to heart bleed, but I'm ok with emergencies. It was the calls at my last job where the owner's kids couldn't print from their ipad that sucked.

Right now, no matter how bad my day sucks, I know it ends when my shift ends. I have to say, I LOVE that.

 

[rogdeb]

I remember those heady days and nights

.. working to the "exigencies of the service" .. whatever the hell that meant. Getting back into the yard after a normal day, only to have your supervisor tell you you're not finished yet. Who cares if you need to pick up kids or wives. Then you worked till Dispatch told you you're OK to go home..... then be prepared to be called out again .. Ha!

Yeah ... I miss working ... LOL

 

[Chuck35]

I've never had the pleasure of "on call" status. It wouldn't have worked very well back in my drinking days.

 

[Powerman]

Called at 03:30 this morning, dodged it because I had work on my back yesterday.

Traded a guy for last weekend. Made a deal for him to go at 07:00

$100 to go on call, not worth it.

 

[Abigail]

Ain't too fun for friends and family, either. I've hardly seen my SO lately, he's been on call for the past 5 out of 6 weeks...or is it 6 out of 7 now? Anyway, a group of us went out for a little spin around our home town (wouldn't dare go too far with two guys on call) and we hadn't gone 5 miles before he saw a water break he'd have to fix. Rather than wait for the call to come in, he went ahead and started working on it. The rest of us did ride a little more, but of course it wasn't the same. The other guy ended up having to help, too. I stopped by after they'd been at it for well over an hour, and they were still digging up the road, trying to find the source of the water. Amazing how much damage water under pressure can cause.

 

[Redfish Hunter]

As much as I hated getting called out, Not getting called out sucked worse. The fact that you cannot go anywhere, cannot do anything, cannot be more than an hour from the job for an entire weekend was horrible. But at least if I got called out I made some money on the deal. Having my whole weekend ruined by being on call and then never getting a single call was ******.

I don't miss that job and I don't miss being on call. If they call me now, it has to be something very serious.