In the old days you just had to get things sorted, now it's ring someone to ask what to do.
Perfect example, my carpenter's rang me to say that they cannot fit a roof as the carpenter with all their nail guns had broken down.
My reply, use a hammer.
Pantherman
Yeah, I was never happy with that level of availability in my job. Fortunately it wasn't an issue when I moved to testing. When I was still on the application support team, though, I had to carry a phone for after-hours support. There was combat pay that went with it, but it wasn't worth the aggravation to me. When I was a team leader, I was happy to let volunteers take it.
But I had some amusing incidents when I did have to carry it. We provided support for West Coast clients till 5PM their time, 8PM our time.
One time, I got a call when I was in the "library", if you get my meaning. I listened to the customer, a school district system admin, describe the problem. Normally we would log in to the system and start diagnosing. But I couldn't, at that moment, and I told the customer that I wasn't in a position to access her system. She got snippy-"Oh! So you're saying you can't take care of this?" "No," I replied, "I will, but at this exact moment, I'm not able to try to log in to your system. I will in about 10 minutes." If I had been in a more irascible mood, I would have said, "Look, lady, I'm taking a dump. Give me a few, all right?"
Another time, I was at bat in a softball game, when the phone went off. One of my teammates yelled from the bench, "Yo, B-rad! You're phone's ringing!" I let it go till voicemail.
And there was the time when a California customer waited till 4:59 to call. It wound up taking an hour to resolve, and I had plans for dinner. I could have reached through the phone and strangled her.
"Put the computer back in the box, take it back to the store, and tell 'em you're too stupid to own one."
