Work Reform

Practically speaking, I already do: I told them not to contact me on my cell if they aren't going to give me a work phone or reimburse me for the cost of a plan then I will not be using my personal phone for work purposes. They can reach me during business hours on my desktop phone, the work messaging system, or a ticket. If anything happens outside of those hours and they want me to do something about it, they better pony up for a plan, overtime hours, or flex hours.

Firing me seems highly unlikely because they agreed to these terms, I am very good at what I do, and they love me. Actual legal protections sound like something everyone should have though, if you're on call you damn well better get paid for it or it's wage theft pure and simple.

I guess I’m really lucky to have this right. Every day after my 8 hours are done, I have my slack notifications automatically muted and I fully shut down my work laptop. My boss knows if she really needs me, she’ll have to call my cell, and she has never once done that. There’s nothing quite like a little bit of mutual respect.

In my case it kind of comes with the job. Anyone who works "in the cloud" and/or with web apps / servers and/or database servers knows what I mean. We do our best to minimize issues and keep things running smoothly during off hours. But of course, complex systems can and do break for myriad reasons. Sometimes we overlooked something. Or sometimes there's an event beyond our control (ClownStrike, anyone? AWS outages, anyone?).

So, for emergencies / unforeseen problems I expect it to happen and don't mind pitching in to help.

But my boss is also a workaholic who works almost every single weekend. He's bad about texting or emailing us at weird hours and it's annoying. Even if he doesn't expect us to do anything right then, it still causes a mild panic when the phone lights up. And then you're thinking about work shit when you shouldn't have to.

One of the other managers where I work does a cool thing where he'll put a "delay send" on his off-hours emails so you don't get them until the next business day. A real act of kindness and consideration on his part. Unusual for an American manager.

Australia's 'right-to-disconnect' law actually comes into effect on Monday :)

How are they contacting anybody in the first place, breaking into their homes? Check work messages when you go to work.