In nearly all cases, being on call means that when a co-worker calls you are obliged to come in. Given a modicum of decent judgment, no need for the boss to be involved.
The procedure for a refusal should be a mandatory immediate call to a supervisor. This way, everyone understands that saying “I don’t feel like coming in” is equivalent to “I’m really looking forward to 10 harsh minutes on the phone with the boss, hearing what a worthless (and possibly soon to be unemployed) scumbag I am.”
Two thoughts occur to me.
I am, as everyone else, sympathetic to your plight. However, this paragraph makes me wonder if there is a side of the story we’re not being given. Why is it that you’re getting so much sympathy here, but not from your coworkers. Surely they have also had to deal with this derelict on-callee — the same on-callee you tell us is right now getting everyone to agree with her.
That’s a little strange, no? Do you have a reputation for being to quick to bring in on-call personnel? For passing the buck too readily?
Sure, we think it’s rotten what she did to you, but the ones in the best position to judge seem to be taking her side. Why is that?
Others might say it’s the responsibility of the employer to hire enough staff to meet all of their demand without requiring employees routinely to work longer than conventional workweeks in the form of unpaid, on-call labor.
Going to tackle this one first.
The big problem with the on-call situation at work is that it’s unfairly putting the day-shift blood bankers on the hook, because the on-call list is only for blood bank. See, day shifters, whatever their lab specialty, work only in that specialty. Eves and Nights are generalists, and they rotate through blood bank. So when it became necessary to have people on call because the workload increased (they are trying to hire people but it’s taking a while, then we have to train them), the bosses said that all people trained in blood bank need to start signing up for on-call shifts (with a small on-call premium, like $2.50 an hour if you’re not called in). So the day shifters are grumpy about it because nobody in chemistry or microbiology needs to step up and do extra. Even though the Eve and Night people who are trained in blood bank are also on the list, the Days folks feel like it’s unfair. And it is. But there’s not much to be done about it until we have new people trained. It’s life or death in the lab, often literally, and we need to have enough people to handle the workload.
The other thing is that there’s already some friction between myself and some of the day shift blood bankers, and there has been since I started this new shift 8 months ago. I do noon to 8:30 and I think they resent the fact that I don’t do as much of the shitty day shift responsibilities that they do (never mind the shitty evening shift responsibilities that I do). So they already spend a lot of mornings discussing various reasons why they don’t like me. But hell, they talk trash about everyone, they’re gossipy bitches a lot of the time. The blood bank supervisor and everyone above her head think I’m kicking serious ass at work and I need to ignore the nastiness, so I know it’s not really about my work. If anything, I have a reputation for taking on more than I should and picking up people’s slack - I’m not a “pass-the-buck” person and I end up paying for it, but that’s my own problem.
This was also the very first time that anyone’s been busy enough to need the on-call person. So there’s no precedent, it’s not like she’s done this a dozen times before.
We had a meeting today and went over the incident. I’m not satisfied with the result, really, but at least all the supervisors are aware of what happened.
More updates later…
I wish I could say I was surprised by this. But given how few of my coworkers seem to grasp the concept of coming in to work when they’re actually scheduled to work, let alone when they’re on-call…
Paranoid much?
I actually use a variant of this system at the car wash I run because we’re so beholden to the weather, and because the weather in the Cincinnati area isn’t very predictable. I actually schedule everyone I think I’ll need, but I call people off when necessary unless I have a project for them to work on. Labor is expensive when there’s no money coming in to compensate for it. Rarely do I ever put anyone “on call”.
This has little relevance to the OP, but I thought I’d share that a situation similar to yours exists within reason.
No, not really.
The majority of the “long shifts” of doctors, and some for specialist nurses, in the Spanish medical system is “on-call.” They need to be within 30min/40km (whichever is shortest) of the hospital. A lot of the doctors and nurses who work in my home town’s hospital live farther than that: there’s a flat in town which they use as their “on call” address, it’s been the official address of as many as 24 people sometimes.
They get paid every hour they’re on-call, whether they need to go in or not. These are part of their global yearly hours.
I’ve had jobs where I was 4th-shift: 72% of my yearly hours were from working weekends and holidays, the other 28% was on-call. It was a clearly stated condition of employment and it actually made a lot of sense: these were technical jobs, so you couldn’t just bring in a temp when someone woke up with the flu (plus that took longer than a phone call to a weekend-shifter), but most of the time there wasn’t enough work to have another lab tech or reactorist hanging around. Two lab techs in the same lab can make sense, but two guys working the same reactor would just get into each other’s way.
I’ve worked with women like Cat Whisperer’s coworkers and it sucked. Women like that want to make eveeryone else as misreable as they are.
It sounds to me like she didn’t actually refuse, but whined about dinner, at which point you (Antigen) kind of pussed out. Am I getting this right?
Sounds about right. Notice he didn’t answer my question. 
Pretty sure it’s a she, just FTR.
Who, besides the teenagers (who are clearly being screwed by unscrupulous bosses), is saying that being on-call is unpaid? The OP said he’s going to try to make sure the coworker doesn’t get her on-call shift pay, since she didn’t respond to the call. My wife is a nurse, and is on-call about twice a month. She gets paid some token amount (like 10% of her base pay) while she’s on-call since her actions are restricted during that time, and she gets at least time and a half if she’s actually called in. And requiring entities like hospitals to keep fully staffed at all times for uncommon events would cost a fortune, and not make anyone happy.
Even if that’s so, if she agreed to call after dinner then didn’t she still deserves to get raked over the coals.
Our on call system is breaking down.
And so is the attendance policy, not coincidentally.
You see, no one does anything if you just waltz in thirty minutes late. No one even notices if you don’t call to check, as you are supposed to, when you are on call. There is no consequence for failing to call if you are going to be late.
I regularly say out loud in front of management people, “Oh, the schedule is just suggested times. You can come in whenever you want. Unless you just want to not show up, that’s fine too.”
They tell me I am being disrespectful. I mention that that is because respecting the complete absence of supervision would be foolish. Besides, even if it is disrespectful, it isn’t inaccurate.
No, all coworkers don’t suck. But management cannot tell the difference, so management must want folks that suck.
Tris
Yes, she does. I suppose we (or I, anyway) am wondering what the OP said in response to the excuses. Was there pure foldage?
Nightingale, who I quoted in the paragraph above the line you quote from me, mentioned that she is also expected, as a condition of her employment, periodically to be on-call.
I’m not sure why you think it would cost a fortune. They pay your wife now (paid at 10%) for being on-call, which, if not needed, has no tangible benefit to the hospital. Surely such diminishing returns have not been reached and past that an extra employee (paid at 100% and who would relieve the need to put employees on call, and of course, to pay them an on-call premium) would have nothing to do during his or her shift at the hospital.
The same response and pay if you’re on time as if you’re late? How stupid do they think people are?
I wonder if you have ever worked around acute care medicine. Almost all areas have some kind of an on call system. EMS and fire departments are famous for this as well. Scheduling for every conceivable situation is not cost effective, having on calls is.
For example: Ambulance company I worked at
4 Regular ambulances on 24/7
3 Regular ambulances on call
Regular ambulances:
If the 3rd unit was dispatched, the first on-call crew was paged. They had 30 min to get in. 4th unit dispatched, and 1st was more than 15 min from clear, 2nd on call was paged, and so on. It was rare to have more than one on call crew around but it did happen a few times a month.
One of the things about medicine is, when the major shit hits the fan, you could have every body the hospital owns in the trenches and still not see the bottom of the work pile for 12 hours. Forecasting for major freeway pileups, structure fires in large apartment buildings, airline crashes, natural disasters, is just not possible.
They can look at the averages, and having been trained in inventory and production management I understand the math, and it is still tough.
Lets say Fresno County CA dept of forestry fire crews respond to 200 wildland fires a year. How many crews does each fire need? Lets say 3. So now we have 600 crew units/year involved in fighting fires for an average of about 1.5 per day.
OK so we put on 2 crews
But wait we need 3 for a fire.
What if its a larger than average fire, we need 4 or maybe 6 crews. So do We always schedule 6 and let 4 of them play ping pong all day most of the time?
On call crews allow you to have 10x the resources available for the price of 1 full time crew. So when the “BIG ONE” comes, you can hit it hard and fast.
I think they judge us by their own intelligence.
Tris