Slashdot Mirror
Using Employee-Owned Technology in the Workplace?
digitalvengeance asks: "As of Monday, my company is initiating a 'no cell phone' policy at all of our offices, including the IT department, where I work. I consider my cellular phone a necessity both in my personal and work lives. I have a number of servers and custom applications configured to notify me by text message, in the event of a problem. I am considering refusing to take work calls or text messages on my personal cell phone, and even quitting in protest of the new policy. How have other Slashdot readers dealt with policies regarding use of employee-owned technology at work? Any suggestions as to how I can get this policy overturned without looking like someone who wants to spend my working time on my cell rather than coding?"
If they stonewall and ignore your concerns, then by all means, raise a stink. In the interests of civility, job security, and conservation of energy, though, you may want to try the easy way first. Don't break out the elephant gun before you've tried the flyswatter...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Have them pay for an alpha pager and move your alerts there. Really, quitting over the use of a device you've become addicted to is not the smartest reason to terminate employment.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I am considering refusing to take work calls or text messages on my personal cell phone
Reminds me of the old cartoons where they talked the other guy into saying what they want.
'no your not'
'yes I am'
'no your not'
'yes I am'
'yes your are'
'no I'm not'
and even quitting in protest of the new policy
Now That's a bit drastic. Surely if there is a business need, they would allow exceptions.
On second thought, just go ahead and quit. Stick your tongue out and say 'na-na-na-na-na-na' when you do.
...or is it "you can't bring a cell phone to work"?
You might be able to get a waiver for the former... the latter seems like a misguided attempt at a security policy, perhaps?
The Army reading list
First of all, when in Rome...
.02,
Second, while I don't technically agree w/the policy I don't really see why you are complaining. You do as they say w/o too many questions. If you don't like the working conditions you find another place that is more towards your liking.
I would normally go on to rant about how I personally dislike cell phones in public (nevermind the workplace) but it's irrelevant for this discussion. You do what the employer wants or you start sending out the resumes. A cell phone isn't exactly something required to sustain life.
Just my
Actually, both my friends who work in the government and my father who works in a hospital have this requirement. One has to do with security, the other with interference of pacemakers and electronic equipment. Sometimes a cell-phone ban (though I'm not in favor of it) actually is the responsible thing to do.
It seems cell phones cause people to become sort of useless on the job, as they will tend to do anything but pay attention when they have easy access to unlogged phones. Our system in Arlington actually watches all calls, so our employee personal calls are logged.
That being said, the company just initated a policy to give everyone in IT blackberries (the nice color ones) and phones. Show them a business benefit (read: $$$ increase), and you'll get your cell phone back.
If they won't let you use your own phone get them to provide you with a company phone. After all if you are using it for business then they should be paying for it.
So I can send an application. Cell phone free work place, bliss.
I'd just reconfigure your alerts to be transmitted by email and kick back and let the good times roll.
Beep beep.
If you use your cell for work as much as you say you do, and you are not alone, then the impact of this new policy will be felt.
Do what they tell you to do, don't use your cell at work.
On the flip side of it: If you truly do use your cell for work, then get them to spring for it ( monthly costs and all ). It's only fair.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Just tell me where I should send my resume so I can replace you.
and even quitting in protest of the new policy
I hate the damn things, you go ahead and quit. On your way out could you put in a good word for me?
This assumes you're in an environment with wireless, and you have a wireless-enabled PDA. Or, like another poster mentioned, see if they'll allow an alpha pager and go from there.
"Well, I am mad, and I'm a crazy fucka when it comes to tea"
Connect the servers to the company's paging system. A few weeks of hearing "THE SERVER IS DOWN!!" at 120 decibels ought to make them reconsider.
then they should pay for it. Plain and simple. My office has no idea I have a cell phone number. They know I have a phone, but they are not gonna get the number unless I see part of the bill being paid by them.
-------------------------------------------------
Seems pretty obvious to me: ignore their silly rules, set your phone on vibrate and go about your business.
Quit over this? What, are they going to fire you if you check an occasional text message on your (silent) cell phone?
Some rules are made to be broken, not fought.
I think you need to spell out to your employers the importance of your cell phone particularly as it relates to your work. Make it clear to them that their new policy will substantially diminish your ability (and that of anyone else you can reasonably claim) to work efficiently, and that if it's implemented as planned, your company's productivity will diminish. Those are the terms that any executive or middle manager will understand.
And if that doesn't work, it might be worth it to try to get the company to issue work-only cell phones. It would be kind of a hassle to keep switching between two, but it might be the kind of alternative they'd be willing to agree to.
I am going through a similar thing where I am. For 5 years, I have used my personal laptop for over 12 hours a day for coding, etc.
Now, all of a sudden, it's not ok anymore. It's not like I use some infected Windows-ass piece of Dell shit either. (Ironically, that's what they are trying to force me to use!)
No cell phones is a retarded rule. I have 3 kids all under age 5. Plenty of emergencies arise--as you can imagine. Without cell phones, how would we be able to deal with them?
It's unclear whether you are saying that the company won't allow cell phones to be used or won't be supplying them. An outright banning cell phone from the workplace is extreme and should be met with a quick move to another company. To be potentially unreachable by family in the case of emergency is not a condition I would tolerate.
Let's assume that's not the case and they just won't be providing you a cell phone. Your job is to keep systems running. If you fail to keep them running you will be seen as not doing your job. Any excuses about the company not providing a cell phone will be seen as petty.
So, I would ask if the company is going to reimburse business calls on your cell phones. If they aren't, you should ask them where notification should be sent and that your cell phone is unacceptable. They may tell you to have notifications sent to your supervisor. If so, do it and get on with life. Don't feel obligated to leave your cell phone on all the time - besides I think it sucks the life force out of you to be reachable all the time. This makes your supervisor responsible for responding to notifications. A few weeks of your supervisor getting the notifications and not being able to reach you during movies, etc. and the policy will probably change.
If they are going to reimburse expenses, leave it as is and make sure you get the expense reports in every month. Do the expense reports on company time and make sure that the time spent that way is clearly noted on any status reports. Once they realize that they're spending $10/month on cell service for you and $50/month for you to itemize the statement and another 10/month to process the expense reports, the may get smart and change the policy.
In short, follow the rules but make them follow the rules as well (i.e. That you won't accept un-reimbursed business expenses.) See this.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
I used to run my own webserver at home on a mac. I did Mac phone tech support, and over time quite a few of the sites & hints I did for customers ended up on my server.
When I needed to sell the mac to cover school fees and told my work they should really host the stuff themselves, I was told under no circumstances should I remove work material from where it was used. Hell I was happy to give them the domain too, it was just a small vanity one that had no other use to me.
So in the end I had to sell the Mac, the site went down, and I lost my job. Sucks
Why don't you suggest an employee/employer focus group? You could suggest that employees requiring notification via text and voice is a neccessary for you to perform your job.
You really should side with them employer on banning employees from cell phones unless they really do need it for their position. This position should leave you neutral to both techies and employers.
Perhaps your company is willing to purchase a few dedicated email capable cell phones for technical employees? Many possible solutions are out there if you can sit down as a group and properly discuss the matter.
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Set up your monitoring system to only send email during the day. Have it send text messages to your cell phone after hours. Pretty simple and non-intrusive.
if they are unwilling to supply such a device, tell them they can call your desk phone and leave a message and you will attend to their call first thing the next business day.
many employers are technologically "retarded", and do not understand the signifigance between their admins using PDA's and cellphones for work related monitoring, and their receptionist gabbing to their S.O. about why they hate their job.
attempt to educate...failing that, update your resume.
The powers that be don't want you wasting company time on personal business, and I don't blame them.
The policy no doubt didn't come from nowhere. There are obviously people in your organization that took advantage of the fact that they had cellphones.
I've seen those people, chattering away all day. It's ok to talk as long as they want, right, because it's not like they're using the company phones.
The waddling ass in the office next to me spends AT LEAST 4 hours a day playing tetris on his cell phone. When you walk past his office he gives it a really serious look like he's contemplating his hectic schedule and contact list. I'm not fucking stupid, I know what tetris sounds like. Of course, I say nothing of it because the guy is dangerous when he's working, he's completely fucked up every project he's touched. Worst coder, ever.
Anyways..
There's no constitutional right to having a cellphone at work.
Be a man about it. Suck it up, and get back to work. You expect these nerds to throw you a pity parade because you can't play text messaging all day.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Know when the policy will be reversed?
When your boss' boss needs someone ASAP from the IT department and can't reach them via the corporate phone system.
And your boss will be flippin' burgers.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Have they detailed why?
Often it helps to know the exact reason before blowing up and making a stink over it. It also means you can approach them for a exemption and know what not to say when trying to justify it.
Area51 - We are watching...
And then argue that it's not a cellular phone, but a two-way radio. You'd be tecnically correct.*
*And that's the best kind of correct.
I have found that in this situation, outlining a business case with real world cost benefit analysis of several options helps the management types with an agenda see the light of day without losing face.
:
Outline in a business case that you are keen to meet company pollicies, but as you are no longer able to utilise your mobile phone for the work purposes you outlined, you require
a) a pager and company cell phone or equavalent to maintain the current levels of service;
b) a company provided other doo-hickey remote support solution (fill in the blanks here);or
c) special expemption to utilise your personal cell phone, with an allowance to reimburse you for the relevant quiantity of your monthly bill.
For each of the options, outline the costs versus the benefits to the company, and make a reccomendation on the preferred options for the company, and outline why.
I have found this approach works wonders with managers.
I have a number of servers and custom applications configured to notify me by text message, in the event of a problem. I am considering refusing to take work calls or text messages on my personal cell phone, and even quitting in protest of the new policy.
Well, make the the servers and applications send their messages elsewhere and by all means refuse to take work calls and text messages on your cell. If it is really important to your employers that they be able to contact you on your mobile they will either make an exception for you or find another solution.
If you are really concerned about this policy for work reasons speak to your manager, I'm sure he would rather you be the one getting text messages from servers and apps than him.
You don't need a personal cell phone at work. IF these server notices are important to work, then the employer can provide you with either a telephone or text pager or blackberry... and if they don't want to do that, then you are no longer on the hook for notices you couldn't receive
if you family needs to reach you at work, they can call in through the usual office lines, like everyone always did in the time before we all had cell phones in our pockets.
i really don't see the problem here.
Then you can set up some techno music too, and it'll be like homestar runner.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I have a number of servers and custom applications configured to notify me by text message, in the event of a problem.
If I were you... I woudl think it would be in your best interest to get them to sport for either an alphanumeric pager, or a two way pager.
Just a oneway alpha/numeric pager should work as well as your current mobile setup, may not even require changes to your script.
Two way pager may be able to be attached to a serial port... provided you use TTL levels, and just accept error messages regardless of whether you have a network connection or not.
It seems to me that you are doing your job and using your equipment to do it. If they won't allow you to bring in your own equipment it's only common sence for them to buy it.
Otherwise, you can invest in a handheld internet terminal, which while can be used as a mobile phone, are more likely to inspire sympathy as being a IT required device. Unless they plan to ban handheld palm like devices.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
What you didn't say is what their reason for the ban is. Many an executive decree turns out to be the wrong (or overly broad) solution to a genuine problem, and it's possible that your intended use of your phone falls outside of that problem area and can be exempted (e.g. they're freaking about camera phones and your phone is demonstrably camera-free). Or perhaps that information will suggest solutions to your own problem that get around this decree (e.g. they don't want people yakking with their friends, so you could use a pager instead of a phone). Heck, if you know what they're trying to accomplish, maybe you could even suggest a different solution that makes more sense.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
No joke. I could post for pages and pages with antecdotal evidence, from my own experience and that of fellow geeks, that the quickest way to eliminate a policy or new set of particularly stupid regulations is to follow them to the letter. For instance:
POINTY-HAIRED BOSS: Why didn't you know that Server X, Application Y, and Cubicle Drone Z were all hosed and not responding to requests?
YOU: Well, sir, I get these notifications, see, and when I'm working in another part of the office or not sitting right at my desk, I know instantly if something goes wrong with anything that I'm responsible for and then I can fix it.
PHB: But...that doesn't explain why you didn't know about XYZ!!
YOU: Well, these alerts all come on my cell phone, you see, and since it's company policy that Cells Are Not Allowed...
The dumber it is, the more religiously you should follow it, and make darned sure that all of your buddies fall in line with the company's new direction as well. I'm assuming, of course, that you've already presented your case to a supervisor or HR person or something, and that you're not a Super Executive VP of Something. If you're at that level in the organization, just say "no" and have your department behave differently from everyone else...apparently this works in the real world if you're high enough on the food chain.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
The easy fix here is if they want it bad, they get it bad. Remove all the monitoring, turn off off or leave you cell phone in the car. Then you might try a 'delicate' server reconfiguration. Now return to your cube and allow the mayhem to unfold. Soon someone will come running 'Email is DOWN' your response 'I didnt know, new policy foribbids me from monitoring the servers' their response 'What new Policy?' now you point to HR. Then 'fix' the problem get email flowing again, of course without monitering, allow it to crash.. by the end of the day they will be begging you to reinstall the monitoring.
Here is my delima. I pay my phone bill, it is my cell phone. Yet 98% of the calls I recieve are work related. We have a zero tolerance policy also for cell phones. Which I adhere to as does everyone else. When I forget to turn MY phone back on after leaving work, I get my ass chewed. Yet my company pays for none of the minutes they use. I recently had my cell phone disconnected for currency issues ( lack thereof ). I was told that I had one week in which to have it turned back on or lose my job.
I had no clue what to do in this situation either. It has gotten to the point where I could no longer afford the bill I was getting every month for a service that turned out to be work related. I have tried showing and even turning in a copy of my cell bill showing the company use, and requesting reimbursement. You know what, it never happened. Yet make one long distance call at work, and you get blasted.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Seriously. Why do you need a cell phone? Do you have a phone on your desk at work so that people at work can get a hold of you that way? Do you have email?
I'm trying to think of why you might need to use your cell phone at work, and these are what I could come up with:
1) Communicate with other people in the organization or company. If this is the case, then the company should provide a phone for that purpose. Obviously the company you work for does not think a cell phone is necessary to do the work they hired you to do. They could be wrong, but that's what they think. If so, either convince them they're wrong, if they really are, or use the tools and processes they want you to use for communication.
2) To communicate with vendors or other 3rd parties. If so, then the company should provide you with a phone, but it doesn't have to be a cell phone.
3) Personal calls. It's actually better for the company to make a phone available for personal calls. Many little errands can be done over the phone that you would otherwise have to take time off for work to handle and it is invariably more efficient to use the phone. It may be in an inconvenient location, but they aren't obligated to make it convenient for you. And if they don't provide a phone for personal calls to take care of personal items, then you either take a couple of hours off from work to run errands, figure out another way to handle the errand, or quit over it. Quitting seems excessive.
4) You mention server alerts. Are you attempting to manager either personal servers or servers you've set up for a side business on company time? If so, why should they permit that? Many companies even have specific rules against moonlighting because they know the drain two jobs can have on a person. Switch to email alerts and have the mail sent to an account you can check at work. Then if they see that you're doing a second job on their time, they can deal with that as appropriate.
Do they provide you with a phone at your desk or nearby? Seriously, a cell phone is not a necessity.
You DO know what the U.S. job market is like for IT personnel in particular and everyone else in general, right?
To say it's bad is too polite.
To say it's horrible is dancing around the reality.
To say you'd be a screaming lunatic to quit your job because they won't let you use your cell phone is more appropriate.
Unless you're a terribly abused employee, to even consider such a thing is ridiculous, moreso for the reason you're giving. Surely they will reconsider their Draconian cell phone banning policy for you since you obviously need it. If they are insistent on banning all PERSONAL cell phones, then have them buy you a company-provided cell phone where you can send your alerts.
In any case, take a step back and put any thought of quitting out of your mind.
Pants are an employee-owned technology. They're your personal pants and not for business use. That'll fox 'em.
One of my former employers had to implement a ban on personal devices unless otherwise approved because the salespeople were all bringing in personal laptops and wanting to use them despite the fact that they had perfectly good computers on their desks. This was getting to the point that they were starting to trip the circuit breaker and taking the entire room's power down.
The reason they wanted to use their own laptops became a bit of a turf war. See, these were mostly new sales reps who had worked for other companies before joining ours. They wanted to keep their sales contact list on their own laptop so they could bring it from employer to employer. The company wanted them to store their sales leads only on the company server because even though sales reps could only see their own accounts, when a rep leaves it becomes very easy to split their leads list among other reps and also limits the outgoing rep's ability to contact their existing accounts under a new employer.
The IT department's offer was to convert any contact database into our system. We never did get any reps who took us up on that, but some left in protest of being unable to keep their laptops up-to-date.
I've been in similar positions with software purchases over the years; management doesn't see the 'need' to spend money on an essential upgrade or license renewal until something breaks. When faced with downtime that you can document would have been preventable or significantly softened the impact, management will then typically listen (or be replaced by even higher management).
Play the CYA (cover your ass) game with documentation until the day comes that someone has to answer for downtime/response delays/missed deadlines, then put them on the spot with it. It works wonders.
"Powers. I have them."
As a DBA I face the same type of thing every day. When setting up a server I ask for their tolerance of downtime and suggest solutions. If they aren't willing to 'pay' for those features then thats their call.
Also, why were the cellphones banned? Is there sensitive work done onsite? Are they afraid of the new cellphones with built in cameras? Does it interfere with some electronics? There may be a valid reason behind the ban.
As long as your ass is covered (ie, you explained the situation to managment) then whats the problem? Are alpha-numeric pagers banned as well? Why not pick up one of those? You can still get your alerts and friends can still contact you.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
You say your cell phone is needed for work?
Well my policy is "If my employer didn't pay for it, then it doesn't get used for work.". I drive in to work. My car gets used in no other way that is work related. I have cell phone... the closest it EVER gets used for work is to reply
to a message on my pager (which work DOES pay for).
Its simply that simple. I need a laptop to do my job, I make them buy me one, I need a pager for work, I make them buy me one and pay for service.
You should go to them and tell them you have been usin gyour cell phone for work and let them know that their policy is hurting them, and furthermore that they should be paying for the potion of the cell phone bill that you have incurred doing work for them.
If they say no, then simple... just stop using it for work and be sure they know that its the problem.
If they fire you, then sue for wrongful termination.
Seriously people...this is why workers should be unionizing. Why should we put up with this shit? Peopl ehave to work together, the workers should have some say in the culture of the workforce.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It's amazing how many people are pointing out that the company has a right to do this and in the end the employee can only put up or leave.
Yes, we know. Move on, nothing to see here.
Taken to its basic components, any relationship is one where any entity can do whatever it is they want to do and the other entity can decide whether or not they want to put up with it based on some sort of cost/benefit analysis. This works in *both* directions -- Some of my users (salespeople with eight-digit sales per year) pretty much have a 'get out of jail for free' card at work.
But relationships are not just "put up with it or leave." The company presumably has an interest in you working for them because otherwise, well, they wouldn't employ you (ignoring the possibility they're doing this as a way to persuade people to quit so they can outsource them to India without severance pay or unemployment benefit hit). In the end, relationships where each party does the very minimal required of them sort of suck both on the personal and professional levels.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that you want your relationship with your company to have some flexibility in it, and in order for it to have flexibility in one side, it needs to have flexibility in the other side also. So if you're getting work phone calls on your personal cell, it's perfectly reasonable to say "look, I'm bending here and using my cell phone for work purposes and that's OK -- would you bend a little and let me keep it?" If, on the other hand, they absolutely refuse to be flexible, then absolutely you're under no obligation to be flexible yourself -- if they don't allow you a personal cellphone, then don't allow them to use that cellphone to contact you.
Companies that don't want your personal life intruding into their business shouldn't intrude with business into your personal life. Now, mind you, that's a perfectly reasonable and rational approach to which the company may respond with "tough, we can replace you with an Indian for $5/hr. Want to see who blinks first?" That's something you have to deal with and figure out how far you're willing to go.
and commodities don't have a right to complain. Commodities are supposed to happily participate in the market and flow to wherever there is demand. If I buy a car, it doesn't complain that I didn't pay enough for it, or that I'm relocating it to a different state. The same goes for workers, if one loses their job, no problem, just move to India, where there is apparently greater demand. My car wouldn't complain about having to go to India, so why should I? Why should it be any different when dealing with workers? They're just commodities, they have no rights.
This is of course what market fundamentalism is about. It's about relegating worker's rights to the scrap heap, not even recognizing them, and putting the rights of property owners first. And, as commodities, we aren't supposed to complain, we're supposed to simply go somewhere else if we don't like the conditions, and let the invisible hand work it's magic. And, when there is nowhere else to go, we're supposed to shut up, like any other commodity would. The one crucial fact that you are overlooking is that people are not commodities.
I mean, they want to have their cake and they want to eat it too. They want someone to be available 24/7 in case of a server problem, but to not be available 24/7 by loved ones, friends, etc. That's absurdity. I would say those issues are intertwined. If they don't want you to have a personal cell or to make personal calls on a work cell, then I guess that means when you leave work whatever happens happens. It's bad enough these companies expect us to work off hours so much anyway, so that seems like the answer. I punch out at 5, and it doesn't matter if the server goes down. In exchange, I'll leave my cell phone in my car. Deal.
Nobody took it seriously. They had cellphones going off all over the show, including bosses. People even lacked the discretion to use vibrate mode so that it was a discreet breaking of the rules. I think it was instituted due to some localised abuse (people using it excessively on company time), which is fair enough, but could have been dealt with more diplomatically.
They also had a policy that you were not permitted to have music going at your workstation, be it with headphones, or whatever. I work far better when I can shut out the ambient noise of an office. I felt naked without headphones on and it reduced my productivity, but went along with the rules for a while til i noticed nobody really cared if I had my sounds going or not.
Find out why this rule was introduced, and make a judgement call as to whether it is a BS rule that you are happy to break, or if there is a serious reason behind it that would mean you should get formal permission for not following it.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
Can't use USB pen drives anymore!
But that's just because management hasn't started using them yet. When our new firewall started blocking sites, every site with the word 'mail' in it and every site not using the standard port 80 was blocked. I just shrugged and went on with life at work.
Recently, just for the heck of it, I tried my university mail account (port 8000) and it worked! Then I tried my personal webmail site and it worked too!
It looks like some higher exec type got locked out of his favorite site and made the networks guys open the firewall a little wider.
Maybe your 'no cell phones' rule is just another flavor of the week and it will go away also.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
put your phone on silent mode, vibration on.
if you get a call on your cell, look at the callerID, and call the person back on your office phone.
if you dont have callerID, explain the situation briefly in your voicemail message and that you will immediately call back anyone who leaves their name and phone number.
take your voicemail messages from your office phone.
Yeah - it is a stupid policy, the other thing is depending on company culture can you just sit down with your (hopefully) sane manager and say what it is used for and ask to get a waiver from the policy (I worked at a company that had really weird rules, that first line managers could ignore if they didn't apply to their workers).
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Did you ever ask why the policy was instituted. Companies that are governed by the SEC and engage in stock or fund trading are required to have all employee communications monitorable. This way if they suspect someone of giving insider information they have records of the phone calls and emails. Use of personal cell phones make it hard for them to comply with the SEC.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
How the hell are you supposed to look for a new job if you can't use your cell-phone at work? Oh, you mean that was the point. Never mind.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Ah, middle management edicts, the dead wood (and I'm not talking about the paper used to print their memos on) in ANY organization ;)
;)
Here is how I deal with stupid management:
I try to use polite, logical argument.
If that fails I will then impliment what they want TO A T and watch disaster to unfold. When it does, I show the memo/policy that ordered me to do it.
I'm a systems administrator for a local IT firm and I manage systems for a couple dozen clients. I have a personal cell phone. The company won't provide one, and they only offer me a mere $10 a month in compensation, which I turned down so I have the priviledge of NOT taking someone's call if I so choose not to, as I always choose not to when it's the owner calling. I'll use my phone as a pager, and call from a land line when it's convienent.
Our owner has become increasingly paranoid about monitoring our every minute. He pays a small fortune for internet monitoring (Stellar) at the office (of course, we mostly ARENT THERE), and is paranoid about our IT people even having the admin password to the company server (he wouldn't know how to even add a user).
Most of us on the staff have taken to using our personal laptops with our Citrix remote access server in the office so that our every keystroke isn't potentially logged... We also use an "underground" remote access machine to surf the web on
You just can't do that sort of thing to techies without consequences. We are always three steps ahead.
Frankly, since having a cell phone, I've found it to be a curse. I HATE being reachable all the time, I've found that it causes me to do MORE work. I miss being able to drive from one site to another and not be bothered DURING... I think anyone like me who has to know a couple dozen diffrent client site setups NEEDS a few mintues here and there to clear our minds!
But, by keeping my cell phone personal, I can avail myself of the priviledge to use the OFF button, which I do often.
Corporatism != Free Market
An employer can force you to have a cell phone for your job just as they can require you to have a car. In fact my wife works for several companies that require a car and a higher level of auto insurance in order to take clients from them. At the end of the year you can write off all the expenses off your taxes.
Go straight to your manager and let him know that your ability to do your job is being impacted by the current policies. Be prepared to talk over the options you have for doing your job now that the policy is in place. One of those is to push for an exception. Others might include the company buying you a cell phone that is clearly just for company purposes - a pager could be appropriate as well. You know the situation better than me, think of them.
Be prepared to answer the question from your manager that asks if your current set-up makes sense. What happens if you get a better offer, and leave the company? Is there a good way for somebody else who doesn't have a cell phone to be notified? Should there be a central clearinghouse for these alerts other than your cell phone?
If you and your manager agree that sending messages to your cell phone is the way to go, gettnig an exception is more likely to happen with your direct manager's help. Should you get that exception, document it. You wouldn't want the next round of layoffs to be easy for them.
Forgive me, but I don't think this is a huge deal. Someone made a policy whose intent was to keep people from using their cell phones at work for personal reason, so that meetings would go smoother and folks would be more productive. They didn't know or think that cell phones were being used for work activities. It's not in the interest of anyone at the company to make your life more difficult.
On the broader question of employee owned tech, I think that the main reason companies are and should be cautious is that when you leave, you're going to take your tech with you. Anything they've paid you to set up and that uses your tech suddenly breaks. That sucks. Which comes back to the problem of what happens when you leave and the notices are going to your phone. I really think the answer is that they back off the no cell phones and move it to no personal cell phones. Those of you who need cell phones are then given corporate cell phones. That way, when you leave they give the phone to your fill-in / replacement and the system still works.
Then again, if the phone the message is being sent to can be universally changed by filling out one web form, it becomes dispensible and they just need to hire somebody with a cell phone.
Clarification from the submitter:
Though this policy was abandoned due to my concerns prior to being implemented, it still has relevance in many places. Let me answer some of the questions that have been asked.
Work was, in-fact, saying that I cannot bring in my personal cell phone. Though they don't pay me for for the phone bill itself, I do get compensated for responding to server-down pages or other problems after hours and this more than pays for the phone bill.
Why are they doing this? The stated reason is security. We've been the victim of intellectual property theft due to camera phones, but in my case: it isn't an issue. I have, in effect, clearance to any and all company documents at this location and all others.
As for forwarding my responsibilities to my supervisor, it just won't work. I report directly to the president of the company and he is not exactly a power-user. I've been with the company just over three years, and he's never even glanced at any of my coding work. He simply believes the heads of other departments when they note that their IT systems are doing well, saving money, or whatever the case is.
To save this poor guy a headache: I am not Brian Cancio. I don't own that domain and have no involvement with it whatsoever. Digitalvengeance is just a slashdot ID as my usual alias was already taken.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
I agree. I see so many posts saying something to the effect of: "Stop bringing it, they'll see how important it is when servers go down because nobody got the pages". Wow, what's happened to our work force? Here are a few ideas that might actually look like you give a shit. It sounds like we're stuck in a "Clerks" version of IT!
1.> Have a little frigging back-bone, people. state the issue to your boss in an e-mail. Document it. Be sure to be detailed on the risks.
2.> Contact HR explain the above.
3.> If the above doesn't work (as American AC in Paris has also suggested the 1st two). Contact internal customers who have jobs running on the impacted systems. Explain the situation and the risks.
4.> Be willing to help develop either a more defined policy (i.e. no private calls, no digital cameras) or accept an alternative (alpha-pager).
5.> At the first issue of an outage because no-one got notified, bring this up. Don't wait for all hell to break loose.
Following these steps with the right tone, enthusiasm, and tact, you'll at worst look like you actually care about your job and the company you work for. Unless maybe, you prefer to live on welfare, unemployment, and bitch about how the internet stock bubble saturated the job market with IT guys. Be a "stand-up geek" and do the right thing.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
It is a pain, indeed, but there *are* some valid reasons for controlling what equipment is brought on campus. It does create problems, e.g. a visiting professor brings his own laptop, or a company wants to provide on loan some equipment, or you are doing a joint research project with another institution and they send you some equipment to use, etc...
...a teaching hospital (fairly large one at that) actually has a few masts on its roof. It's bullshit that modern phones muck up hospital equipment. This was not the case 10-15 years ago when phones transmitted at a higher power and hospital equipment was less advanced than it is now.
I am NaN
I ran into this myself at one job. They wanted employees to be available 24 hours a day in case of an emergency, such as a senior exec having a problem over in Europe. Their plan was to give cell phones to the employees so they could be reached at any time, and to have a someone designated as "on call".
I remember there was a bit of resistance to this concept, mainly because they didn't want to increase the staff to support a 24 hour center. With 2 network admins, that meant that if one was on vacation, the other would be on call 24 hours a day for an entire week! We tried to express that we understood emergencies happened, and tried to remain in contact for server crashes, WAN outages, and so on - but the idea of being a 24 hour help desk without additional staff was too much.
In the end, I quit. Since then, I've tried to be very clear with any other job: my life is not my job. Most places are pretty understanding once you lay out the clear idea that "even geeks need sleep". And that if they need to reach me at any time, they, not I, have to supply and pay for the cell phone.
Usually that works pretty well, and again, most employers are understanding once you lay it out for them. Just be careful of the ones that don't.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I work in a call center and in my previous organisation cell phones werent allowed due to people taking calls and they did not want the cell phone static or ringing to disturb the calls.Even though i was a sys admin i wasnt allowed to carry a cell phone.But after a lot of protesting they finally realised that there was no point in not allowing me to carry my cell phone.
THe point is that theres no reason to ban cellphones for everyone in any company.Besides if i had to leak insider info i could do it anyway.
Lord of the Binges.
Any suggestions as to how I can get this policy overturned without looking like someone who wants to spend my working time on my cell rather than coding?
Hmmm... That's a tough one. Have you considered not posting on Slashdot during work hours?
Sounds like a Management problem. As in the employees are not being managed. Treating employees like children only works on the immature and the stupid. Everyone else gets annoyed, and (eventually) leaves.
There's no constitutional right to having a cellphone at work.
There is no Constitutional right to sick time off, either. Would you want a "pity parade" if your job suddenly cut sick time because a few people were abusing the system?
====--====
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Switch it to email/IM notification and tell your employers they should get you a pager or cell phone so those notifications can also reach you when you're away from your desk.
I had an incident where one employee left a cell phone at their desk, it rang (one of those really annoying music rings) on and off for nearly an hour. Another employee (next cube over) turned it off. The first employee went ballistic about that. That was fun. Once in a while I'll have an employee who just spends wayyy too much time talking on their cell phone. Lovely to deal with that as well.
The reason companies never wanted people making personal calls at work was not the cost of the (mostly local) calls, but the cost of their NONPRODUCTIVE EMPLOYEES. When employees have cell phones (as most do now), they feel much more justified in sitting around on the phone since the "cost" is theirs. People who know not to spend hours on personal calls on their desk phones seem to have no compunction about doing the same thing on their cell phones.
So what's the solution? In my experience, the RATIONAL answer is to speak to each person when you feel that they've crossed a line, and make a decision suited to the problem. In my experience, the rational answer will get you reamed. Employees who care so little about their responsibilities to their work and to their co-workers tend also to have no compunction about arguing "disparate treatment" (as though cell-phone users are a protected minority). We are forced to make inane blanket policies that hurt the decent employees who probably ARE contributing their personal cell minutes to the company, in order to stop the bad behavior of a few. I've been told by HR that I cannot tell ONE employee to "leave the cell phone in your car" I must make the rule for EVERY employee in the department (not that I have, I'd rather lose the productivity of the lamer employees than disgruntle the better ones).
Anyway, there are two sides to every story.
~
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
I used to work for a great company that bought dinner every night for every employee who worked past 7:00pm. This not only boosted moral (and impressed job candidates), but also it kept people in the office several hours longer for a mere $10 dinner. Smart company. Win-win situation.
Bottom line: keep your employees happy, and don't interfere with their personal lives, and they work harder. Impose stupid restrictions and watch morale disintegrate.
This argument assumes that the employees are responsible people. (If they aren't, the company has worse problems than a few cell phone calls.)
Every time someone asked me something stupid, I opened 2 beers - one for me and one for my Newfie.
Boss comes in, sees 8 empties lined up behind the monitor, and a drunk dog passed out on the floor snoring ...
End result - fewer stupid questions. Sometimes you've got to go completely against the grain to make a point.
My company has a "No Cell Phone BATTERY" policy in effect.
That means, if you want to come in, you have to REMOVE your cell phone battery. Not only is powering it off not enough, but you physically have to prove that it can not be powered on and transmit any information.
They also insert keylocks on floppy and CD drives.
Laptops, if you are so 'fortunate' to have one, have the IR ports desoldered and the microphone jack plugged.
All documents are to be carried in folders; nothing is to be made visible.
Optical cabling is run out from shielded conduit; converter boxes take it the last few feet to the computer.
So yeah, whining about losing your cellphone? Check your messages a bit more often or work to get a pager in place, if they'll let that (I don't think mine does).
Besides, I used to work in another area that banned cell phones because they were concerned that the fumes from 2000 gallon tanks of boiling solvent might get ignited. After a few demonstration videos of small scale going ka-boom, I declined carrying any form of contact with me except a paper clipboard.
I think the issue of using a cell phone at work is a symptom of a larger issue, and that's exactly how much of your life does your employer own. It speaks to a larger theory called work-life balance. Do you have life to supply work for your employer, or do you work to support your life? Look at what potions of your life you already give up for your employer and find the balance point. Taken in a larger context, your employer banning the use of your cell phone at work, no matter how well justified or logically supported, can be viewed as just another way for them to assert control over your life.
For the record, I do own and use my own cell phone for personal and work related purposes. But then again, I work someplace where they treat us like adults - people who voluntarily give of ourselves to the company for profit (both our own and the company, which is our own as well thanks to stock options), and how will reimburse me for work-related phone calls on my cell and wired phones.
In the end, you get to ask yourself what you want on your tombstone:
He worked hard and made a lot of money in a job he didn't like for an employer he hated.
-- or --
He loved his life.
...and you run and you run and you can't stop what's been done...
1. You have no specific right to be able to use your personal phone in the work place, period. Arguing about personal rights sounds good, but you're on company time, company money and company resources. Sorry. Your employer has the liberty to restrict anything that comes into the work place. If you need to receive emergency or other sorts of calls, that's what your manager can do. If you need to make personal calls: that's called on your lunch break. In practice, most work places allow use of business phones / communication services for "reasonable" personal use: just don't abuse it is the usual rule.
... "necessary for my job function": it smelled very badly that she just wanted to chat at work, and the helpdesk ticket was rejected. You don't want to look like this girl: you need to put forward a professional case.
2. If you need the cell phone for your duties: then you should have it funded by the company. If it's not absolutely necessary for your work, there's not much you can do about claiming that denying it to you undermines your employment contract (this argument can work in some countries). In the case of your sort of work, I don't think you could argue that it's absolutely necessary to do your job, but in reality, it's probably making you a more effective employee. If they are short sighted about this: try to change their attitude, or find a new and smarter work place. That's life.
3. Because of your job function, there's probably a good argument that a cell phone adds enough value so that your role should be an exception to the general rule. Either the exception is that they allow you to use your own phone for work purposes, or they fund it for use in business purposes only. If you want to make your argument for this: you need to present a bottom line oriented business case: just _exactly_ how does the cell phone actually concretely contribute to making you a more effective employee and how does it contribute to the bottom line: some examples and so on would help. Again, if they aren't convinced by this (and they're not obliged to), then tough for you: find a new workplace. When you go to the interview for the new workplace, check out these details to see whether it's the kind of place you want to work.
I once saw a helpdesk ticket from someone asking for "MSN Messenger" installation for "communication with people in israel"
I'm a sysadmin at a mostly-mac scientific institute. Some of the labs allow scientists to bring in personal laptops, and we have many windows laptops that are personally owned. I understand the problem, and how these scientists need their own computers, but it is nothing but a pain for us because their computers aren't patched, aren't virus-scanned, etc, and when they bring them home to work on their dsl lines, these scientists end up bringing an infected computer in which spreads to all the windows-only instrument computers. Thus, I will be the last person to condone personally-owned equipment-it provides nothing but headaches to our department.
They might not be cost effective but I feel much more comfortable having my critical alerts going to it.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
When my Mom was in the intensive care unit 3 years ago, there were all kinds of "NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED" signs posted, but what did I see at nurse's station in the center of the room, not 10 feet from my mom and no more than 20 feet than most of the ICU stations? A DOCTOR ON HIS CELL PHONE!
At that point, I knew it was a bullshit ban implemented by either lawyers ("save us from 0.00000001% liability risk") , administrators ("working the the dihydrogen monoxide risk, too"), or some anti-cellphone zealot ("it is not polite to patients to hear ringing or talking during nap/meal time").
Maybe at one time there was medical equipment that was analog-monitored on FCC part 27 ("unregulated") spectrum, but I highly doubt that anymore. I'd think that manufacturers would have hardened their wireless system to be immune from casual interference, since fuckups would cost them money, too.
This kind of reminds me of an asinine decision made at my first real job. The CIO decided that every computer in the organization would all be the same and contain the same exact software located in the same place. No extra software, no customization of anything. The thought being that an employee can be trained once and use any computer in the company. When they implemented it, IT went around an basically backed up and wiped every computer then installed all the accepted software. When I, any my co-workers came back in on Monday we were greeted with a PC that had nothing but Office and custom internal applications. We knew what was going on but just assumed it didn't include our department which did all the custom development for the company. Our compilers and other development tools were gone. They were not on the list and hence not allowed. The brianiacs at IT would not let us install anything on the PCs. That lasted about 3 days while the committes talked and finaly went to the CIO for a decision. Of course exceptions were made for us, the programmers and soon for other groups and soon it was totally reversed. So basically, the moral of the story is blanket directives like that and the no personal tech are lame brained and are indicitve of management that will soon drive the company into the ground.
Take a reality break here. Imagine something like this.
PHB: "Why is my email down, Itnerd?"
Itnerd: "Is it? I didn't know. Since you banned cellphones I don't get any warnings that the system is down (insert Homestar reference)."
PHB: "So you haven't changed it so it emails you, and you apparently never bother looking at the server you're supposed to be administrating?"
Itnerd: "Well, when you put it that way...."
PHB: "When I put it that way, you're an incompetent dipshit and are now fired. Fuck off."
Go on. Tell your boss that the server crashed because you couldn't be messaged on a cellphone. You'll be fired before you finish the sentence.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I'm really amazed at the number of "why do you need one?" posts. Sorry, but yours is one of the more pedantic and supportive of totalitarian work rules.
We also don't "need" computers, the internet, cars, air conditioning or any of the other components of the 21st century, except for that they all make us way more productive and in touch.
Employers who embrace this and make it work for them will reap huge rewards, those with control agendas or luddite tendencies will pay the penalty.
...my cell phone is my life line to both my personal and professional worlds. I keep it on in case the unthinkable were to happen to my child and loved ones and my best customers have it on speed dial if they can't reach me at the office. In truth, companies can ban them all they wish but as long as you have a serious need for it (like children) they cannot say a word or risk litigation.
We're a financial services company and we banned camera/cell-phones recently after our competitors had a nightmare scenario pop-up.
A person who was running their imaging group (scanning signed loan documents into imaging DB) and would use her cell/camera to take a close-up of the docs, and harvest the personal information for later sale to organized crime. Very embarassing for them, and costly as well, as they were sued by half-a-dozen people whose info was stolen in this manner. It is getting ugly. AND the Feds might fine them for the breach of security... Ouch!
So while I agree, the IT guy needs a phone, its understandable for people to be leery of their employees cell-phones.
Who did what now?
In response to their decision to ban employee-owned technology in the workplace, I would recognise that my brain is employee owned, and therefore I should switch it off on entry to the building.
This has to be the stupidest thing I've ever seen posted on slashdot. Can't believe it is receiving front page attention. I would agree that the company policy is stupid... but - what a little whining baby! I would never want to have an employee like this guy. Yeah - go quit your job cause you can't use a stupid cell phone....quitter. Sounds to me you've used your cell phone a little too much and your suffering from dementia. If you setup your personal phone to recieve alerts its your own fault. You should have approached your boss from the beginning and asked for a company cell phone to do it. It shouldn't be a pain in the butt to change your alerts. Don't make a stink out of it. If you have job issues like this take it to your boss not the slashdot community.
executives do not pull powerpoint presentations out of their asses.
you sure about that?
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
I don't see what you can possibly do in this situation, short of quitting. If they don't trust their own employees, then they're not going to be receptive to employee feedback. If you dissent politely, they'll smile and ignore you. If you dissent rudely, you'll just reinforce their patronizing attitude.
And playing work-to-rule games ("I didn't know the server was down because my cell was switched off, as per policy") isn't going to help either. It's just another way of communicating something the bosses don't want to hear, except that it also makes them look stupid. Which is not likely to make them receptive.
Sometimes management falls into the mode of treating employees like spoiled children -- people who can't be communicated with, only bullied into a semblance of correct behavior. If you can figure out a way to change that attitude, you've really got something (like a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize!). If you can't, there's not a lot you can do.
If he needs to be paged at all hours and they won't allow him to use a personal phone they should make his phone a business. Chances are if he's being paged at all hours he might need to be calling people too.
That's the deal here. My phone is a company phone and the company has will take over the payments for anyone who already has their own mobiles and needs to be contactable for work purposes (it's still their phone and number if they leave). Getting to make personal calls on company money is just an upside to the downside of being woken up at 4am when a router farts and your server isn't contactable for a minute.
It shouldn't be a major issue to point the paging system at a different number if the guy leaves or is on holiday.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Maybe I wasn't clear enough, so lets make this simple:
I. need. IMMEDIATE. notification. even. if. I. am. not. at. a. computer.
K?
Hehe gotta be careful with that attitude. I've consulted for companies that had sysadmins with that attitude. Pretty easy to slap them down to reality and guess what? I got paid $80/hr to do it ;)
Point being that they always have the option of bringing someone in from the outside. You can stand your ground but I wouldn't go walking around calling yourself god and pissing everyone off. Nobody is irreplaceable.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
" As has been hinted at in previous posts, many times in life there's the "Official Policy" and the "Unofficial Policy". Check to see what the unofficial policy is before complaining about the offical one. It's what seperates the elites from the nobbs..."
Where I work, I'm so freaking overworked I pretty much decided some time ago to ignore any stupid company policy that gets in the way. Dress code, for one.
I'm technically violating it because the only "polo" shirt I'm allowed to wear is a company one. But try doing the job of a sysadmin who also has to function as a jack-of-all-trades tech (it's West Virginia) with a tie on.
Last time the owner tried to start on me on this one, I cut him off with "I will not wear a tie, that is not open to discussion". Indeed, in some areas (I was told this was true in NC) wearing a tie is an OSHA violation for a computer tech...
My pay, hours, etc suck, and I can't stand the boss because he is a congenital (poor) liar. But at least I'm working, and the upside is, I'm so irreplaceable because of proprietary knowledge (and skill) that I could show up to work buck naked and the boss really couldn't say or do much.
And, I do get to do some cool stuff every now and then (such as WAN design) from time to time.
Ah well, soon as the economy improves I'm out of this hell hole...
Corporatism != Free Market
" When my phone is near my computer speakers, my speakers "ring" before my phone does. Used to freak the girlfriend out when I'd pick up my cell phone before it rang."
;)
;)
When I'm in the car, I am usually listening to my Nomad MP3 player (plugged into the car stereo via an auxillary jack). The sound gets distorted just as the phone rings...
On the upside, I can crank Van Halen until the windows break and know the phone is ringing
The downside is I know the phone is ringing
Corporatism != Free Market
If the need to get text messaging is so importantant get the company to spring for a "company" owned phone that can do the same function. And this phone will be on the person in charge of taking care of such problems if they arrive. Do you see where I'm heading with this, if you *die* or happen to quit on the spot the company will not be left high and dry having failing equipment sending text messages to a phone that is no longer in the service of the company. Of course this means you have just lost a little bit of job security but from the Company's view they will at least not have to unburden themselves in the unlikely event of your departure from employment.
It's all fine and dandy to have all your little scripts and devices installed to make you look and feel more important, but you *DO NOT* have the best interests of the company in mind. You are only thinking of yourself and what little job security you can create for yourself. You would have an easier time all around and the company would look more highly to you if you concerned yourself more making an IT infrastruture that works in the worse case senario as opposed to one that only works when you are around.
Or if the company is just being nasty because they think that not having a mobile will mean that you do more work for them try to impress upon them how much extra stuff you do outside your job description. If they don't get it, work to rule while you look for another job. If they wise-up before you take another position, great, if not it's much easier to find a job while you have a job -- you might even manage to find something that pays better. For those people that think moving to another job is over-reacting, petty rules like this are a huge moral killer which will only result in a less pleasant working environment: Competent, hard working people will leave because they know they can find a better place, leaving only the incompetent to become bitter.
That said, if you work at a military contractor, goverment security division or a place with sensitive equipment (such that there's a real reason for this ban), suck it up and get on with life.
So get a pager, they are not cell phones and will do all you need
Normal people worry me!
Do you charge the company for accepting calls on your personal phone? If you are then you are getting ripped off. Our company pays for all my mobile bill (including personal calls) and in return this is the way they can contact me whenever it is needed. Sure you get the occasional call at wierd hours but for the $$$ it saves every month who cares?
Also one thing to remember. Try and keep the phone personal and charge the company for the bill every month. This way when you leave the company they cannot keep your phone and number which saves you the hassle of changing numbers.
[Please type your sig here.]
If I didn't already have a company cell phone, I'd get one (it seems to be necessary for the job description). I'd just give out my desk phone to everyone instead of the cell phone. I'd have outages and such page the phone directly, and I'd set the phone to forward to the cell when I'm away. They could review the phone records all they wanted, all they'd see is that the work number kept calling my cell phone, so they would all be "work related" calls.
If it is truly a "no cell phone" dictate including no work cell phones, then just go as high up as you need to to explain why that is impractical. It worked for me when I was in a job where a reorg resulted in the IT department being grouped with PR and so all people in IT were required to wear ties. A calm explanation that was ignored followed by threats of lawsuits from a tie getting caught in a fan and the dress code was changed.
Learn to love Alaska
Like it or not, when you're on the clock, they own your time. If they say no cel phones, that is their right. I've ran into this problem in the past, on bringing my notebook to work. My solution to the problem was to draft a request for clarification/exception on my notebook, and was accompanied by a convincing and long list of incidents where my notebook did a job that no other computer in the building was capable of, or when company time/money was saved as a result of me having my notebook. I was actually more interested in the sheer convenience of having my own system with me at work, but I had a valid point in that I am more valuable as an employee to them when I have my laptop.
;-)
The counter-argument that was raised by my manager was "if the company needs your notebook, then what the company really needs is its own notebook". That got about two steps up the management ladder before being shot down by the bean-counters. Since they had already agreed that I had a point, and since they now couldn't do the best thing about it, they did the second-best thing - they got off my case about it. (I wasn't a formal exception, but was basically left alone, I could walk past managers with my laptop bag in tow without getting "pulled over")
I think you should persue this route. Since they're not all that expensive, you're very likely to get your own company-provided cel phones as a result, and you'll probably get less static from them about redirecting your warning instant messages to the company phone than you are getting now about your own cel phone. The down-side of this is you are now basically chained to the phone... it's like a pager and they'll expect you to answer it off-hours. At this point, just take it over... give out that as your 'new' cel number and ditch your own phone. Save on monthly charges and keep the peace at the same time.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Company policy makers are great at coming up with silly policies that are not carefully thought out. (Which is why we can all laugh at Dilbert)
Several years ago I worked for a micro-manager. He required all developers to receive permission from him before any changes could be made to a reporting system. Even if you wanted to correct a spelling error on a report you were required to fill out a request for change form and meet personally with the director for approval.
As soon as this policy was implemented, the efficiency in the department dropped to almost nothing. We all joked that it took longer to fill out the paperwork than it took to actually do the work in the first place.
Things reaced a head during a business trip to Asia. I was working with some consultants who were giving me information on how to format tax reports required for that country. Before we could open up for business, the reports needed to be modified and printed out for approval by various government agencies. Because of the time zone difference, the change management policy really got in the way; yet the director insisted that he still wanted to approve every single change by phone each day.
Since he didn't specify a time to call, I would wait until the end of each work day in Asia and call him before leaving for the day (at 2:00 A.M. his time). Sometimes I would "remember" something I had forgotten to ask permission for and have to call him a second or third time. After about 3 days, I was given blanket permission to make any needed changes to the report for the balance of the trip.
Soon after that, the policy was modified extensively, to allow us to do our jobs. Major releases and new projects were managed by committee, but minor changes were allowed to go through as long as they passed the QC process.
This is just stupid. If you NEED to be notified instantly then your company should supply you with a pager or cell phone. If they specifically ban the devices and deem you don't need one to do your job then why argue about it? When the server goes down let them know you weren't aware of it because you don't have a pager and were at lunch.
Its easy. If you are at the office where you are not allowed your portables, you should have a computer that can produce a visible and an audible tone via some monitoring system like nagios, whatsup, etc.
If you are not at the office, the office policy doesn't apply and thus you can use your portable.
If your office doesn't have computers, well then I guess you'll just have to have your phone on vibrate and hide it in your crotch or something.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
[quote]
Sliently ignore most rules, and they will be silently re-written so as not to apply to you.
[/quote]
The above usually works best, but the below is probably more politically acceptable.
Some time back there was a bunch of postings about security measures that sound like something but do nothing of any value in terms of making anybody more secure, and usually inconvenience everybody. These stellar ideas are hot and bold and bad. They usually come about to address some particularly instance of abbuse commited by some particular person. They are also almost always rescended, sometimes only after that person is fired.
So there is probably someone who is sitting on their butt chatting all day, but since it is *their* phone they can't be gotten for misuse of company facility. Meanwhile their work is probably just good enough to not clearly be sub-standard and their noise-making is annoying the people around them.
There is also a high probability that some part of this issue is the latest panic-craze about people using their "camera phones" to "steal company IP" etc. (Which is a nice new fad and quite popular among the PHBs lately.)
So someone makes a "policy".
So write a memo to whoever your supervisor is that quickly and concisely states the following:
1) you have a particular circumstance that will cause the compnay grief if you comply.
2) you have examined the options and the time-effort-cost ratio to implement the inferior solutions (if any) are unacceptable for some particular reason.
3) that you presume that reasonable provisions for exceptions exist where the company interests are best served.
4) that given the the above circumstances you believe that continuing to use the existing solution is the correct action, so "unless otherwise directed" (and/or "funded") you will continue to use your cell phone as you do today.
This creates several things.
1) you get your way.
2) you have documented that this is not being done behind anybodies back.
3) your *supervisor* gets a degree of plausable deniability, he doesn't have to take any proactive action to give you your way.
Generally this is all you would need to do. And since the entire military lives and dies on "unless otherwise directed" memos, if you are working for a defense contractor or ex-military person, or military-heavy company nobody will even batt and eye.
Either way, as long as you don't flaunt your exception nobody much should care.
The second of tonights lessons:
The truth is that I walked around in jeans and T for years at a company where the president had decided that everybody should wear suit and tie. There was no way I was going to do the physical parts of my IT job (climbing under people's desks and behind server racks) in suit-pants let alone a jacket and tie. There were only two "incidents" over this.
1) "If you dressed that way, and I was your boss, I'd send you home for the day." to which I responded "and I'd go, but I'd be back dressed no different the next day." (This guy was not my supervisor, was in fact nobodies supervisor, and was generally a busybody {which is why he was nobodies supervisor})
2) "How come you dress like that? I should go home and change!" to which I responded "I don't care if they fire me, if you can say the same, dress any way you please." This was the cube-mate of an acquaintance who was feeling dis-empowered and all entitled.
In short, when you step out of company-line for any reason, even a compelling one, heck *especially* a compelling one, you should expect to have the ineffectual middle-management suckups, political marshales, and enfranchisement-challenged to become somewhat inflamed. You should already know how you are going to deal (or not) with these people.
And finally rate your desire to live in that job, where you are presumed untrustworthy (or whatever) .
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I am considering refusing to take work calls or text messages on my personal cell phone, and even quitting in protest of the new policy.
Cool! Can I have your job?
"BTW: I do know which end of the IDE cable goes into the motherboard but we tend to use SCSI these days on any machine that I'm likely to touch so I'll probably forget eventually ;)"
I work in West Virginia... Cost is everything. IDE RAID, and Serial ATA are all the rage.
Better do a refresher on IDE.
PS: my PC (AMD Athlon 64 3200) has a WD Raptor 10K SATA hard drive, as fast as anything but a 15K SCSI drive...
SATA/IDE is the future, for cost, if any other reason. Performance is becoming less and less a reason to go SCSI.
Corporatism != Free Market
Last year I fought a similar battle. As one of the 6 remaining engineers, we each take turns on the "help-desk" rotation - meaning we are required to take calls from angry customers at all hours for a week at a time. We leave a modem with the customer that they can turn on when they need us to dial in, provided we have access to an analog line to dial out from. After years of hanging up on telemarketers, I had finally (happily) rid myself of a phone line only to have my company turn around and require me to have one. I'm quite happy with my personal cell phone, and my employer provides me with a work cell phone with which I must take incoming calls. On top of that, the meager pay that we had been recieving for support was basically terminated (although we were still charging customers, go figure). I mentioned several time to my boss, and his boss, that I was in violation of their policy - but I was as likely to pay for a phone line as I was to write the company a check for $20 a month. Eventually, they decided that 20 bucks was a small price to pay for me to shut the hell up, especially when we're routinely charging customers $100/hour for phone support. So I expensed the first few payments to prove that I had won, and dropped it after that. After all, it's not really worth our time to fill out those expense reports. It [i]is[/i] worth our time to make sure that management thinks twice before trying to "save money" at your expense. Remember: Your loss is their gain.
"Let the Spanish keep it, it's a sh*thole," we said, but you had to have your goddamned orange juice.
You made your point, here's mine.
If it's that important to your company, they should pay for it, period.
You shouldn't need to subsidize their uptime. They should pay your cellphone, they should pay you "extra" to have a cellphone that improves their uptime. Those things have business value, and should be recognized by even the most pointy-haired boss out there(hint: if not, he's just using a negotiating tactic, and playing dumb about it too)
Your PERSONAL cell phone you should leave at home... And only carry when off-duty... And yes, that might mean you need 2 cell phones, and that precious few(if any) people ever have both numbers without a gold-plated marble writ from God.
Some of us make a business of uptime, and I would highly resent your giving in on this without a fight... You should thank me for giving you back your life, when you're not on-duty, you can finally turn the cell phone off..
--
My cell phone is never off, but that's because thats the service I sell to my clents. Me, 7 days a week, 24 hous a day.
those TLA sites don't allow ANY electronics into the building... well actually thats not true, you can bring electronics into the building but they will either
a) take it away from you when you enter, or
b) take it away from you when you leave
but on no account will they let you take anything electronic out of the building
its like when they baned "Furbys" and everyone said how stupid thats was. But what is a Furby? its a microphone and CPU and some memory. And the difference between a Furby and a "listening device"? some software and a hidden antenna.
As for camara cell phones being a risk, if you have seen the size of some of the new digital cameras then you know that cell phones are no risk by comparision to a lot of other options out there. Like this digital camera pen http://www.hard2buy4.co.uk/Gadgets-and-Boys-Toys/
-jon
I simply stopped using my cellphone for work use. All calls from my boss were redirected to voicemail and I refused to give anyone at work my cell number. After about two weeks the company agreed to give me a "Company Cell Phone" which I couldn't use for personal use. I refused to carry that beyond work hours since I'd have to carry 2 phones. They eventually relented.
Frankly it appears that you've been a been a bit of a fool so far. Your employer has "allowed" you to donate your personal time and property to the company. This ultimately harms both you and the company. Consider what happens if you go on vacations, quit suddenly or get hit by the proverbial bus. In addition, since you are obviously not cleared to do what you have done (I'm not saying the principal is not a good idea) you may be legally liable if something goes wrong or if you are the victim of a "bums rush" lay off preventing you from disabling your unauthorized access.
Here's what you do.
1) Show your superiors what you have done and are about to do and explain how this will impact your workplace. Don't get upset or defensive or anything like that. If there is no policy in place to handle outage notification they need to know that and to made aware that they've got their pants around their ankles. I would suggest documenting the issue in an email or memo.
2) Disable all work-related paging to your cell phone IMMEDIATELY.
3) Suggest that your company purchase several pagers or two ways which can be set up to do the job your cell is doing now.
4) Set up those pagers however you see fit and ensure that all pages are logged.
5) Ensure that you are paid an on-call rate whenever that pager is turned on.
6) Ensure that you are paid a call-in every time it goes off.
This protects the company since they are not dependant on some undocumented procedure implemented on some hardware that'll leave the moment you do.
It also ensures that you are properly compensated for the burden of being available 24/7.
The company may turn around and offer to pay you for the use of your cell phone. You have to make the call on whether you want to go there but I would suggest that you encourage them to have the pager as a backup for the reasons listed above.
After your cellphone has been disabled and before the pagers are set up, your company may experience signficant outages. It is not your fault and should only be taken as proof of need. If someone feels the need to unload on you, either smile and take it (preferably to your next performance/wage review) or solicit constructive input on how you could have handled that incident differently (maybe your job becomes "surf the web in the NOC" for a few weeks).
So, what happens is, the foreman (who is also union), stops getting any requests to waive the signature exemption, and spends the entire day with a clipboard doing paperwork. Clearly the foreman can't be held responsble for this action, and management doesn't really have a way to lean on the drivers and crane operators to kick in the exemption.
But, it isn't exactly what most people think of "work-to-rule." There's a good reason for the set-up, because the crane operators are forklift drivers need a way to protect themselves from damage claims. But it seems to me a little more like a strike action, even though it isn't, than simply strict "work-to-rule."
in essence, I do this anyway. I have no cellphone, and I'm seldom at home. anything work-related will have to wait for work-time, where it belongs. need me in earlier? tell me in person. I have no obligation to stay reachable for work outside work-hours.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I had problems a couple of years ago with an employer not wanting to supply me with a cell phone (I was working as a consultant and spent all of my time at a customer in a different town). I ended up changing my private cell phone number and refusing to give it to the employer, I made sure that they knew I had a cell phone however. This at least made them see the problem but I ended up quitting the job after a couple of months as they still refused to solve the problem.
Good luck!
NON OMNIS MORIAR