Respecting private life.

[Kosmik]

The division within the company I worked at the last 26 before retiring never had respect for private life.

In that time, I never went on leave without being phoned for advice, information or suggestions regarding problems with analytical equipment under my responsibility. Even after leaving the company on retirement, I was still being phoned. The worst one was when my wife and I had a weekend breakaway for my birthday, I was caught up in a call for almost two hours when they've been struggling with one specific online analyser, of which I was one of two in the country factory trained on it. My wife sure wasn't happy about that call.

I submitted my intention three months before my end date even though 30 days was the requirement. What a big mistake that was. When word got out that I was planning to leave, I was inundated with requests for assistance. There is a flexible working hours system in place where overtime worked could be taken off. I had so much to do before leaving, I accumulated exactly 30 hours of overtime, and because of everything that was requested from me to before leaving, all requests to take of overtime was denied, thus the 30 accumulated overtime hours that I forfeited.

I was supposed to be put on fixed hours the last month of employment but was kept on the flexible working hours because they knew I would work diligently and longer hours to attend to all the work request piled on me.

Sadly that I think is where a person needs to be honest and setup a boundary. In those scenarios, its very much give a finger and the entire hand/arm/torso is taken.

 

[Kosmik]

Pretty chilled where I work at. Just one employee that always has something urgent that needs to be done 10 mins before home time on a Friday which then becomes my problem.

I'm 90% certain that's often a passive aggressive behavior. Once maybe but continuously? Nah.

 

[ShaunSA]

I think this needs a discussion or a refresh if before. Basically as the title says, respecting people's private lives and time by employers.

In the EU I think, there is now the "right to disconnect".

Many years ago I worked with a dude who was in high demand all hours of the day. Then one day he kicked the bucket. Every single person who constantly looked for him stopped needing him with immediate effect

 

[Herr der Verboten]

When you're thrust into it though it's a different story. Not for a lack of trying to get more people to know the system. The only one who could probably run it is in Sweden as he has been for a good couple of years now, as our supplier took him on.
But even then he doesn't have the new underlying knowledge that came from all the other changes, I was originally just hired as a normal sys admin back in the day until everyone started leaving :-(. Some people just like to use companies for their training programs and after three years leave :-(

I get that been there before too many times - if you haven't yet:

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[Sworaxe]

Seems IT bros have a hard time separating work and private life.
Fortunate my industry this is a non-issue even when we WFH.

 

[Londo]

I only briefly worked for a company in SA so I cannot speak about how the employers are. But I have anecdotal experiences from my years in US.

I worked for a commercial real estate brokerage for a few years - commission only - and yet the company expected you to spend random evenings discussing deals with your associates with company throwing in pizzas. "Pizza and Deals", they called them.

Then I had a friend and he was a medical rep. He was expected to spend his regular working hours in front of customers. Writing up orders, learning about new products was all expected to take place "after hours".

The US makes a big song and dance about "family" but the company comes first every time. Being a white collar worker in the US is the worst. Far better to be a blue collar worker paid by the hour, with overtime being paid at overtime rates.