What Are You Doing Right Now
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@brianlittlejohn said:
I'm of the opinion, if it is something important call me.
Which I think changing of the schedule would be an important enough matter to justify a phone call if the other methods didn't result in an immediate response.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Rather than call, I'm not the kind of person to sit with my phone in my hands hoping someone texts me.
Am I wrong for thinking a call would've been more appropriate?
Text is way more appropriate and neither is appropriate at all. Calling and texts are legacy technology and are about contacting your device, not you. To contact you as a person, email is the right technology. A phone call is the worst possible as it requires that you jump to answer it, and there is no call for an interruption like that. Email is best because it is not an "interrupt" type thing to do and he needs the message to get to your reliably regardless of your device state or location and texts have no delivery reliability like emails do.
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@DustinB3403 said:
But a little blip noise on my phone which isn't in my pocket / hand / immediate next to me isn't going to be heard. At least the ringer I'd be able to hear.
You can set your phone calls to blip and your texts to ring if you want. What alerts you and how is up to you. My phone calls do not ring, for example, and haven't for years. If you want me to get the alert, it has to be email. Especially as my bedroom has no phone or wifi access, so if you try to contact my device (phone) rather than me (email) I likely won't get it at all. But email will get to me the moment I get in wifi range or check my computer.
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If the boss wanted to ensure you got the message - which unless you're oncall 24x7 and required/expected to see all messages within min - he should have called.
Sure Scott's right, calling is old school - But when you don't get a confirmation using whatever method you choose to live by, then you need to continue trying communication methods until you do.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
But a little blip noise on my phone which isn't in my pocket / hand / immediate next to me isn't going to be heard. At least the ringer I'd be able to hear.
You can set your phone calls to blip and your texts to ring if you want. What alerts you and how is up to you. My phone calls do not ring, for example, and haven't for years. If you want me to get the alert, it has to be email. Especially as my bedroom has no phone or wifi access, so if you try to contact my device (phone) rather than me (email) I likely won't get it at all. But email will get to me the moment I get in wifi range or check my computer.
So what do you do in the case of an emergency when somebody needs to get a hold of you RIGHT NOW? You might not have wifi or data for email, but you could have a cell phone signal.
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@Dashrender said:
If the boss wanted to ensure you got the message - which unless you're oncall 24x7 and required/expected to see all messages within min - he should have called.
Sure Scott's right, calling is old school - But when you don't get a confirmation using whatever method you choose to live by, then you need to continue trying communication methods until you do.
Plus was this a company phone? Or are they paying for the phone that's being used? If not, why would you expect an immediate answer at all if you're not on call?
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@Dashrender said:
Sure Scott's right, calling is old school - But when you don't get a confirmation using whatever method you choose to live by, then you need to continue trying communication methods until you do.
I didn't say that it was old school, I said that it was wrong. Not the same. Old school and wrong are different things.
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@dafyre said:
So what do you do in the case of an emergency when somebody needs to get a hold of you RIGHT NOW? You might not have wifi or data for email, but you could have a cell phone signal.
I just said... no cell phone signal. Nothing, there is no way to reach me when I'm in my bedroom here, sadly. Because we can't change the wiring in the house to address that with wifi (this has caused us to start house shopping to resolve this issue part of the time) we are just stuck. But email and IM remain the most reliable and immediate ways to reach me whether Internet is solid or it is flaky. Because if you have flaky phone, calls and texts don't make it. But email does as soon as possible.
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I am specifically not on call 24x7. If my boss texts/emails me after 5 PM she has no expectation that I will receive/respond to those things until 7 AM the next business day. In my case (Sorry Scott - calling is the emergency contact method for everyone else I know, except you - and yes that may include 2-5 phone numbers) calling is the emergency communication.
I suppose I could set my device to ring when I get a text message, not sure though if I can set text messages to continue to ring until I actually look at them though - or email notices (But, damn, can you imagine having your phone ring all the bloody time until you actually look at incoming email?)
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That's my take as well (everyone besides Scott and MQ) text or email is fine, if you get a response, but I'll be damned if I'm "expected" to listen for it.
If you need to get a hold of me call, I live in the modern world, and have access to cell service 99.99999% of the time.
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@Dashrender said:
I am specifically not on call 24x7. If my boss texts/emails me after 5 PM she has no expectation that I will receive/respond to those things until 7 AM the next business day. In my case (Sorry Scott - calling is the emergency contact method for everyone else I know, except you - and yes that may include 2-5 phone numbers) calling is the emergency communication.
You are again, mixing up "wrong" with "everyone does it." I never claim that the majority do smart things, I, in fact, constantly state that comparing the "majority" to "good practice" is nearly always wrong because the majority don't think about anything and are not smart. Remember the average business fails, the average person can't do basic math, etc. That most people use the phone should be the red flag that that's not smart but what makes some business the most money or is just lazy or is intended to fail, etc.
Calling isn't reliable or appropriate. It is, quite frankly, rude. It's an interruption to someone when they are not getting paid when it is not only not needed, it is less useful. Why do most people accept this or do this to other people? No idea. But the fact that most people do supports what I said, it is no way whatsoever disputes it.
And we are NOT talking about an emergency here. That's a different issue. In an emergency you should email first. Call as a follow up if you need. But as I always say... if you need details, you need email. A call in a true emergency is fine, once details have been sent. But we are not talking about an emergency here at all.
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@DustinB3403 said:
If you need to get a hold of me call, I live in the modern world, and have access to cell service 99.99999% of the time.
No, you live in Rochester where everyone I know complains that they have no cell service. You actually live in the worst region I've seen, in the entire world, for cell service. Literally, I kid you not. I know of one uninhabited high mountain valley in central Nicaragua without a single house that for a one mile stretch is comparable. That's the one and only place in 21 countries that I've found to equate to how bad your region's service is.
I have no service in a room. I have a thousand times better service around the house than you can get in western NY.
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About to go home for the weekend! Woooooo
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Good Morning ML
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@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
If you need to get a hold of me call, I live in the modern world, and have access to cell service 99.99999% of the time.
No, you live in Rochester where everyone I know complains that they have no cell service. You actually live in the worst region I've seen, in the entire world, for cell service. Literally, I kid you not. I know of one uninhabited high mountain valley in central Nicaragua without a single house that for a one mile stretch is comparable. That's the one and only place in 21 countries that I've found to equate to how bad your region's service is.
I have no service in a room. I have a thousand times better service around the house than you can get in western NY.
I was going to say... upstate NY is notorious for have some of the worst cell coverage and of what is here some of the oldest and worst infrastructure.
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@Dashrender said:
I suppose I could set my device to ring when I get a text message, not sure though if I can set text messages to continue to ring until I actually look at them though - or email notices (But, damn, can you imagine having your phone ring all the bloody time until you actually look at incoming email?)
You can't do that with your phone either. It rings only as long as they sit on the phone - not something you can do for hours during an emergency. A phone call requires the caller to sit and wait hoping that you pick up, requires you to drop what you are doing and make it to the phone, requires the phone to be working, requires the service to be working and requires all of those things to happen in the same thirty second interval and if they don't the communications doesn't happen.
And does this mean that you believe that all people should keep phones on during movies, plays, meetings, etc.? Or do you feel that IT people cannot attend those things? How do you combine situations where you cannot be interrupted with a belief that you should always be able to be interrupted?
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@scottalanmiller I completely understand the situation here, as this clearly isn't an emergency.
But the normal communication methods tried first would be an email or text. If there is no response a follow up call. I for one wake up (on average) 1 hour before I'm due into work.
So to have a text that I'm not looking for sitting on my phone, saying "hey can you be the early guy" is not a notification to me to update my alarm.
I happened to wake up early enough to make it in, but a call would have absolutely been the appropriate thing after there was no response via Text after a few minutes.
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@coliver said:
I was going to say... upstate NY is notorious for have some of the worst cell coverage and of what is here some of the oldest and worst infrastructure.
Yup, being from upstate NY is what taught me without a doubt that any concept of thinking that you can rely on calls or texts is crazy. Even the land lines up there aren't reliable.
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@DustinB3403 said:
@scottalanmiller I completely understand the situation here, as this clearly isn't an emergency.
But the normal communication methods tried first would be an email or text. If there is no response a follow up call. I for one wake up (on average) 1 hour before I'm due into work.
So to have a text that I'm not looking for sitting on my phone, saying "hey can you be the early guy" is not a notification to me to update my alarm.
I happened to wake up early enough to make it in, but a call would have absolutely been the appropriate thing after there was no response via Text after a few minutes.
A call as a follow up is different than a call instead of sending the info. Those are very different concepts.
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@DustinB3403 said:
That's my take as well (everyone besides Scott and MQ) text or email is fine, if you get a response, but I'll be damned if I'm "expected" to listen for it.
If you need to get a hold of me call, I live in the modern world, and have access to cell service 99.99999% of the time.
LOL - you must never fly. I have cell service way below 99% of the time because of things like flying, and being in basements with no service, etc... but I also generally don't have any other service at those times either.
