When mobiles first came in, my manager told me to take a company phone home one weekend, to keep it with me at all times, and to remain sober, close to a computer with an internet connection, and ready for work from 08:00 - 00:00, in case our technicians out on a site visit needed support. I asked how much standby money was being offered. The figure that he had in mind was 'zilch', but I would be paid for any work I actually did, in multiples of 1/4 hour, rounded down! I politely declined ... We had a lengthy discussion about it. He couldn't see that me giving up my plans for the entire weekend was worthy of a payment. In the end, I squeezed £20-odd out of him.
I used to work at a shop years ago. We worked roughly a 50 hour week for crap pay, with Sunday our only full day off.
When mobiles came in, the owner/director thought it'd be a great idea to offer an 'emergency' delivery service on a Sunday for our customers. Well, his customers really...
His brilliant idea was that me, or one of the other staff, would take 'the mobile' home. If a customer rang, we were expected to drive to the shop, open up, load the van, boot up the computer, raise an invoice, deliver said goods up to 40 miles, return, lock up, set alarms, drive home.
And possibly repeat if someone else phoned. He was utterly, genuinely astounded when we suggested we might be paid to do this. On our one day off per week. He really expected to us to not only be on call for nothing, but if work came in, to do it for nothing, and not being able to go anywhere on your own time.
He eventually offered £10.
Pi$$ off...
but has anyone ever seen a poor dentist?
