Dear dimwit on the phone

Bow games should be fun to watch.

 

sorry man. i disagree. i value my life away from work too much to be handing out my personal cell number to people who aren't my family. i give work nearly a third of my life. why should i give it more?

i routinely put in 50- and 60-hour weeks in my 20s and early 30s, then i had kids. i don't do that shit anymore.

 

Eh, I could fix that.

 

And it's fine to disagree, man. No one's saying there's a right or wrong answer. Just different preferences.

 

remember, dude, you never get that time back. wish i could.

 

I never give out a colleague's cell phone without their permission. I have asked many times "Do you want me to give so-and-so your number?" Usually the answer is yes, because it means they don't have to sit around the office waiting for a call. But I never assume that.

 

I suck at work-life balance.

My work phone number is part of my e-mail sig, so a lot of people have it, including cranky parents. I have most of the coaches I deal with programmed into that phone, and maybe I'll answer it when I'm not working.

But that's my choice.

My personal cell phone won't be used for work, not anymore. I even deleted it out of all the in-house/employee lists I could find so nobody gives out the wrong number.

I'm still astounded that a colleague would just hand over someone's cell. Take a message or transfer to voicemail. If it seems really important, call/text/e-mail the other reporter yourself and pass it on immediately.

 

I think many of us agree that just giving a cell phone number to someone without knowing their relationship to the reporter is not good.

 

I get that. Every situation is different. For me, giving out the cell number lets me work from home a good bit and actually gives me some hours back.

It depends what your job duties are, too.
If you're at a bigger shop or are mainly on the desk and spend 8-10 hours a day at the office? Yeah, you can "sign off" when you leave.
If you're at a smaller shop, where one or two or three people do a little of everything, it's harder to spend that amount of time at the office and easier to have the "mobile bureau" available.

 

Honestly, I don't have the same perspective on life as you at the moment. I'm single, have no kids and my family rarely spends time together now as it is.

 

Do you find that a lot of callers are just old people who don't have the internet? There are a few old guys who keep calling "from the other side of the state" because somehow we have the inside scoop on things living in the big city, asking some very basic questions that a 10 second Google search could answer.

There's one guy who every time he calls has to tell me he moved out of state and wants to know the score of whatever team because "they don't have that down here."

 

Yeah, I'd get calls maybe once a week or so from an old guy who loved to talk --- of all things --- figure skating in the winter/spring. Being an Olympic know-it-all, I was OK with it and if he called early in the day, I'd chat for 10-15 minutes about whatever. If he called late and I was on deadline, I'd excuse myself. He said he didn't have a computer and was glad we ran the results from all the Grand Prix meets, Olympic trials, etc. in our print edition.

So, yeah, there are people like that.