Employers, do you tolerate employees who occasionally make important but personal calls on the job? (business, good)

[RatherBeReading]

Originally Posted by Lekrii

If you break that trust, you'll be submitting time sheets detailing what you did every 30 minutes all day long, though.

HAH!!! So true.

A former boss of mine once came to my desk, noticed I was on the phone, said "Oh" and I told him I was on hold with my doctor's office but could call them back...he said not to worry and to please come find him when I was done. But, I also got my work done on time, stayed until projects were completed, and didn't miss deadlines.

[GraceKrispy]

We've been told that personal use of computers/ phone is fine for short, important business. We do deal with clients, but we don't have any tech around us when that happens. The personal use of tech happens behinds closed doors or in cubicles

[DorianRo]

Do upper managers tolerate the middle managers sitting in their offices on their 6 hours a day and sitting with their blue tooth on their rear on a computer while operations crumble?

Never ceases to amazes how PRODUCTIVE employees who get paid less are held to a higher standard than LESS productive management getting better money and should be held more accountable

[fishbrains]

Originally Posted by DorianRo

Do upper managers tolerate the middle managers sitting in their offices on their 6 hours a day and sitting with their blue tooth on their rear on a computer while operations crumble?

Never ceases to amazes how PRODUCTIVE employees who get paid less are held to a higher standard than LESS productive management getting better money and should be held more accountable

Is it even possible for you to contribute to this forum in a productive manner? Can you stay on topic for anything? You have made it very clear that you gate your workplace, that you feel all other workplaces are similar, and all management is evil. We get it.

[don1945]

Originally Posted by ragnarkar

I'm not talking about people who call their friends while on the clock or spend a good chunk of their work hours making unnecessary personal calls.

I'm talking about making calls to places that don't take calls outside of regular business hours that they need to take care of, for example:

- Calling their doctor to make an appointment or to get their test results.
- Calling their mechanic to check on the status of their car.
- Calling their landlord to report something that needs to be repaired.

Of course, if any of these things can be done outside of your normal working hours, I will still try to do so. However, sometimes you really don't have a choice.

Some people here seem to think that personal calls should be completely prohibited while on the job with no exceptions, but I'm under the impression here that most (not all) employers will probably tolerate this if it doesn't happen frequently on a regular basis and only interrupts your work briefly.

Work is not the same as prison. Where I work, we do have restrictions on phone use (we make the kids keep their phones in the office so that they are not on them all day) but, if someone has to make a call we are ok with that.

Brief calls are fine, but not lengthy calls for just chit chatting.

[pittsflyer]

I would take 2 + hours off outside of lunch to do continuing education twice a week. This was pseudo work related, as in it was required to maintain my professional license but it was in no way affiliated with my employer and I chose the classes I wanted to take to fulfill this requirement (since the employer refused to pay for it).

No one ever cared, if they did I would have found someone who didn't. I remember there were other things that I had to leave in the middle of the day for that were not as dramatic as "my kid has malaria" or "a family member passed away", one that comes to mind is I wear an odd ball length of pants so when I buy new pants for work I have to get them hemmed and they have very limited hours. Or paper work notarized, etc. When you are a degrees professional with multiple certs you have to do it or your certs expire, etc.

I also have complex hobbies (that I hope to turn into a side business) that require specialty parts and tools and sometimes making progress requires I left work at weird times.

I dont really care if the employer trusts or not, if they want to be a dick about it I would play the little game until I found a new job. I am not an indentured servant lol.

Sometimes I would leave to go fly because it was a nice day, I took it off on my time card but sometimes I would miss meetings over it.

I would NEVER bill anyone for work I did not do, but if there was an unreasonable work load and it was going to interfere with the good flying season I said no. This whole business of someone needing to die or your house has to burn down to get 5 min off is nonsense and employers get away with it because people let them.

[pittsflyer]

Originally Posted by BusinessManIT

At my last IT job, you could make all the phone calls that you wanted to anyone you wanted. However, you had to submit time sheets detailing what you did for every quarter hour. That was for ALL employees, top performers or merely good employees. Mediocre and bad employees did not exist there. These were quickly fired. There was no trust, period.

You couldnt just take it off your time sheet and bill out a 38 hour work week?

[boxus]

Have little care, or put it this way, if it starts getting attention, it obviously is too much phone time (this was when I worked in an office). There was actually never any policy for/against, but company culture and past practices made it like I said above.

When I worked in a factory, it was strict, no phones on the factory floor, calls must be made during breaks, but a person could ask their supervisor if they needed to make a call while not on break.

[treemoni]

Micromanagers are the worst. The end.

[Huckleberry3911948]

The burning question
Does the employer have the right to dictate behavior and dress during paid hours as a condition of employment
Many think not
And yet the employer is held 100% accountable for the outcome
Much like being a modern parent isn’t it