How common is it for you to get “called into work” on a weekend or evening?

Posted by Careless_Squirrel728@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 356 comments

I’m talking in corporate jobs, not emergency services. It seems like it happens all the time on American shows and I’m wondering if it is real or just to advance the plot?

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mzg72@reddit

I work as an ed spec for DYS but we're short on Youth spec. So it comes up. There have to be two staff with each group at all times and extra for breaks, etc. But I will do it and, hopefully get comp time in return because they can't really authorize overtime. I prefer the extra time anyway but I'm at a stage in life where that's better for me (doctor appointments, relaxation time, other commitments, more free time.)

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Yankee_chef_nen@reddit

In my industry, at my level, yes. I’m an executive chef. when the freezer goes down at 2am, I’m getting a call. When the hotel breakfast cook doesn’t show, I’m getting a call. When a line cook gets arrested, I’m getting a call. When there’s a kitchen fire, I’m getting a call. If it’s my day off and I’m taking a nap, I’m getting a call.

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Few-Big-8481@reddit

If you shut off you're phone, you don't get a call. But your kitchen burnt down.

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Gorewuzhere@reddit

Seconded this as an executive chef

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WhereTheSkyBegan@reddit

Are you my dad? Sounds exactly like what he goes through as an executive chef.

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Soul_fragrance@reddit

Omg that sucks

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aWesterner014@reddit

It was far more common in my first IT role out of college. My team developed and supported factory software for a couple of factories that bounced between 2 and 3 shifts per day and sometimes worked on Saturdays and even rarely on Sundays. Four of us would rotate through an on call schedule. The architect was not on the direct rotation, but he was expected to be available if one of us on the rotation needed help. We would also have to do our system upgrades over the weekend or even holidays and were expected to do onsite testing before the first shift started up in the evening.

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docthrobulator@reddit

I work for a city, so it happens every so often. During the winter it's for snow operations or broken water mains for example.

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Dry-Astronaut-8640@reddit

I’ve worked many jobs. If I needed to come in after normal business hours, it was almost always known well in advance. It was never just dropped on me. I did have a job where I worked as a range safety officer on a live fire training range. If something happened where someone was killed or seriously injured, I’d be called to come in regardless of the time.

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Chemical-Mix-6206@reddit

I used to work in commercial printing, and the plant operated 24/7. If one of my jobs requiring a press check was going on press at 3 am, I needed to call my customer to meet me there at 3am. Didn't happen often enough to complain, and it was usually only when there was a ridiculous deadline so you half-expected it up front.

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Megalocerus@reddit

As a developer in the 1970s, I was on call for night job failures (old time batch COBOL failed regularly) and expected to drive in and get it running as soon as called. Usually, I received comp time. No overtime. This continued into the 1980 but there were fewer overnight jobs. That job required regular after hours work but much less at night, and it became a matter of signing on remotely. Installs also happened off hours. Later, extra hours were mostly remote, and the systems were more stable, but installs were still off hours. Still had call. Not much comp time. Started spending time on at 10 p.m. to check and at 5 a.m (early riser) for a bit, then into work, and taking off a long lunch. (For some reason, that was fine.) They also tracked internet time, but I convinced them mine was work related.

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tacobellbandit@reddit

Really depends on the job. I’m on call once a month. I work on medical equipment and my personal policy for coming in is “only if there is a patient on the table under anesthesia, or there is an immediate risk of loss of life, limb, or permanent eyesight if the device is inoperable” and I actually had to specify before that I meant PERMANENT loss of eyesight.

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Living_Fig_6386@reddit

Never. I do sometimes need to respond to e-mails in a timely fashion because I might need to answer questions for government regulators (I work in rational drug design, and some of my data is included as supporting pre-clinical information in applications to start clinical trials). However, I'm never called into the office or required to be at work at any specific time. There are people that have job functions where that is normal, though. A lot of people in IT, for instance, work weird times to do systems maintenance and upgrades outside of regular business hours. They are also often on-call in case something bad happens. It's not uncommon for those roles to have more flexible schedules to accommodate.

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DustyComstock@reddit

It only used to happen to me occasionally when I worked in live television. Once I had a family and kids I got out of that business.

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padall@reddit

Never. I have a union job. Can't work more than my 37.5 hours/week, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

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Run-And_Gun@reddit

I don't work a corporate job. I'm a cameraman and the bulk of my work is in the sports world, so the majority of my work is at least partially on the weekends.

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ThatTurkOfShiraz@reddit

I think remote work and ubiquitous telecommunication have changed this. For example, when I was a kid, my dad (a corporate IT director) would have to come into work sometimes on nights or weekends if stuff broke or they were doing IT maintenance during down times. My wife is in advertising and she works a lot on nights and weekends but she does it from her phone or laptop from home. I basically never have to work nights or weekends except for traveling for work.

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bckwoods13@reddit

Purely depends on the job. I've been with my current company for 6 years, working a set monday through friday schedule in logistics. I have had to work 6 saturdays due to issues out of my control. At some previous jobs, it was once or twice a month when someone else would call out on a Saturday.

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spamella-anne@reddit

I'm a field engineer, and not too often for me. My customers have contracts that are usually Monday - Friday, 9am to 5pm. So those are the only hours I'm obligated to work. But if I like a customer or I just need a few extra hours to finish something, I'll work late or weekends as a favor to them. My boss never gets mad if I don't work weekends, but it is appreciated when I do. Plus I'm hourly, and I feel fairly compensated for my regular work so I don't feel obligated to do OT to pay bills.

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tacosgunsandjeeps@reddit

I work lots of weekends. Its a lot easier to get maintenance done when nothing is running. I have been called and asked to come in a couple of times when shit hit the fan, but they always ask the guys who live closer first

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Apart_Insect_8859@reddit

This is extremely job and industry specific. This is very common behavior if you work in the trades or manufacturing. You might be 'called in to work' if there is a backlog in the plant that needs to be caught up, or called in to work in the evening if something big breaks and requires fixing quickly. Most corporate stuff can wait. Unless you have some big public launch or a merger or some out-side imposed deadline of some sort, there isn't really a reason to be called in to work evenings or weekends. Now, jobs which have those things exist, but they aren't all corporate jobs.

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RemotePossibility399@reddit

It depended on my role. When I was in manufacturing management, it was a somewhat common occurrence. Not overly frequent, but I was responsible for certain automated operations and if something went wonky, I would have to address it. In other roles, I would occasionally come in on Saturday mornings to catch up on stuff or work on a special project, but that was planned ahead.

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LollyK53@reddit

I have been called into work only a small handful of times. Mostly, to check on the building if the alarms went off. Occasionally, there have been instances of working extra hours voluntarily on the weekend, but I have to know about those ahead of time.

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Ravenna178@reddit

Depends on you job. If you work a salary job, you're expected to get your work done no matter how long it takes. So you might have to work nights and weekends, but you can probably do it from home. If it's an hourly job, they would have to pay you overtime, and you're allowed to refuse.

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legally_brunette_01@reddit

I work in the legal field (not a lawyer) and never get called “in” per se but have definitely been sent things virtually to finish ASAP as late as 2 am and if it’s at all feasible, I’m expected to start working then.

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CompetitiveYak5380@reddit

My stepdad is a machine repair guy at a vitamin factory(I think his position term is maintenance) and he gets called in often. My boyfriend is a forklift driver at a factory, and he doesn’t necessarily get called in but he gets told last minute that he’s working the next day when it’s his normal day off work. I used to work a corporate sales job and never got called in.

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Hi-itsme-@reddit

I’m in banking on a team that supports our core systems. I’m salaried but have a rotation for being “on call” and it’s scheduled: it’s one week every six weeks. I get a small per diem in addition to my salary for each of the seven days I’m on call that week, regardless of whether or not I’m called. Getting the call is rare. When I do, I help with troubleshooting transactions that failed, monitoring for return to service, sending out communications on the solutions reached and actions taken, testing the solution, providing sign off for return to service, that sort of thing. Other times I may work over night for a major update to assist with regression testing and validations, maybe once a quarter on a Friday night into Saturday. But those are planned and I won’t work a full day that Friday on such dates.

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Hawthorne_northside@reddit

Are you in the USA?

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Cheap_Coffee@reddit

It's just to advance a plot point. As a software guy supporting live, revenue-bearing systems I would occasionally get called on off-hours to look into a problem. But it's software, so I could do it from home. It wasn't that common. Getting up at all hours of the night to participate in international conference calls, that was common.

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Hawthorne_northside@reddit

Lucky boy. Some of the systems I supported would go tits up at 11:00 pm and we couldn’t get all the people we needed to figure out whats wrong overnight so we stayed on the SRT (system resolution telephone call) all night long and into the next day. It really sucked on a Friday night. This situation fluctuate based on new feature roll out. New release? No sleep for me.

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a1ien51@reddit

I am wasting time now to log in at 10PM to make a 5 minute change that I am not allowed to make during regular business hours to limit impact which also makes no sense because my process kicks off at 10:30PM... lol

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WestBrink@reddit

I'm an engineer at an oil refinery. Something comes down and they need me to help, I get called. These days they usually just call for guidance rather than me coming in since I technically work for our HQ office and nobody at the refinery is actually in my chain of command, but it still happens every now and again... Random calls after hours with questions are extremely common. Several a week at least.

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Carlpanzram1916@reddit

I would say the majority of 9-5 office workers do not ever do this. They have office hours and a salary and that’s it.

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NetDork@reddit

A 9-5 job is 8-5 now that businesses decided they don't need to pay for a lunch hour.

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Odd_Dragonfruit_2662@reddit

Jokes on them. I just leave at 4…

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NetDork@reddit

Pfft, amateur. I'm out by 3.

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lokland@reddit

Good to know that wasn’t just me imagining things. I’ve only had 8-5 jobs

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RuPaulver@reddit

Yeah. Mine's 9-6. Don't know if that's better or worse though lol

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krombopulousnathan@reddit

IT is the big exception here. Office job, but certainly not unusual to work weekends on either emergencies or big software transitions

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MetalEnthusiast83@reddit

IT for 20 years here. Have never worked a weekend.

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chloapsoap@reddit

Good for you? Lots of people in tech do. Weekend releases are extremely common in my industry

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MetalEnthusiast83@reddit

Ok and lots of people don’t. Sorry for answering the fucking question I guess.

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chloapsoap@reddit

Relax, it’s not that serious. I’m just agreeing that it’s not unusual to occasionally work weekends in IT. Your personal experience isn’t universal.

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MetalEnthusiast83@reddit

Man my point was that people who DO work weekends also don’t have a universal experience. Redditors are so god damned annoying.

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chloapsoap@reddit

Yeah, it the OP asked how common it was. And it is common…

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MetalEnthusiast83@reddit

It’s also common not to experience it.

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chloapsoap@reddit

That’s pretty uncommon in my industry. Regardless of what company you work for. Which is what I was saying to begin with I don’t know why you’re being so combative. Sorry if I said something to upset you

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devnullopinions@reddit

> Good for you? You’re the one that came off as combative to start tbh

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Substantial-Ad-8575@reddit

Hmm, IT since 1992. Very unusual that an IT worker has never had to do some work on a weekend. Like 5-10% have not…

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MetalEnthusiast83@reddit

I didn't say never, but it's extremely rare for me. I haven't actually worked a full day on a weekend in probably a decade. I am on call for 2 weeks a year so will answer stuff then, but some times I don't get any calls.

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Substantial-Ad-8575@reddit

Yeah, just getting ready to oversee a major cloud migration. Moving from AWS/Azure to our own private cloud, just over 14k servers/devices next weekend. CIO/CFO team Sauk g that will be a $36m-$40m a month savings. But boss will give me 3 weeks of April off. So good trade for a long-high workload weekend. So will have 9-14 of these events every year. IT consulting is a bit different. Mostly passing on 30 years of experience myself now. But fun times for teams I lead, working 2-3 days a week on average…

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cmh_ender@reddit

same here. at least once a year we are required to cover a weekend shift. 50/50 if we get any sort of comp time to cover for it (salary)

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Far_Winner5508@reddit

Yeah, IT here, boss makes sure upper management understands that unless they want to fund 24/7, we work 8-5 M-F. That being said, many of us do check on the systems over the weekends and sometimes someone catches something that can be dealt with remotely but if it’s major, they’ll just email team, customers, let folks know something is down and work issue on Monday.

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Substantial-Ad-8575@reddit

Work IT Consulting. Most projects have overnight/weekend work. Mass majority of our IT clients, their workers get time off/extra pay. My company, it’s always extra pay/bonus. And yeah we are an unusual IT consulting company. We get paid more by completing projects early, so yeah not unusual to work 3 weekends a month, it works out to maybe 5-8 hours. But hey, extra $2k-$3k plus $8k-$20k of bonus? Yeap let’s do it…

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Trakeen@reddit

Yep. I’m 3rd level of escalation for on call so that doesn’t happen much for me but weekend and evening work is common. Changes need to happen outside of regular business hours. Though these days with global workforce someone is always impacted

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phouchg0@reddit

And if you are THE guy for a specific system, application or business process, it's always you

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captainstormy@reddit

Depends on the job. "IT" covers a lot of roles. Guys who put their hands on hardware probably have to do it the most often. After that admins for servers and databases probably have it happen from time to time. Guys doing development or analytics probably never have it happen. I'm a software engineer and Linux System Admin. It's probably only happened to me 2-3 times in my 22 year career. Also helps I'm a Linux Admin and not a Windows admin. I've never had an emergency issue with a Linux system, just regular maintenance and upgrades.

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Traditional_Trust418@reddit

My dad is in IT and they know that if he works on a Saturday he isn't coming to work the following Monday

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V-Right_In_2-V@reddit

Yeah I’m a system admin and we do all our deployments and upgrades on weekends. We spread it out though so it’s like one Saturday every other month. Sometimes we can do twice a month but that’s rare

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beenoc@reddit

Manufacturing as well (like a manufacturing engineer.) If a piece of process equipment breaks down, and the team who's already there on weekend/shift can't figure out what's wrong, they'll call the on-call engineer, and if you can't figure it out over the phone, you're heading to the plant. Now, that's not really a thing in media - I can't think of a single character from a popular movie or TV show, ever, who was a manufacturing engineer. But it does happen.

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Slab8002@reddit

Yeah, I feel like our IT does a lot of software upgrades and the like on weekends to avoid when our software and systems engineers are doing most of their work during the week.

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ScarletDarkstar@reddit

I agree. Lots of offices are just closed nights and weekends and nobody expects them to be available.

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paranoid_70@reddit

In 30+ years, I can't think I was ever 'called into work' during my time off.

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Boring_Scratch_9701@reddit

Emails are a given for pretty much every job.

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Odd_Dragonfruit_2662@reddit

Literally never

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zylpher@reddit

More than I would have liked when I was in the Military. Probably once or twice a month. I lived on base and was single. So my phone number was at the top of the list. Twice when I worked retail. Once when the store got robbed and I had to cover for the manager while he dealt with the cops. Once because it was easier for me to get to work in the snow than the person scheduled. The former sucked, because it was open to close. The latter was whatever, shortened hours due to weather, and we only dealt with commercial that day. As a mechanic, outside the military. Absolutely never. This is between automotive, shipyard, or manufacturing.

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CorpseRida@reddit

It depends on the job. This is something that usually happens to a salaried employee because an hourly employee would have to be compensated and that takes more money from the company's earnings. For example, let's say you were an assistant manager somewhere: You're probably earning a salary instead of hourly pay. If an employee calls out of work or the staff count is just generally low, you'll be working extra shifts for free. This scenario changes depending on the job, of course. City jobs for example, have alternating weeks of being "on call" so they may easily work 80 hours that week but will be compensated with overtime pay. Again, the concept of being called in to work varies wildly between jobs.

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11B_35P_35F@reddit

Im in HR. So far, never. It does help though that HR are the only folks that would have access to my personal phone number and that has been me. Nobody else can reach me after hours as my number and email arent listed If I had a work phone (prior company but not current one) it got put up/silenced/or just left in my car or the office. I dont put anything work related on my personal devices.

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Greenearthgirl87@reddit

Common. Consultant here.

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jackfaire@reddit

In my job our office runs 24/7. There's two night shifters that's me and my counterpart. In four years I've been called in same day to cover for him I'd say 3 times. That's called in an not counting pre-arranged covering. One was notable for being a perfect storm of "Oh shit" because he came down sick and it happened to be the same day I had to move from my old place to my current place so my work set up was packed. The swing and morning leads had to split the difference. Usually outside of illness we're not having to be called in. I'll work sick since I'm work from home and can't get coworker's sick but if I'm really foggy I'll call out.

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Adorable_Dust3799@reddit

I'm retail so all the time, obviously. My bestie is military management and always takes a cruise on vacation specifically because he's "not important enough to rate a helicopter". He started that after being called in from Disney world. His phone was off, but some people knew where he was and he was paged.

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UnihornWhale@reddit

My spouse is an IT contractor with the federal government. He regularly has to work odd hours just to ensure no one is using the system he has to update. However, ‘called in unexpectedly’ is much rarer. It can depend on the issue and the agency. Certain federal acronyms are a bigger deal than others

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BearsLoveToulouse@reddit

My friends works IT for government as well. He told me he works so often outside work hours they bought him a wireless hotspot device so he could work easily. That being said I think it mostly happens on days he has off, not necessarily on weekends.

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blipsman@reddit

Not that often unless you're like IT and oversee critical servers, website, etc. Nowadays, often urgent after-hours requests would be done from home.

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OpeningChipmunk1700@reddit

It depends on the job. I don’t get physically called into work on evenings and weekends, but sometimes I do have to work evenings and weekends. Do I love it? No. But generally it is necessary for my work. I get compensated an obscene amount of money in part because of my availability.

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Ok-Office6837@reddit

It’s the same for accounting, except during busy season you are required to into the office on the weekends a lot of times. They will SOMETIMES give you half of your Sunday so you can grocery shop and do laundry but then you’re usually expected to sign on at home that night.

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Proof-Emergency-5441@reddit

The joys of not doing public accounting. This is not our lives in corporate.

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devnullopinions@reddit

My father in-law has been “retired” for several years from his job as a corporate tax lawyer. He now works as an accountant performing audits for corporations as his retirement hobby and sometimes works weekends lmao.

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Proof-Emergency-5441@reddit

Sweetie- that's literally public accounting. He's just working for himself instead of for a larger firm.

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AskAnAmerican-ModTeam@reddit

Your comment was removed as it violates Rule 9 which is “Treat the person you are replying to with respect and civility.” It means that your comment either contained an insult aimed at another user or it showed signs of causing incivility in the comments. Please consider this a warning as repeated violations will result in a ban. If you have questions regarding your submission removal - please contact the moderator team via [modmail](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/AskAnAmerican).

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devnullopinions@reddit

It’s funny to me that most people wouldn’t like doing public accounting but my father in law thrives on it so much he does it in retirement. That’s why I made the comment. No need to be condescending and call me sweetie.

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FinanceGuyHere@reddit

I feel like lawyers and salesmen are basically small business owners. We keep a schedule but it could change at any time for any reason

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boomzgoesthedynamite@reddit

Same. Sometimes I continue working when I get home or put in a little work from my couch on the weekend. Well worth it for what they pay me.

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SheenasJungleroom@reddit

Not a lawyer, but I work for a major law firm running research reports. Sometimes the boss says “we’d really appreciate it if you can do some overtime tonight or over the weekend. The attorneys really want to get started on this project.” Fine by me because I get time-and-a-half overtime pay.

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shakeyshake1@reddit

Also an attorney and a solo. I’m going on vacation next week and I expect to spend 30 minutes a day on emails, and there’s a thing I have to file electronically on a specific day when I’m gone. I don’t like it, but I’m used to it. It is what it is, the work doesn’t go away just because I do. It’s just the reality of the job.

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CeeCee123456789@reddit

I am an English professor. It is pretty much the same unless I am teaching a Saturday class. In 6 years, that has only happened twice in community colleges. It has never happened when I was teaching at universities. Well, except the obscene amount of money. 🤣🤣🤣

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Ineffable7980x@reddit

I work in sales. Occasionally there are networking events at night, but they are always planned, so I know about them weeks in advance. As far as my company "calling me in", it never happens. We are strictly 8-5 M-F.

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I_am_just_here11@reddit

I mean my work is closed on the weekends so there would be no point in calling me to work.

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Vast-Jello-7972@reddit

I’m in the restaurant industry. It happens all the time. Restaurants run on skeleton crews. There is no one in the restaurant who is not already doing 1.5 people’s worth of work at any given moment. If someone calls in sick or no-shows, someone *needs* to be there to replace them or the business is seriously affected. Anyone at any level can get one of these “emergency” calls. Usually they’ll call all the hourly workers at the bottom first, if they can’t get someone at the bottom to do it, they’ll start working their way up the management ladder. If no one says yes it’s usually the manager’s responsibility to cover the shift, but managers are really good at making hourly workers feel like these emergency shifts are mandatory if they *really* don’t feel like coming in.

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MerbleTheGnome@reddit

Data architect / software developer for a major university (been there almost 25 years) Most of my work for the past 10 years has been entirely remote. Right now I do physically go to the office one day a week - and that is only because I also have a part time adjunct professor position which requires being there in person on the days that I teach a class. Calls at night to fix an issue - it happens, but not all that often and when it does I can fix the problem from home. Actually going into the office, it has happened, but those events are usually scheduled in advance. The events when I actually need to be there would be related to major software updates which involve multiple subsystems and the reason for being there is a just in case precaution.

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Duque_de_Osuna@reddit

Never, but I sometimes have work I need to do in the evening or weekend.

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devnullopinions@reddit

It’s not uncommon in the tech industry if you’re building/running a live service to occasionally be on call which could result in you having to work outside of regular business hours. My wife works in the medical field and it’s not uncommon for medical professionals to occasionally be on call to handle patient emergencies.

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FoolhardyBastard@reddit

I’m a nurse and I work a hell of a lot of weekends. Depending on the type of nursing (procedural, like OR, GI lab, IR, Cath Lab) you may have designated on-call weekends where you need to be available to come in for emergencies on the weekend. The rotation of such weekends depends on the organization you work for. Could be every third weekend or every other, or as little as every 6th. Depending on how busy your facility is, sometimes you hardly ever get called, and sometimes your call weekend is a death sentence of overtime.

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bowling_nun@reddit

Software developer for business apps in the 80's & 90's for large companies. A lot.

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Appropriate-Food1757@reddit

Not very

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newhappyrainbow@reddit

I work in an unusual industry. It’s not exactly what you probably think of as “corporate” (it’s niche and blue collar) but definitely not “emergency” related. If I get called in unexpectedly, it generally means getting on a plane and leaving the state for a few days, and I generally get about 24 hours notice, sometimes less. It kind of sucks. I don’t love doing it, but the pay is good and management takes very kindly to accepting those jobs. It’s not forced, just… HIGHLY encouraged. Occasionally, it takes me to a place where I know someone and I’ll have the opportunity to visit, so that’s a perk. If I’m not scheduled immediately after, they have been known to be flexible about the home flight, so if it’s a place I want to stay for a while at, I need to cover my own lodging and transportation for the additional stay, but they will still cover the flight as long as it’s comparable. I’ve gotten some cheap vacations that way. Happens around 3-5 times a year. If it isn’t leaving the state, it’s usually more like “can you do this thing at this other place and different time instead of the thing you thought you were going to be doing?”. That happens regularly but it’s fine. The hours are generally the same and it puts you in good stead to be flexible.

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KopitarFan@reddit

Never. In fact, we have a lot of things in place at my work for the express reason that no one should have to come in after hours. I’ve had job like that in the past, but since the dawn of web services like AWS I haven’t had to come in after hours. I used to have to, sometimes, go to our data center to troubleshoot a server.

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BokkoTheBunny@reddit

Literally never, if we are required to work OT we are told at least 24 hours in advance.

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buzzrusted@reddit

I feel like this is only certain professions that physically have to be there in certain cases like maintenance work (like my father, he has to go in on weekend and nights when there’s issues), things in healthcare like doctors, ect. But also people who work retail, fast food ect are very likely to get called in on weekend when they aren’t scheduled due to scheduling demands.

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hvl1755@reddit

Never in my line of work. I have a set Monday through Friday remote job and they certainly don’t want to pay me overtime. I’ve had retail and bartending jobs in the past that would call to ask if I could cover a shift when someone called out though.

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Sooner70@reddit

There was a time when I got called in probably once every 6-8 weeks. That said, it’s been years since I’ve gotten called in. Different jobs. Different realities.

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AgathaM@reddit

I’m an engineer. Sometimes I have to answer my phone and send some emails on weekends for urgent matters. Sometimes I have to physically come into the office if it’s something even more complicated, but that doesn’t happen often. But not doing it means that a lot of people can’t do theirs, and sometimes that means that people can get hurt. So I send some emails and answer the phone. It’s usually about once a month or so.

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patsyyer@reddit

It feels like every corporate job I hear about does have that “surprise" weekend work moment - like, who wouldn’t want to spend their Saturday night staring at spreadsheets? Is it just me or does that sound like a plot twist gone wrong?

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12468097531@reddit

0% chance with mine or my husbands jobs

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_Internet_Hugs_@reddit

I worked as a secretary for a medium sized business and was never called in. Not once. Only rarely worked late, and then it was because we were dealing with something very unusual like a tax audit or something.

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Karamist623@reddit

When I worked retail in pharmacy, I was called in often. Now, I’m still in pharmacy but on the specialty side, and we don’t work nights or weekends.

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Osric250@reddit

Work cybersecurity, there’s a few times a year some shit happens and it needs to be taken care of right now to get an intruder out of the network. We keep an on call rotation but if something big happens it’s all hands on deck. But my work is also super flexible with work hours and isn’t bad at spotting you comp hours if you’re out of normal office hours.

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TheCouncilOfPete@reddit

I work in a factory They try to get me to come in but I never answer their phone calls unless im in the facility 🤷‍♂️

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Calm_Criticism1958@reddit

It's absolutely not done. But I'm also a tax examiner and federal employees and employers have pretty strict roles regarding when we can when, if we can work overtime, when overtime can be worked, and whether it's mandatory or not.

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One-Sale4366@reddit

I got called in to attend a crisis meeting on a Sunday at a university to discuss a shooting at a Homecoming Dance. My office sponsored the event. Luckily there were no injuries from the gunshots.

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sluttypidge@reddit

Sometimes I get a call "SOS we're drowning in the ER you available? You'll get call back pay." There are weekend requirements and I work the night shift. It's my norm and I'm probably not your target for the question.

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AshDenver@reddit

I don’t get called in so much as, because I’m the director of a 50 person department, I just need to be available. I worked 4.5h yesterday (Sunday) so yeah, somewhat common for office work depending on the industry.

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rickdadz@reddit

I’m in risk management. I don’t have to “go in” on weekends often but I get a call or email that requires some follow up at least 2-3 times a month. During the week, I’m usually home from work by 6pm but it’s pretty common to get calls until 8 if there’s something going on, and there kind of always is.

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crxslh919@reddit

Union truck driver. I can count on 1 hand how many Saturdays I've worked in the last 5 years or so. I've been doing the same job for 23.5 years, have never worked a Sunday. And most years, I might only work 6 Mondays of the entire year. Made 6 figures last year and worked about 185 days total for the year, after vacation and PTOs.

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wampwampwampus@reddit

I'm higher Ed staff, and the answer is all over the place in my field. A few offices are purely 9-5. Most will have an occasional weekend or evening for annual, predictable events. Some folks have responsibility for a facility, or for student emergencies in a residence hall: they're on call for a week (or weeks!) at a time, 24/7 (couldn't be me).

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sigmalibrae3@reddit

Me, former residence life staff: if I’m being “called in” it’s BECAUSE I’m on-call. As a higher ed professional, I can think of… maybe twice? Once for a campus wide bedbug infestation, another to support students during an on-campus student death.

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ggbookworm@reddit

I'm in IT and when on call, used to get called to go in at all hours, but now I fix everything from home. It was not unusual to get 8 or 9calls a night at one point when I was new to a team, but I went to great effort to get that down to just 1 or 2 a week.

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ITrCool@reddit

I'm in IT, working for an MSP......that's normal life for me.

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VioletJackalope@reddit

It depends on the job. My job is 9-5, no weekends or holidays.

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TheMarshmallowFairy@reddit

It is very specific to the type of career you have, and even then it depends what kind of setting that is. It’s common in retail work, restaurants, bars, hospitality, hospitals, or anywhere else that’s open nights and weekends or 24/7. I am still in grad school, but I have a tentative job offer. In that job, I will never be called in on a weekend, because it is a building that is only open M-F 8-5 when I’m already going to be working. I may choose to do things outside of those hours related to work, but I won’t be called in for it not paid extra for it (I’ll be salaried). But within my same field, there are plenty of positions where I may be asked to cover someone else’s shift or stay late if I have one of those jobs.

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Khaleesi_dany_t@reddit

At my last job? All the time. We had an on call schedule and about two weeks before my last day I was a really popular person to call to ask if I'd take over people's holidays or on call weekends. I said no Now I'm at a different job and the only person who can work on call or from home is our office manager.

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CPA_Lady@reddit

I’m a CPA. This is busy season. But it’s not unexpected . You know on Friday how much you will work that weekend.

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NeverRarelySometimes@reddit

It's pretty normal to have to do something outside normal working hours. In my experience, most after-hours work is scheduled, though. Emergencies are handled via WFH - it's the fastest way to deal with an emerging issue.

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anneofgraygardens@reddit

Never. I've never gotten a call or text from a coworker. i did recently give my boss my phone number in an emergency situation but he's never used it. I honestly can't imagine there would ever be an emergency data problem that would require my assistance on the weekend.

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Forward_Tank8310@reddit

Early in my career, it happened to me only when on a bid team for major sales contracts. I would have to review the RFP or RFI details, compare with the sales team product response proposal, and then determine if they met all the requirements, otherwise providing alternatives.

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abjectadvect@reddit

it happened a lot when I was working in tech; I didn't have to commute physically but I've had to be on videocalls with my work laptop at like 4am on a Saturday

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TankDestroyerSarg@reddit

24/7/365 Retail, it was pretty common to be called to cover a shift or deal with an issue after your scheduled hours or scheduled days off. Manufacturing, never have to. We only run the place 5 days a week, 6 if people volunteer for overtime. Plant manager doesn't have to come in, but he may get a call about something going down and we have to go home.

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msspider66@reddit

We have an afterhours department to handle things during nights and weekends. Once every couple of months they may reach out to me with a question that I can usually answer without logging on. A handful of times I have been asked if I wanted to work a few hours because of expected issues. I usually do if I am able. It gives me a head start on issues I would have to deal with on Monday with an added bonus of overtime. Only once, a few weeks ago, I was called on a Sunday to ask if I can hop on a few hours.

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SueNYC1966@reddit

My husband USA lawyer. He often works in the weekend from home. Today the office was closed. He billed a full day.

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Phaedrus317@reddit

I’m an instructor for a software company, teaching clients how to use said software. I’m not saying it couldn’t ever happen if we really needed someone to fill in for classes teaching in other time zones, but I’d like imagine wed probably just cancel the class. In my previous position I worked in client support. It certainly happened then, if the client issues were severe enough to need my specific presence.

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Prestigious-Name-323@reddit

I’m on call every three weeks but it’s minimal. I pretty much only have to do something if there’s a problem which is rare.

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ELMUNECODETACOMA@reddit

I got a call during the holiday today because the developer who was officially oncall was called for a problem they couldn't solve quickly, there were no other team members online because it was a holiday, and I'm the manager so it's my responsibility that the production environment is working. I'm salaried and pretty well compensated overall. It's just a part of the job that while I don't technically work 60 hour weeks, I have to keep an eye on things 60 hours a week.

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heatrealist@reddit

It happened too often with me. I worked as a software engineer for a large company. If something went wrong at a customer site I would sometimes get called to provide some kind support. Most of the time it had nothing to do with things I worked on. But they wanted someone to triage the issue and find out who to contact. I worked remotely so at least I wasn’t driving to an office. But I was on call and had to get online/phone and do stuff. The customers were spread out all over the world. So I don’t think anyone was going to an office other than the people at the customer site. Most were just doing it from home. I did not like it at all.

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MasterOfPuppetsMetal@reddit

I'm an IT tech in K-12. I'm hourly and have never been asked to come in the evenings or during the weekends. We've had several events happen over the weekend where work was offered, but we're not required to work outside of our scheduled times.

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Utterlybored@reddit

Before I retired in 2022, I had a job where I was told I had to be available 24/7. The boss often took advantage of it for no justifiable purpose, so I figured it was a power trip.

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Excellent-Gold1905@reddit

Depends heavily on the job. When I was in highschool I used to work at McDonalds. Maybe 2-ish times a month I'd get called in on a day off. Usually it was someone else who was scheduled being sick, quitting out of nowhere, something along those lines and they'd call other people in. That said because I was technically a minor at the time there were limits how much I could work so I probably got called in less than adult workers. In other jobs I've had its been much less common, but there are also almost nobody just randomly quitting on the spot, few people are going to "call in sick" so they can go to a party on a friday night, and similar. Which really thats what is often causing these callins other people were scheduled and for some reason they are not keeping the schedule so other workers get called in to fill in. Once you get into more serious careers its much less common. That said hospital workers can and will get "called in" all the time, and its effectively part of the job/compensation package to be "on call".

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Calaveras-Metal@reddit

it's very rare for most jobs. In my old line of work I was responsible for the IT stuff at work. So all the servers, network and internet connection. My job was nominally 9-5. But the business was 7 days a week 365 days a year. (it was a TV station). So when the network goes down on a weekend I have to come in to see what is up. It happened enough that I had a VPN connection to a console server in the machine room. If I could remote into that from home I knew the internet was ok. Then I would check the SQL server, WIFI controller etc. If everything was green than I'd pass the buck to a broadcast engineer. It was a problem with some app or something that an inexperienced person had misdiagnosed as the network being down.

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Open-Buffalo7685@reddit

It’s real. I work a corporate job. I work a LOT of nights and weekends.

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Chemical_Basil113@reddit

I’m in the medical setting in an outpatient office. I’m salary but since our office isn’t open on the weekends I do not ever do anything on weekends or after hours. It’s great and I love my job, being salary does have some nice benefits too! Now I’ve also known some IT people for various companies that were basically on call 24/7 (I would never work a job like that)

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Inspi@reddit

Depends on the job. I've worked plenty of weekends, nights, and even 24+ hour shifts (record was 40 hours straight) in IT. But now I've moved up in the world and almost never work any overtime.

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Sugah-mama21@reddit

My job we get asked to work dbls a lot but we have the ability to say no.

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l23VIVE@reddit

Last year I worked around 275hrs of OT, we're finally staffed tho so I'm hoping to only work closer to 100hrs.

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Cant-think-of-a-nam@reddit

In a corporate office job unless you with IT or machine maintenance pretty much never

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VisionAri_VA@reddit

A few times a year, usually because something has gone *very* wrong and can’t wait until the next business day.

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TrillyMike@reddit

Never

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kibbeuneom@reddit

In the last 3 years, I had one Saturday I had to hop on a call for a couple of hours. In the 2 years prior to that, about once a quarter I'd have to attend and coordinate a late night software release event.

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1965BenlyTouring150@reddit

When I worked in the private sector, it rarely happened. Now that I work for a nonprofit, it's at least twice a month.

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AttilaTheFun818@reddit

It has happened in previous jobs. I used to work in theatrical post production and had a hand in getting movies to theaters. Now and again they’d call me in to review a new duplicate negative so we could make more prints. That would take me about 20 minutes (if it met my standards). A day of 1.5x pay for an hour and a half of time, including commute, was pretty sweet. Happened occasionally when I worked retail but I could just ignore those calls if I wasn’t feeling it. In my current career (film industry payroll) it’s happened maybe twice in ten years, and only for true “holy shit” issues. Both cases was my trying to resolve an issue that would have led to a work stoppage because of some union issue.

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Kyle81020@reddit

Depends on the business you’re in. My industry operates 24/7, and I’m in operations. Night and weekend work is going to happen. I typically get a few calls on most weekends, occasionally have to go to the office or a field location on a weekend, and a few times a year I have to travel on or over a weekend.

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ConeyIslandMan@reddit

Been at same job 38 years, got called once to come in for emergency………woulda have been paid time and a half and said NOPE

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muphasta@reddit

I've been called in twice in 25 years working at basically the same location. I deal with secure spaces and had to go in for alarm issues.

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SkipperJingles@reddit

Utility (electrical power distribution) engineer here. Under normal circumstances, no weekends will be worked. However, dealing with powerlines and the inevitability of ice storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc., I will be called into work on my weekends several times a year. I’d say I will normally work 4-7 weekends a year for “storm” calls. I am salaried, but my company does pay straight time overtime to us engineers who work storms, so I am more than happy to do so.

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bluecifer7@reddit

I have never ever done this

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somecow@reddit

Office jobs don’t do this, unless their boss is a crazy ass, and that’s a sign to get a new job. The rest of us already work overnight, weekends, and holidays anyway, not just emergency stuff (there’s a whole lot of people you never see cooking food, stocking shelves, keeping your electricity on, pulling things from warehouses, driving trucks, even working in offices, etc). It’s just for the plot, and that just means turn your phone off or don’t answer it, cause no.

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wotantx@reddit

IT is an office job, and it happens.

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LizardHunters@reddit

I work in IT. We had a server issue Saturday night, and I ended up working from home 3 hours Saturday evening. This is rare. It maybe happens once or twice a year.

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2PlasticLobsters@reddit

Meeting planners often work weekends if that's when an event is scheduled. But it's uncommon for that to happen on short notice. The only time I ever heard of it was when Person A slipped a spinal disc moving furniture on a Saturday & Person B had to take over. She had to spend Sunday making travel arrangements & getting up to speed. By all reports she did a great job despite the short notice.

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dudestir127@reddit

For me, never. I have a desk job.

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wismke83@reddit

I’m in a office job and we wouldn’t get called in to the office. With smart phones and that we work from home twice a week, so we all have a set up to work at home, we generally have the ability to work “off hours” like nights and weekends when necessary. I’m in financial advising for city governments, so a lot of the work is client driven and we have a lot of autonomy in terms of work, meaning I judge what I need to do and when I need to do it, and sometimes that calls for working on nights or weekends, to get a project done. I just was on vacation and generally spent at least 30 mins to an hour a day reviewing and responding the emails and doing light work.

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FreshHotPoop@reddit

I’m a plumber so it happens all the time

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Responsible-Fun4303@reddit

Depends on the job. I used to work a corporate job and we needed someone on call on Saturday as work was continuous and would come in at any day/hour (Sundays we caught a break and had an after hours team that would handle it). Many times it just was signing on to a work laptop at home to see if work came in (many times none came in at least when I was on call). A few times I had work but was able to work from home thankfully. I worked in insurance which has insane laws at both the state and federal level so we were responsible to abide by all laws, hence if a request for care came in (regardless if it was approved or denied) it had to be handled by the timelines allowed by said laws. Some states had literally a few hours for us to make the determination and communicate it to the clients. It was a stressful job lol. We either saved or cost thousands of dollars depending on if we caught mistakes or didn’t abide by laws.

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Jay_Lockhart@reddit

I don’t have to PHYSICALLY go into work after hours or on days off, but since there’s nothing I do that can’t be done remotely I am doing work from home for probably three hours a day (in addition to my 9.5 in the office) during the week and five a day on the weekends. My boss expects me to be available at her beck and call, basically, despite the fact that she never actually shows up herself.

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Avbitten@reddit

once or twice a month to cover for a sick coworker

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JewelerDry6222@reddit

I don't get called into work. I have planned work on Saturday that happens maybe twice a year due to data import events. But nothing spur of the moment. I believe that maybe executive level or job specific events.

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Apostate_Mage@reddit

A few times a month probably? I work in manufacturing.

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BallBroad41@reddit

i run my families restaurant (took over on paper mid last year) were selling it soon because its failing, thats the one thing i did do is put it for sale) Workers dont understand were tight as heck on cash its a game of them resetting their memory on what i tell them EVERY day. I get calls id say 3-5 times a day and texts 3-5 aswell just thismorning 30 mins before a shift a worker texted me, this was my one day this week i waas gonna sleep in. instead i had to find someone quick to cover it thank god i have more bartenders then i know what to do with so they all want hours. Its noon right now and ive been called 2 more times and texted 3 times. all telling me im low on this or out of this. Called into work i have to go in usually half my days off, when i have a day off that means im not working a regular shift usually im still spending an hour or few driving somewhere to get stuff for the restaurant. I havent had a regular day off since christmas day, but i was really sick then so didnt mean much the last time i was gonna take a vacation which was gonna be my first since 2016. was last year in august for 8 days then my main worker waited till the day before to text they quit no notice. This is part of the reason im selling i dont wanna be the buck stops here person, i want to be able to work a regular job or be my own boss with no workers so nobody can disappoint or fck me over lol If i get fcked over i want it to be only my fault. I wanted to say more here but im rambling and frustrated :/ Though being reddit im sure im gonna get dove on because managers and owners are always to blame not the employee, were all human.

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fullerm@reddit

In the 8 years I have worked in my office job, I have come in outside office hours 3 times, all on my own initiative. Someone needed to be here for a scheduled event, so I agreed to do it. I was given other time off during the week to compensate for the time I was needed.

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brownmtn@reddit

When I worked in advertising it was probably every other weekend.

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mburucuja@reddit

It really depends on the job.

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Not_an_alt_69_420@reddit

If it happens with any regularity, and you work as part of a team, most places have on-call schedules. My old man is a programmer, and he spends two weeks out every eight on call. It was the same thing when I worked at a free clinic. But that's not always the case. When I was a journalist, I was expected to be available 24/7 unless I was too sick to get out of bed (in which case I had to make calls at home).

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Soul_fragrance@reddit

Agreed. Depends majorly on job type.

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arah91@reddit

In my experience I would say it's heavily tied to weather or not your job allows other people to keep doing theirs. Mine doesn't part but I basically have monthly products that I need to hit, I've never been called a half hours. People who work with factories shipping and production support, where if something goes wrong the whole factory might go down, those people seem to be getting called at all the hours all the time.

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Crash217@reddit

^^ for me it’s NEVER. For my coworker, it’s fairly common to be called at night or on weekends. I do damage analysis reporting and create process documentation, he is the engineer on a particular piece of testing equipment that often runs on nights and weekends due to customer and workflow demand.

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awesomeperson882@reddit

Canadian here, but for what it’s worth I’m a fleet mechanic and I get called in regularly to go deal with a breakdown. During the summer we work 6-4 M-F in the shop so if there’s a charter breakdown after 4 I often get the call, but if I can’t work it, there’s no expectation since I’m not on call. I volunteer for on call work on weekends though

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Felinius@reddit

Not emergency services, but not white collar either. Quality inspector and repair tech for a major manufacturing company. It’s less common at my current plant, but there’s been long stretches, especially during launches, where vacations and weekends were just nonexistent. 7/12’s were common at one plant, and I’ve been called into another due to stop ships. An amusing anecdote; I once got called into another due for a stop ship, because some prototype parts might have gotten out and could cause a recall. Was told to check the parts for a “pimple” to designate it a prototype part. 6 hours into the quarantine parts and not a single one was found. Asked my boss to see the email, and it read that the prototype parts had a “dimple”. I just stared at him for a moment, went back to the floor, and told everyone we had to start over. We ended up working another 6 hours, then finished up on Saturday. Great overtime, but I was pissed at the miscommunication.

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boneyjoaniemacaroni@reddit

I work in corporate telecom. I sometimes receive emails or teams messages outside of work, but it’s my choice to respond to them. I never do unless it will take me under 2 minutes. Some of the people on my team do work nights and weekends, but I do not. My boss leaves it up to us how we want to manage our time. I do work from home so I’m never actually called into a job site, although other people in my organization may be called into a job site if something emergent happens.

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yozaner1324@reddit

My work has an on-call schedule where I'm on-call for one week every three months. So if there is a customer issue after hours during my week, I'll be called and need to open my laptop and help. Other than that, never. And even when I am on call, I usually don't get called.

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Nobodyville@reddit

I’m a lawyer. Called into work, never. Need or choose to work on weekends, frequently. I don’t work a ton but it’s common for me to bill a couple of hours on the weekends

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No_Promotion_7125@reddit

Sales so it happens sometimes. Customers can be in different time zones or countries. Plants can have issues and go down during 2nd or 3rd shift and that needs to be communicated, some times it’s taking clients out for dinner and drinks. It’s good pay, so I work whenever they need me.

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CheesE4Every1@reddit

Only in busy season and planned months before

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wrigh516@reddit

I'm a Product Owner for Enterprise Apps at an airline. We rotate on-call. I'll get one weekend out of every six, and get called about half the time.

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Ebice42@reddit

My work has an on call schedule. 1 weekend out of 6 i have to monitor the email queue. I get 2 hours of pay per day to check the email. If something critical comes in i have to punch in and work it. (From home, or where ever my laptop is.) Aside from that, my boss has called me 3 times outside of work hours, in 10 years. One was a mistake. He misread the on call schedule. One, i was on vacation and he wanted to let me know that the new contract was. The third was a crisis that would become a disaster at monday 8am. Not out teams fault, but we could be heros

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Taz9093@reddit

It’s not a thing for me but my company strongly encourages “volunteering” at the many, many events they put on.

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JimJam4603@reddit

C-suite, sure. My company has sales reps that need to be present at surgeries, so them too. Regular old office workers, no.

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GizmoCaCa-78@reddit

I work maintenance in a factory. Any supervisor+ level employee is almost expected to be available by phone 24/7. I dont think its written anywhere but they all do it.

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Federal_Pickles@reddit

I occasionally do, but my job, at times, requires coordinated efforts with people around the globe. I usually know about or can predict it beforehand.

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Other-Resort-2704@reddit

Honestly, it depends on the job. From church, I know someone got one of their teeth messed up, so he contacted one of the dentists in the group and that dentist fixed the tooth on the weekend. In retail, I have had it where someone flaked, so I had to work additional couple hours beyond my regular schedule to cover for them.

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Purple-Measurement47@reddit

9-5 salary here, probably about twice a month, but i do work in cloud software

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Medium_Tourist_4832@reddit

This sort of thing is more likely to happen in retail. Especially when someone calls out sick and they need someone to cover a shift. Much less likely in corporate settings.

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Per_sephone_@reddit

I sometimes have night work (like one project a year that lasts a couple of weeks), but I don't get called in for it. My crew is scheduled in advance, and I go meet them on site. There's nobody "above" me telling me to come in.

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Gullible_Departure39@reddit

Very common. Hourly paid jobs and salary jobs. My last job the president would send an email at 2am and call you at 5am to ask why you hadn't responded yet. He was in the same time zone too.

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Emergency_Coyote_662@reddit

depends on the job. I work for a government agency that has a response role in certain scenarios. so i’m neither corporate nor emergency services and I can occasionally be recalled to work.

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Big-Carpenter7921@reddit

More common than it needs to be. Frequently for a job I don't even do anymore

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Valuable_Recording85@reddit

I work in a hospital but not an emergency department. I'm lucky enough to have a position where I can refuse overtime. I work 5x8s, so if the house supervisor calls or texts I just ignore it if I'm not willing to pick up on a day off. I really only pick up when the request is to stay late and take crisis incentive pay. Anything to do with going in before 7am, working a double, or working overnight gets ignored by me. However, I have had plenty of times where I worked long days because I didn't have any relief. Those days can be aggravating, but I can't abandon my psychiatric patients. If there's no relief and I work 12 hours without so much as a bathroom break, I have to do it. But the times it's happened, supervision has gotten an earful because that stuff burns people out real fast. Nobody wants to work where they can't rely on teammates or supervision.

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BirdieRoo628@reddit

It depends on the job. My husband runs a golf course. He often works weekends, especially in spring/summer. But even if he is off, if a piece of irrigation goes out, he has to go fix it. If it snows, he has to plow. If a storm comes through, he has to go clean up limbs. No one calls him in, though.

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HonkHonkTootToot@reddit

I don't even have anybody from work's phone number. I don't pick up phone numbers I don't recognize. I may have finally figured out life in my 30s because this wasn't always the case.

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GrlInt3r46@reddit

0 But I’m pretty damn high up now and my own boss. So if I work late or on a weekend it’s my choice. Back in the day my regular work week was 12 hour days 7 days a week.

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Far_Winner5508@reddit

How many years did you do 12/7s in a row?

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GrlInt3r46@reddit

A decade give or take. And I traveled to a different office each day.

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cryptoengineer@reddit

When I worked datacomm at a bank, it would happen. This was in the 80s, and I carried a pager. Later jobs, not so much, but some SW development houses would have pushes to meet a deadline, and we'd work evenings and sometimes weekends. But it was always the exception, never the rule.

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RetiredBSN@reddit

It's more common in healthcare than in other lines of work. Hospitals run 24/7, and if someone gets sick and can't work, others might need to be called in to cover. I worked in a clinic that had set hours, but if our services were needed on an emergency basis, we had someone taking call that could answer phone calls, get and deliver supplies, or go into the hospital to do treatments. We got paid a pittance for just being on call, but got paid full rates (or overtime if it applied) for at least two hours if we got called in, even if it took less time.

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MissionDelicious3942@reddit

Not even possible for most people I know. Anyone I know with a job that this can occur are highly compensated or in a medical field and are usually paid while on call.

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Better-Credit6701@reddit

IT. When something breaks on the weekend or night, everyone gets a call until it is fixed

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BreakfastBeerz@reddit

It depends on the job. I'm in IT and it's not at all uncommon to get called in to address issues that happen on production systems. I'd imagine this would be completely different for someone in HR. Something like marketing or advertising, I could see getting called in for critical time sensitive matters that might come up. Say for example, parts are missing from a retail display that is expected to be shipped out on Monday.

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Gecko23@reddit

Im in IT, but related to manufacturing supply chain. We schedule work for non-production times, and have ever incentive to have staff present while any production is running. So getting called in unexpectedly is incredibly uncommon. Cyber attack, physical crisis affecting services like a fire or complete power outage, etc. I can say that those that answer directly to the company president get yanked around at all hours, but they agreed to be permanently on a leash when they took the job.

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x_Caffeine_Kitten_x@reddit

I work as a data analyst/data scientist. Not super common, but it does happen maybe once every 6 months. It's usually for less than an hour when it does happen.

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anclwar@reddit

I work in a lab and still wouldn't expect to get called in on a weekend or evening. The only reason I can imagine that happening is if we're about to experience a catastrophic loss of material due to a secondary power outage or a temp controlled unit crashes. We have a rotating on-call list, so generally only one person would go in unless they need backup.

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Traditional_Trust418@reddit

Most people on salary do not do this. I'll work overtime if I get paid overtime. If I'm salary, I'm working exactly my required hours. If I'm hourly, I'll definitely come in for overtime pay

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Plenty_Vanilla_6947@reddit

There was one year when I worked 30 Saturdays. I didn’t receive 30 comp days or overtime. It’s insane and exhausting

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vegasnative@reddit

I get the occasional evening/weekend phone call or email from the highest-ups at my office. I don’t ever have to go in as it’s usually just finding an answer to a question or pulling some data together that can be done from home. Normally it’s not a total surprise- like if theres a board meeting coming up there might be an “emergency” question or something.

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DizzyLead@reddit

For me, working on a weekend day (one or the other but never both) is usually scheduled weeks ahead of time and not something that comes up last minute, but it happens. I tend to “make up” for it by getting a subsequent weekday off.

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Justmakethemoney@reddit

I work in government (law librarian) and have worked on a weekend twice in my 12 years at my current job. 1) outside vendor changed a delivery schedule and suddenly I had a week to do a project that normally takes a month. I could’ve pushed it off a month, but I felt like seeing if I could do it….and I did. 2) Pipe leaked in a storage area over some book cases and I needed to go in and formulate/direct the clean up/try and save the books.

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_S1syphus@reddit

I get it maybe once every other week or so at my pizza job, every minimum wage job ive had has been like that except for Walmart, which for all it's faults runs it's schedule like the Navy

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AlarmedWillow4515@reddit

Maybe once every year or two we have some IT calamity on a weekend and they try to get a hold of us to address it or something bad happens on a Friday and we need to work a couple hours on the weekend to deal with it.

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mtcwby@reddit

It's pretty rare. It was more common 35 years ago when I had a support role and in fact was the only support. Even then it wasn't common

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HVAC_instructor@reddit

In my line of work it was fairly common in residential will to be called out. In commercial work a little less often, and on industrial not often, but when they called you had better be on your way because it was serious

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PoolSnark@reddit

As a manager it is not uncommon, especially when your company works regular weekday hours but your customers work irregular retail hours. This is when managers get the call.

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SabrinaFaire@reddit

Called in last minute? Never. Sometimes we have a need to come in and push through a backlog, but we are given notice about it.

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pinaple_cheese_girl@reddit

Never. I used to work in a therapy clinic with optional weekends (which would be overtime pay) but it’s was optional with advance notice. I’m corporate now and work a strict 9-5.

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RichardAboutTown@reddit

It's a real thing, but not as common as a show might make it look.

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DeezDoughsNyou@reddit

It’s like Jeffrey Katzenberg used to say: “If you don’t come to work on Saturday, don’t bother coming on Sunday.”

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jamiesugah@reddit

I work in TV news and it's happened occasionally, but for the most part it's not necessary for my job (archival). When it happens it's for something like, the weekend guy had to go to the hospital and someone has to cover. Also I ended up doing a couple of hours of OT work the day Queen Elizabeth died (it was my day off).

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teriKatty@reddit

Luckily my department isn’t opened at those time.

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GravityTortoise@reddit

I have only had it happen twice.

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Slippery-Pete76@reddit

Occasionally I will have work I need to get done outside of office hours, but I will just log in from home. I very rarely had to go into the office outside of work hours before remote work became commonplace.

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LettuceInfamous5030@reddit

I work in gaming tech, if there’s a big issue I would be called in to help. Like if our site goes down or something.

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mybluecathasballs@reddit

It is not common at all, unless you have a shit boss.

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Gracefulchemist@reddit

More depends on the industry. I work pharmaceutical quality assurance, and definitely have been called in on weekends. Mostly I knew it was a possibility (on call), but sometimes not, and now my new facility is moving to 7 day operations so we have to be available as well.

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sep780@reddit

For some jobs, it is common. For example, assisted living/nursing homes there is a strict number of aides that have to be working for each shift. If somebody calls in, either somebody else is called to suddenly come in, or somebody has to stay for another 8 hour shift. That’s good or bad boss.

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SabresBills69@reddit

for corporate jobs…the ones that get called in on aceeekend ste 1. bidding for a big contract or a project needs to be done by a deadline. 2. senior corporate ececs 4. to discuss big decisions like a negative PR event or the company in trouble. 5. if a corporation is a world companie so you have business in Asia/ Australia where it’s now Tuesday morning or about to be Tuesday

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DruncleMuncle@reddit

Never - sometimes I would have a client reach out to me on a weekend/evening to escalate an issue.

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No-Market-4906@reddit

Most of my tech jobs have required some amount of on call time where if something breaks after hours you're responsible for fixing it or at least stabilizing the issue until normal working hours. You usually get paid for the time you're on call regardless of if you have to do anything and things don't break that often so it's honestly a pretty good deal.

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seancbo@reddit

Doesn't happen to me. In fact my job gets pissed if I work outside of normal hours.

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AlexV348@reddit

It has never happened at my current job. My last job, I worked for an online store that had most of their business during Monday to Friday so occasionally we'd have to do site maintainence on the weekend.

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Reasonable_Mood_5260@reddit

Big companies generally have backups for every position so it would be rare to be called in, except in the case where there is a deadline like a software release. Smaller companies is all hands on deck. You would hope to be compensated for the loss of your free time by a stake in the company or a bonus check or promotion. But any company will call you in if you have a bad boss which is common.

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SteveS117@reddit

I’m a corporate engineer. I’ve never had to go into work on a weekend or evening. Most that has ever happened is taking a call from home at 7pm because it’s with people in Korea.

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No-Profession422@reddit

Fairly common, mainly industry dependent, IMO. When I worked Security, it was pretty common due to call outs. Fairly common in Healthcare. Though many times, people just stay over their shift. I did that Saturday due to a call out. Did a 16 hr shift.

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Syndromia@reddit

For office workers? Almost never. Ive been called in 1 time over the weekend since Ive been on a desk job. But our nurses and aides get called in All The Time, "Im offering a $?/hour bonus for anyone who can come in, would you like to work 7-1900 on Saturday? No? How about till 1500?"

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thatsad_guy@reddit

I work in TV production. I get called in from time to time. The show must go on and all that BS

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beardiac@reddit

Years ago when I worked in a technical support role, there were definitely some late nights and the occasional weekend work. But it was rare. But most of the jobs I've had since generally stick to the 9-5 with maybe a few hours here and there when doing software releases or other time-sensitive things.

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GeneralBlumpkin@reddit

I'm on call for a week once a month. They can be very busy weeks (I fix diesel generators) like last month, I had 82 hours in that week. This on-call week I had no calls. It just depends. Sometimes I get called in the middle of the night. Sometimes I get called when I just got home

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Aggravating_Hat4799@reddit

I’m in healthcare. Very common

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getElephantById@reddit

Only a couple times in 20 years have I been *required* to go into work on a weekend, or work late into the evening. That is to say, someone said "hey, all hands on deck, we need you to come in this weekend to get this done". I have voluntarily worked weekends many more times than that—let's say 50-100 times—because I felt overworked and wanted to catch up. That said, I have goofed off and not done anything all day many more times. I feel I should mention that if I'm going to complain about being overworked.

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visitor987@reddit

Its common in IT but you can often fix it at home. For maintenance repair it very common

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DragonKing0203@reddit

It depends heavily on the job. Some jobs you’ll never have it happen (office jobs, salaried positions). Some jobs it’ll happen often (emergency professions, trade).

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PotterChick2818@reddit

I have one Saturday a month where I have to be in the building as the manager on duty. The rest of the time it’s people emailing me on weekends because no one knows how to figure things out on their own.

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Loud_Inspector_9782@reddit

Not often unless there is a crisis. One son works for an airline, and he does get called in or assist on line during bad weather or other incidents.

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jvc1011@reddit

The last corporate job I had, they got very angry when they called me in during church on Palm Sunday and I didn’t answer my phone. International development consulting, an industry that is dead and desperately needed restructuring anyway.

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Whatisthisnonsense22@reddit

I'm in management in manufacturing. It's about once a week I get called on a night or weekend. I don't always have to go into the plant, but they need an answer to a question.

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the-quibbler@reddit

0% for office work. Sometimes for tech services. Usually people are properly "on-call" for such things, except in very small companies.

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qu33nof5pad35@reddit

I work for a medical university in commercial real estate, and some of our project managers have to be on call during severe weather.

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esaule@reddit

It depends on jobs, but that is quite uncommon. If you are an office worker, then it is usually a case of "the shit hit the fan, so we need all hands on deck". And so almost by design this should be uncommon because that means operation broke down somehow. If you are working in a store or some customer facing parts of the business, it is more common. Think a restaurant, we need 3 cooks to run the kitchen, one of them called off. What do you do? Usually you call a cook that is in their day off and you pay them to show up.

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sparkledoom@reddit

My husband is a doctor and I’m in tech, these are both jobs where being “on call” is often part of the job description. We’ve also both purposefully sought out jobs that have no “on call” responsibilities, because being on call sucks, but we have both had times in our life where we were expected to be available to respond after hours. In medicine, it seems like being on call means to expect contact, how much depends on the specialty. In tech, whether you actually get bothered on call is very variable depending on the company. I’ve mostly worked in places where it was rare to need to respond when on call. I worked in law previously and working evenings and weekends wasn’t uncommon, but you weren’t suddenly called in. You just had a workload that extended beyond the workday. Frequently. I think more jobs are like that, people are working long hours. Only a handful of industries have a need for someone to be available to respond to an “emergency”.

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Far_Winner5508@reddit

Never. Have made sure to not work jobs that do stuff like that. This is mainly because I refuse to identify with a job, to make it part of my self image.

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catslady123@reddit

At my last few companies it was very common for me because I worked in customer experience / support operations. Now I work in partnerships and I’m never bothered outside of business hours.

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Prize_Consequence568@reddit

# *How common is it for you to get “called into work” on a weekend or evening?"* Depends on the job. \*"It seems like it happens all the time on American shows and I’m wondering if it is real or just to advance the plot?"\* Sigh At this point every single person outside of the United States needs to stop believing everything they see about us from TV shows and movies. Unless it's corporate, IT or emergency services it's very unlikely OP.

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river-running@reddit

When I had an office job: never.

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TickdoffTank0315@reddit

Last year, out of 52 weekends (im scheduled 2pm to midnight Monday through Friday), i ended up working 49 of those weekends. Usually just 1 day of the weekend. I

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Future-Mess6722@reddit

I work at a public library. So we are open nights and weekends. We have subs so they would be called first. Then they would ask for volunteers, which usually someone wants extra hours. I have pretty high seniority so it's never gotten to me and I never volunteer. But I'm sure it happens at some libraries.

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Distracted-senior@reddit

I’ve noticed that most of the questions if not all the questions in this sub could be answered with “it depends” This is another one of those. Sometimes it depends on the nature of the work is it heavily deadline driven? Is it a government job versus a corporate? What’s the culture of the particular place? I worked in advertising agencies for 20 years. It dependent on what the owner was like and what job you had. It wasn’t a matter of getting called in. It was that you had a lot of work that had to be done before Monday. I worked for a TV network. I get called in in the middle of the night to make changes on the log. If you work a certain shift, you probably just worked that shift. It depends!

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dotdedo@reddit

It happened so much at my retail smoke shop job I actually debated asking if I could get on-call pay. Especially the guilt trips they'd give me whenever I said no.

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That_Might_7032@reddit

It has not ever happened to me. The one time I've ever worked over a weekend was because I volunteered

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IanDOsmond@reddit

It has happened to my wife two or three times in the past five years, when she was the weekend on-call person. She didn't have to go in physically, though; she was able to handle stuff remotely. She's in cybersecurity. My father would be called in for emergency calls every couple of months with various clients that he did maintenance for. He was a general contractor, and had ongoing contracts for emergency repairs at some facilities.

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Sea_Curve8772@reddit

In software development it happens occasionally. More often if support is a big part of your role.

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invictus21083@reddit

Never. I'm not on call.

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itijara@reddit

I work in IT/Software. It is not common, *per se*, but happens a few times a year. I have an on-call schedule and if something goes wrong with the software, I have to work. That being said, I can do it remotely, so it mostly means having my computer with me on the weekend and not planning something too remote when I am on call.

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Roboticpoultry@reddit

I work every Saturday so I guess weekly

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ABelleWriter@reddit

It's happened to me exactly once in my job (I've been there 3 years) due to an emergency. It was after I had only been there a few months. But my job and what we do is pretty unique, for having an office job.

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elphaba00@reddit

I work an hourly office job. If you want me to do something not between 8:00 and 4:30, I will put it on my time sheet or take it as comp time. Actually, I can probably count on one hand how many after-hours calls I've gotten, and I've never gotten the request to "come in" because my commute makes me one of the least convenient options.

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17Girl4Life@reddit

Never in my current role. My previous job was considered essential in a crisis (I’m non clinical at a hospital) and I had to report for weather emergencies a couple of times.

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Nice-Zombie356@reddit

E-commerce website. Every few months something goes buggy after hours. It can be major (website down or say, website working but payment processor is rejecting too many credit cards) and we will wake people up. Or it can be very minor (one partner connection for one region of our site is down) in which case the lead for that item may check it if he/she is available - for example it’s 9pm and they are hanging out on their couch. If they’re busy or it’s 3am, it’ll have to wait). To add, the product or tech lead often has an emotional tie to “their” product. They built it. They spent months contracting with the partner. They really and truly want the damn thing to work. They may also have annual performance criteria or bonus tied to resulting sales or whatnot, so even more reason to try to fix it if possible.

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gravely_serious@reddit

I'm an engineer, and it has only happened once in the past (nearly) 9 years when there was a product failure on a customer's assembly line over the weekend.

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WittyFix6553@reddit

I’m in the entertainment production industry. Called into work? Never. Work weird, inconsistent hours? All the time.

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simply_mea@reddit

My partner is hourly at a manufacturing plant. They get called in for 2-3 weekend shifts a month. I am an hourly inside sales rep and never get called in on the weekend, however if I'm traveling for work we always fly out on Sunday.

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Greedy_Pomegranate14@reddit

Depends on the job

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Senzualdip@reddit

Not very often for me. I was called in this past Friday night as we were switching over pc’s and voip at the new locations we bought and they needed my help mounting stuff. If I have to go in on weekends it’s generally planned months in advance, but it’s only for certain projects that can’t be done while we are open to the public. Only time it’s not is if it’s an emergency with one of the buildings. I’m a facilities manager so all building maintenance and repair is my job.

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underground_cloud@reddit

In my non emergency services (adjacent) job, never.

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tuberlord@reddit

I'm a devops engineer who works an on-call shift. It happens periodically, but actually going to the office would involve flying halfway across the country, so I take care of whatever problem is happening from home. My wife works a support job at a hospital. They can ask her to come into work and she can if she chooses to (she'll be paid more), but her union contract allows her to give an unqualified no and have that be the end of the situation.

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gnirpss@reddit

It has never happened to me. I've had to stay at work late to finish time-sensitive projects, but bosses typically try to avoid paying overtime whenever they can.

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popfilms@reddit

It's happened to me (tv business) but it's probably pretty rare overall especially with people having the ability to work from home now.

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moonsicklovelight@reddit

minimum wage jobs have it happen way more than corporate jobs in my experience

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khauser24@reddit

Software engineer here. I stopped seeing my job in hours long ago. I get the job done. Might mean evenings and weekends, but it's made up for in comp time

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AleroRatking@reddit

Ñever. I'm a teacher. There is no scenario this would happen

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VisualCelery@reddit

Yeah no, I'm 10+ years into my career and, at least in the corporate world, I've never had a boss tell me I have to work over the weekend or come in after I've left for the day. What I have experienced is: \- situations where I'm an hourly contractor and my coworkers are salaried, and they checked their emails and such before/after work hours or while they were out sick or on vacation, whereas I didn't, and that led to some misunderstandings. \- my boss in another time zone asking me for stuff before her meeting with executives, over an hour after I'd logged off (again, hourly contractor) and was in the middle of making dinner. I felt bad though, our team was under a microscope and she was super stressed going into these meetings, but I didn't really have anything to help her out. \- a project manager getting stressed because our boss asked for edits on something 10 minutes after I'd left on a Friday, and I didn't see the request until Monday morning. I got her the edits ASAP, it seemed fine, but he was like "you need to stay late when you're working on stuff like this!" And that actually made sense, I learned to flex my time in this job, I was salaried so it was fine, and working late usually paid off. Being asked to stay late when the work calls for it is a bit more common, and the further along you are in your career, the more emboldened you may feel to either say "sorry, I have a hard stop at 5" or decide to drop your plans because you know the work needs to happen, and will pay off in the end.

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Wadsworth_McStumpy@reddit

In my job? Almost never. When I work a weekend it's because I want to get something done that's best done when people aren't bothering me. I think the last time was 7 or 8 years ago.

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Excellent-Pitch-7579@reddit

I don’t. Ever. Last time I had to come in on night/weekend was when I worked night shift. To be cl, I work an office/desk job.

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Rich-Contribution-84@reddit

I wouldn’t say “called in” very often, but I’ve got deadlines and projects going all the time. It’s not uncommon that by Friday night I’m simply not done with what I need to do to be prepared for Monday, if that makes sense. I maybe work on weekends 50% of the time or less. I’d say it’s normal for me to work a 6 or 8 hour Saturday or Sunday once or twice a month.

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Positive-Avocado-881@reddit

Never but I will occasionally check my email on Sunday to see what’s going on.

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Top-Web3806@reddit

Zero times in my 20 year career at various corporate jobs.

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IHaveBoxerDogs@reddit

Never. My husband worked for the same company in aa the director of a different department. Several times a year he’d go in because shit was hitting the fan. (He wasn’t really called in, he knew he had to go.) Now he works for a different company and it has never happened. It’s a more boring job, but he’s much happier.

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MetalEnthusiast83@reddit

I’m on call for two weeks a year on average. Outside of that, never. I don’t even check work messages during my off time.

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Gallahadion@reddit

Doesn't happen since my department isn't open evenings or weekends. Before covid, all the departments in my building used to host an event after regular work hours (for which we received overtime pay), but we do the event during the workday now due to budget constraints.

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Bluemonogi@reddit

My spouse works an office job and he does not get asked to work outside of his normal hours/days.

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FramePersonal@reddit

I’m an assistant principal at a high school. I’ve never gotten “called in” as an emergency. My principal has on occasion (example after the ice storm to check the parking lot/ramps and make a plan for student/bus entry to school with ice). However, I have had to work late/weekends because whenever there’s an event (sports, theater, prom, etc) there has to be admin coverage. We rotate, but I’ll end up with 24 or 25 this year (some events have more than one administrator).

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Hungry_Reading6475@reddit

I’m in corporate travel, which is a 24/7 game. I don’t work for an agency, I work for an organization that has its own in-house travel department, we book travel for anyone traveling on organization business. Surprisingly I don’t get called for emergency situations that often (scheduled overtime is a different matter). We have an after hours service that takes care of our travelers for standard issues, the service only reaches out in unusual situations where they need authorization for additional charges if it’s over a certain $ amount. Occasionally a VIP will want personal assistance from me or my coworker so they call a higher up, who calls my boss, who texts us to see if we’re available to help. That’s pretty rare though. And no, my boss can’t do it, they don’t know the GDS system (airline booking software). Thankfully I can login from home, no need to drive to the office.

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CraigGrade@reddit

I purposely make sure I have jobs where this doesn’t happen. Twice a year I work a meeting/convention that requires a full weekend but I’m getting paid double and know it’s coming for literally years in advance.

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savguy6@reddit

I work management in supply chain. In our industry it’s VERY business and location dependent. I used to work for an operation where we would have to work roughly 35-50% of the Saturdays each year, because the customer we serviced had such sporadic and unpredictable volume spikes. As a salaried manager, it was awful not being able to make plans with my family because I wouldn’t know if I’d have to work that weekend until that Wednesday AND not getting paid extra for the OT. But the new operation I oversee, we haven’t ever needed to work a weekend. Our volume is extremely predictable and manageable within the 5 day work week. So like many things….it depends.

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Patient-Ad-7939@reddit

I’ve never had to work outside of my work hours working a salaried white collar job. There was one time they said they’d be willing to pay overtime if we worked some on the weekend because a deadline was coming up and I just said no. But, in a few years with the direction my project is going, I MIGHT have to get on an on call rotation where I might get calls outside of work hours to reboot a server or restart a program or something.

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Decent_Cow@reddit

Never happens, I work an hourly job. They can call to ask if I want to come in, but I don't have to say yes.

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rrsafety@reddit

I’m in PR and I do a lot of emergency work evenings and weekends but I can do it from home.

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Apocalyptic0n3@reddit

Depends on the job. Personally, I'm a software engineer and lead multiple teams. If any of the products we're responsible for have outages, I do my best to join the recovery effort whether I'm on-call or not. As a result, I will occasionally get paged by the alerts on the weekends and nights.

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dangleicious13@reddit

Will never happen. No part of my job can't wait until the next business day. I occasionally have to work into the evening because of a site visit, but that is always scheduled in advance.

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Limp-Plantain3824@reddit

What do you mean by corporate? Many corporations have roles that require emergency/after hours availability. Can you refine your ask to get better answers?

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TheBimpo@reddit

That was a project manager for more than a decade. It was more likely that I would be staying late than I would be called back in.

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ITrCool@reddit

I’m in IT. It’s VERY common.

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notthegoatseguy@reddit

The US is a services based economy. If you're in an industry that works weekends, you may indeed have to work weekends too. Retail, food service, hospitality, transportation, and many more don't have the luxury of clocking out at 5 and weekends and holidays off.

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gperson2@reddit

Extremely(in my experience).

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boulevardofdef@reddit

I'm in my late 40s. As much as people bemoan what's happened to work culture, it occurs to me now that this wasn't uncommon when I was young, and is basically unheard of now. I have a vivid memory of being in my early 20s and one weekend passing an office where I'd recently started a job, and being happy to see that there were no lights on. An exception would be if you're on call in tech and something breaks. In those cases, you're never going into the office, you're fixing it from home, even if you normally work in the office full time.

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Vert354@reddit

I occasionally work nights or weekends, but its usually due to my own executive dysfunction. Other times I've worked odd hours is for deployments or for calls spanning time zones. Once I was called when I was out sick so I could essentially push a button that only I knew how to push, but that was during regular office hours. In the vast majority of cases its something I either had control of or was given lots of notice. The trope of being "called into the office" is mostly just to advance the plot, or to paint a picture of the character as being overly committed to their job

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ToxDocUSA@reddit

Unexpected / unplanned evening or weekend call, very very rare. Current job it has happened twice in two years and in both cases I was able to do it via telework from home office without disrupting the family. The very very senior leaders work seemingly 24 hours, and occasionally they legitimately have something come up after 5 pm that they need by the morning. If it was more common, I'd probably stop answering my phone, but I like and respect the ones I am thinking of so will do it for them once in awhile. That unexpected/unplanned is important though, I'm an ER doctor by training, and also take phone calls for poison control, and also deployed with the Army a few times. Those all aren't what you're getting at.

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Eubank31@reddit

Software engineer. Never been "called in" partially because my job just isn't time sensitive, but also I can complete work from home if needed (even though my company is moving back to full time in office work) Once in a blue moon I'll need to join a Teams call with some people from the Taiwan office at like 8pm, but other than that I have never been asked to do anything outside of normal hours

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molten_dragon@reddit

I never get "called in" to work but I do sometimes have to work outside normal business hours. Weekends are pretty rare, and it's usually not actually working on a weekend but traveling on a weekend so I can be somewhere at the start/end of a work week. Working evenings is more common and it's usually because I've got a meeting with someone in a different time zone.

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ginger_princess2009@reddit

It depends on the job. Many retail jobs do this, but you also have the option to say "no" or not answer your phone. I worked at a hardware store years ago and I literally never got to enjoy my off days because I ALWAYS was being called to come in. Fast forward, now I work somewhere that isn't even open on weekends or holidays so I don't have to worry about it anymore

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tubular1845@reddit

Literally never for me. I do manufacturing and I can go in on the weekend if I want but I'm never pressured to do so.

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DrMindbendersMonocle@reddit

I worked in manufacturing for a long time and it was pretty common and mandatory. They wouldn't call you at home though, they would tell you earlier in the work day or the day before.

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Fappy_as_a_Clam@reddit

>I’m talking in corporate job In almost corporate jobs in incredibly rare. If I got "called into the office" after hours, it would be quite the feat, considering I wouldn't answer my phone after hours. Homie don't play dat.

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budgetoid@reddit

it happens but not all that often. I am an electrician, I work for a shop in Amarillo but I live about an hour out of town, occasionally get asked if I can go check out stuff that's in or near my town so they dont have to send a guy all the way from Amarillo. more often though we have a couple days notice. we do a lot of hospital work and thats the sort of thing where once you start you're there until it's done and power is back on, might have expected it to take 10 hours but if it takes 18 or 20 you're staying for all of it. very rarely shit will go sideways and they'll be stuck at it so long we have to send another crew to relieve them and finish the job

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rawbface@reddit

If you work a salaried, white collar 9-to-5 office job, it is unlikely to ever happen to you in your career. I can just say "no".

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Equivalent-Speed-631@reddit

Depends on the job. IT, yes.

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karnim@reddit

I do r&d for manufacturing. So sometimes you need to be there third shift. Sometimes I'm lazy with writing my papers and need to do it at home because. But in general, I work 9-5ish with working late rarely, and usually due to my own fault. People with good time management do it less.

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ImColdAndWet@reddit

I’m a software engineer and we have an oncall schedule and the oncall person gets woken up in the middle of the night at least once a week.

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csamsh@reddit

Mostly never, and if you do, it's part of the deal you signed up for, and part of your compensation is because of your availability

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lisette729@reddit

Not me but my dad was an IT Director for a hospital. At one point he was managing three different hospital’s departments, he definitely got calls if systems went down or they lost power etc. He was also on their crisis response team where if none of the C-suite could be reached and there was some weird emergency that needed a decision he got the call too. That was more rare but happened a few times.

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OnlyLeading@reddit

Im a scientist in a publicly traded company. I have had to get called in when our machines (usually freezers/incubators) crap out. We have an alarm system and on site 24/7 maintenance but they aren’t well versed in every piece of equipment so they usually just contact the emergency contact for that machine. So I’ve had to come in to either troubleshoot it or save the samples if I can’t. Also I know it’s not corporate like you asked but my spouse is a manager in retail. He has been called in a few times when the stores alarm system goes off.

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flying_wrenches@reddit

I work in the aerospace industry as a mechanic for an airline. For my specific position? Never. We’re only Monday-Friday 0600-1400. For my family friend who’s in a different department? It’s 50/50. He’ll occasionally get calls asking if he’s interested in overtime/staying over for overtime. Never “your coming in on your day off” always an offer (of more money). If he doesn’t want it? Call the next guy. Or calls from his boss asking if he’s interested in going to *country/state* because *airplane* has *broken part*. His last call was to Amsterdam I think.. Really Good overtime, I’m a little jealous.

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bugga2024@reddit

When I worked a 9-5, never. My husband is a diesel mechanic though and he did road service so he was on call 24/7 including holidays

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Xanith420@reddit

It really depends on the job/company itself and the industry as a whole. My previous job had a high turnover rate and was always short handed so having to work 60-70 hours a week was pretty normal. My new job same industry remains fully staffed so I only need to work 3 days a week on my scheduled days.

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ian9921@reddit

For retail & food service it's basically guaranteed. When you get into corporate America though, it's very rare.

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Jsaun906@reddit

it depends on the job. Some jobs operate strictly within standard business hours (9-5 mon-fri). Others are 24/7 operations and duty might call at any moment.

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dopefiendeddie@reddit

Depends. I was recently promoted to manager, so if anyone calls off, I’ll have to go into work (assuming a part time person can’t cover the shift. My department is funded primarily by county grants, and the grant is worded weird in regard to overtime. We’ve been getting away with it now due to the department being ~ 3 months old.)

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marklikeadawg@reddit

Not once ever.

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GooseinaGaggle@reddit

Never I learned in the army that the best excuse to my boss wanting me to come into work when I'm not scheduled is to be drunk from the moment I leave work until i go into work next. If anyone wants to try checking on me at my home to see if I'm actually drunk I'm going to take a few swigs of tequila to make it seem more believable despite being normally sober most of the time

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dobbydisneyfan@reddit

Never because I work for a school that is literally not open at those times

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No_Street8874@reddit

Never

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sep780@reddit

Completely depends on the job. Caretakers, calling and asking others to come in happens when the scheduled person has to call in. (Minimum staffing is strict.) That’s one job where it’s normal. Others, like the one I gave now loading boxes onto semis, it never happens.

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Wxskater@reddit

Im closer to an emergency service lol but whenever we have weather. But we plan several days in advance of the event for staffing so theres no surprises

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Penguin_Life_Now@reddit

It depends on the job, I was an IT manager before I retired, and it happened occasionally, my wife is an administrator for a local public agency and it happens to her too, usually when something goes wrong, or there is a critical unexpected stuffing shortage.

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mckenzie_keith@reddit

I am not sure how common it is, but if you are working on a big project with a lot of other people and something goes wrong, it can result in people being "called in." I think it is probably exaggerated to advance the plot though.

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nakedonmygoat@reddit

An ordinary desk job? Never. If there was something I needed to do to meet a deadline, I could do it from home or I'd take it upon myself to go in and do it. These situations would usually only be if we were short-handed because someone had left and we still hadn't filled the position yet. But some tech jobs can be quite different. When I did programming and support for point of sale systems (computers that workers use in stores and restaurants), I was often on call, and if a system crashed at any time of day or night, I had to answer the call, determine the problem, and go to the job site if I couldn't talk the customer through fixing the problem themselves.

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Suppafly@reddit

Almost never. Depends on the job though.

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la-anah@reddit

I mostly work 9 to 5. But the company is international, so if I need to meet with team members in APAC I have meetings at 9 or 10 at night. But those are scheduled. The only time I would have to work on a weekend is if it was an en emergency and the website was getting hacked or something like that.

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Current_Poster@reddit

I've always been surprised when it happens to me, so... to *me*, not so common. I can't speak for everyone.

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NJBlasian@reddit

Never.

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ThrowawayMod1989@reddit

The most I’ll ever get is the offer. “If you want some overtime you can work your off weekend.” But no, my boss wouldn’t call and require I be in if I’m not scheduled. My regular work schedule has me in for twelve days straight as it is.

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EnglishRose71@reddit

Most of the time it's because a partner is cheating and needs an excuse to leave the house. There are a few exceptions, depending on their job.

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AskAnAmerican-ModTeam@reddit

Your comment was removed as it violates Rule 12, “Answers and comment replies should be serious and useful.” Please consider this a warning as repeated violations will result in a ban. If you have questions regarding your submission removal - please contact the moderator team via [modmail](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/AskAnAmerican).

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AdinaArcherCoaching@reddit

A few times a month maybe?

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Legitimate-Log-6542@reddit

I work in finance. It’s rare but it happens and at least it happens with notice. Usually if a project is running behind but we have to hit the deadline, I might get asked to work the weekend.

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upnflames@reddit

Almost never over the last twenty years. I can't think of any time I've been ''called in" unexpectedly. Sometimes we'll schedule conferences or travel days over the weekend but it's planned in advance and no one is going to fight you if you ask to take one of those days back during the week. I'll voluntarily do work on my laptop after hours sometimes, but it's only if I'm behind and have nothing else to do. Sometimes it's nice to do tedious types of work while lounging on the couch and have less pressure during the day while doing more difficult tasks.

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ratboi213@reddit

For my husband and I, weekly. There’s just always a thing we need to do. It’s not a person but more a deliverable

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john_hascall@reddit

A whole lot less since (a) the move from physical servers to cloud servers, and (b) since my move from full-stack developer to IT security architect.

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Nice_Share191@reddit

Never. Salaried, highly autonomous professional. My manager is extremely hands-off, in a good way. As a matter of fact, we had a conversation where concern was expressed by both of us about others' on our team who routinely send emails out at very odd times, such as well past 10 PM or on weekends - since it is so atypical we were concerned they are quietly indicating a need for support.

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JimBones31@reddit

I work on a tugboat. "Called in to work" for me would involve a flight and time away from home. When I get called in to work. I typically decline. Sometimes there's some haggling and I may say yes for a higher rate of pay for the extra time involved.

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VisibleSea4533@reddit

Not at all

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Wartz@reddit

Basically only if some massive network infrastructure project goes into initial test and install that needs to happen off hours. So like brand new firewalls.

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iLuvArizona@reddit

I have a set schedule at my job & am only contracted to work at those days at those times. I never get called in.

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