I'm in Europe, and work for an American company. After a few issues in production, they tried to implement an on-call requirement for employees to check the alerts during their out of work hours (5am to 10pm or something stupid like that). I just reminded them that my country has the "Right to disconnect" law, which protects us from having to work outside our required hours.
They changed it to volunteer basis. I refuse to volunteer (because my off time is my time).
Man, a lot of you Americans need to unionize. None of this happens at my work and it's precisely because we're unionized and have a contract that specifically says that our employer is bound by strict rules. Granted, we don't get a month paid vacation, but we can't be denied time off, can't be compelled to be on call, can't be forced to work overtime and we have PTO accounts, healthcare and a pension that get paid into on a weekly basis.
This was my father in-law. He developed sepsis from the foot they had to keep doing surgery on. On his hospital bed where he is hooked up to just about every machine possible, this man was on his laptop doing work and on a cell phone talking to this engineer and that engineer. After his foot was amputated, even on disability he was being called 24/7. He was the most important person in the region, he memorized every fiber optic line and location. His boss was treating him like shit to get him to quit, he didn't like dad for some reason, so he pushed dad constantly and shamefully. Once dad died, they had the nerve to call us asking if he had any documents that could help them with a project, he was doing the job of 4-5 college graduates and they were barely managing. He only had his high school degree but the man knew his shit. He had an interview lined up at a new higher paying job, he was one week away, and he spent the last few months of his life crying from stress, hating his job, and just in near constant despair, the only thing that he was looking forward to was mine and my wife's wedding. Corporate America is a vampire and not the sexy kind, the nosferatu kind.
England: We had a really good deal going but we can't have that because we are committed to racism. We hereby leave the European union without doing any research at all as to the secondary effects of our decisions.
I live and work in Japan, but I'm still in this picture and I hate it... Though my work-life balance has progressively gotten better. I don't, however, let my subordinates do that; I want them to have real time off. If they answer a slack or something, it's helpful, but I'd rather they didn't think about work in their off time. I try to be the leader I wished for.
So unrealistic... No way the guy on the bottom got the time off to go to surgery.
Imagine how mad my former boss was when I was in the hospital for 4 days because the heart issues I didn't know about were causing me to nearly pass out at work. Then I got a note that let me off for 3 weeks to let the new meds take effect before I went back.
Don't get me started on how half ass the diagnosis ended up being either. Got a heart transplant 5 years later after seeing a different doctor.
