Texts in work

M

Maryb50

Registered User
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Just looking for some perspective. Two days running I had my phone in my back pocket in work, as do my other co-workers. I have children, and it's there if they need to contact me. I don't use it except to text them at 5 or so if they have not texted me to say they are on the way home - I work late. The other night, some lads started hassling my daughter outside the local shop and she was afraid. I couldn't pick as the manager would go mad, but we texted and I told her what to do. Yesterday, I got told that there was a no phone use in work. I explained that I only use it to text to keep in contact with my children after school, and then only once or twice depending on what they are doing, activities etc. I was texting my son at 5.00 to see where he was, and I got another lecture, yet at the same time, another staff member came into the office, and said her mother had just rang her with an urgent query, and five minutes later another staff member was going through their texts during working hours. Other staff often text or phone home quickly - the other manager does this quite a lot. I don't feel I'm being picked on or anything, it's just that I can't have my head completely in work if I am worrying about my children. I have never had this issue before, and I would never abuse texts/phonecalls. To be honest, it would make me think twice about staying - as I was upset the other night when I wasn't able to pick up the phone to my daughter when she was being hassled at our local shop. What are other people's work places like re this issue?
 
Personal Phones are an integral part of the modern world, that includes when you may be on somebody else's clock at work.

When at work this challenges convention and is a major challenge for many employers to manage.

I suggest the phone be left outside the work place, in an emergency can you be contacted at your work place on a landline ?
 
It would be very difficult to contact me on a landline at work, as often, because of logistics - difficult to explain without identifying more, the landline often goes unanswered for half an hour or more.
 
If you are using your phone as little as you say then just go to the bathroom when you need to use it. Not ideal but needs must.
 
Easel said:
If you are using your phone as little as you say then just go to the bathroom when you need to use it. Not ideal but needs must.
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We call them toilets here because you can't have a bath in them. Just like we call scallions scallions and not spring-onions because they're actually scallions.

This is simple; work time is work time, home time is home time, never the twain shall meet. What does official company policy say about mobile phones (or do we call them cells now?) or personal calls? If the policy isn't clear or isn't implemented even-handedly or fairly, I'm not surprised there's confusion. Clearing the confusion can only start at the top.
 
mathepac said:
We call them toilets here because you can't have a bath in them. Just like we call scallions scallions and not spring-onions because they're actually scallions.

This is simple; work time is work time, home time is home time, never the twain shall meet. What does official company policy say about mobile phones (or do we call them cells now?) or personal calls? If the policy isn't clear or isn't implemented even-handedly or fairly, I'm not surprised there's confusion. Clearing the confusion can only start at the top.
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Remind me not to come to you looking for a job. ;) That's completely unrealistic. If you have a situation with your kid being bullied, you are going to prioritise your family every time. Any employer should be understanding of this too. Maybe Mary's error was not explaining it to her boss first so they may have thought she was on Facebook etc.

If you work in place that does not understand that these situations arise, you should look for alternative employment. You should enjoy (or at least not hate) going to work.


Steven
www.bluewaterfp.ie
 
There are some sites that prohibit use of phones for Safety reasons - same as in planes or hospitals where the fear is that a signal could pose a danger. Many sites ensure that visitors leave phones at security before entering.
Perhaps the OP works in a similar environment - in which case the employer is behaving in a perfectly understandable manner.
Or perhaps the OP works in a system where a break in concentration would interrupt the work-flow or where a ring-tone would distract other employees or disturb customers ?
There are numerous reasons for not permitting personal phone usage in the workplace - and if company policy dictates that they are not permitted then an employer is perfectly within their rights to enforce this.
 
Easel said:
If you are using your phone as little as you say then just go to the bathroom when you need to use it. Not ideal but needs must.
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i would do this if it was me.
Management may easily " forget " about the new "no phone rule" in my experience as a new rabbit to chase emerges.
 
Hi! Thanks for all the replies. The bathroom idea is good. There is one bathroom with a good signal. There is a signal in one office and spots along the corridors - often when my children text me, I don't get them for about a half an hour, depending on where I am in the building. Re. being in a call centre - no, I work now for a private healthcare company, but not in nursing, so no complex machinery or acute situations. I did explain that I needed to be able to text my children after school if hadn't heard from them, and also to be able to reply to them if they were in trouble, sick etc., but was still told this was the policy, but the policy seems to only apply to those workers who are not in the 'inner circle! Anyway, there is a Union, but I wouldn't be bothered brining this to them, I don't think I would get anywhere anyway. I was only going to stay in the Company until next June, as I have other plans, which I started making after seeing a colleague there very badly treated by one particular manager. Re my kids, they're not happy with it being so difficult to contact me, it bothers them, particularly when the signal there anyway is so bad, that I often can't get there texts for a long time afterwards. I think I will try to get something a bit earlier than next June!
 
If an employee came to be and said they had a to deal with a personal issue for 15 minutes I wouldn't have a problem with it. I think your employer is being very unreasonable.
 
Maryb50 need to phone/text is not the exception, it's her rule. Once off emergencies are one thing, but every school day plus emergencies is taking the mickey, big time. And now she can't have it her way, she's off!!
 
Its hard to juggle work and parenting mary but maybe if you had a chat with the kids and try to make them a bit more independent that they don't need to be texting you all the time. What works for us is we set up a family group on whatsapp and we can check when ever we get a minute at work,my kids used to annoy there mother at work ringing up wheres my Orange top or something stupid but we cut out all that, some people just can't put away the phone.
 
Hi Maryb,

Are you sure you haven't been using your phone in work for calling/texting/posting on AAM about the issues you have described over the past few months including:

Your extension built without planning in a grossly negligent manner with subsequent collapse of roof and ongoing legal case.

Running your other business on the side, setting up a new website and subsequent dispute with website designer, war of words with him on social media and possible legal case/injunction for defamation

Invasion of wasps from your very difficult next door neighbour's eaves

Your daughter frequently losing her credit card

Researching and providing advice to your family and friends on issues such as constructive dismissal, income protection, postgraduate education and workplace bullying.

Arranging your children's education including two of them going to school in France for this school year while also trying to get a few weeks of TY in in Ireland

Dealing with your rental property

Volunteering abroad with your children next year

AND Others


My guess would be that your employer might suspect that you need to focus more on the job and think that asking you to not use your phone in work may help with this.
 
We = Irish people wishing to maintain an identity of our own, those of "us" (Irish people) who have no wish to be or become Western UKites or Eastern Trumpettes.
Bathroom is an Americanism
youtube is American too - what more can I say?
 
Bit strange using "English" to make that point then. Toilet or Bathroom isn't anything to do with Irish identity. That would be or leithreas or folctha. Though I suppose that is a translation of a english word also.

Toilet itself is a french word and is actually a euphemism itself. Interestingly the Jacks also seems to an English term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_(room)#Names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#Etymology

Etymology
Detail of Queen Charlotte with her Two Eldest Sons, Johan Zoffany, 1765, (the whole painting). She is doing her toilet, with her silver-gilt toilet serviceon the dressing-table
Toilet was originally a French loanword (first attested in 1540) that referred to the toilette ("little cloth") draped over one's shoulders during hairdressing.[42] During the late 17th century,[42] the term came to be used by metonymy in both languages for the whole complex of grooming and body care that centered at a dressing table (also covered by a cloth) and for the equipment composing a toilet service, including a mirror, hairbrushes, and containers for powder and makeup. The time spent at such a table also came to be known as one's "toilet"; it came to be a period during which close friends or tradesmen were received as "toilet-calls".[42][45]

The use of "toilet" to describe a special room for grooming came much later (first attested in 1819), following the French cabinet de toilet. Similar to "powder room", "toilet" then came to be used as a euphemism for rooms dedicated to urination and defecation, particularly in the context of signs for public toilets, as on trains. Finally, it came to be used for the plumbing fixtures in such rooms (apparently first in the United States) as these replaced chamber pots, outhouses, and latrines. These two uses, the fixture and the room, completely supplanted the other senses of the word during the 20th century[42] except in the form "toiletries".[n 2]

Contemporary Use
The word "toilet", for the plumbing fixture or for the room, is considered impolite in some varieties of English, while elsewhere the word is used without any embarrassment. "Toilet" was by etymology a euphemism, but is no longer understood as such. As old euphemisms have become the standard term, they have been progressively replaced by newer ones, an example of the euphemism treadmill at work.[46] The choice of word relies not only on regional variation, but also on social situation and level of formality (register) or social class. American manufacturers show an uneasiness with the word and its class attributes: American Standard, the largest firm, sells them as "toilets", yet the higher priced products of the Kohler Company, often installed in more expensive housing, are sold as commodes or closets, words which also carry other meanings. Confusingly, products imported from Japan such as TOTO are referred to as "toilets", even though they carry the cachet of higher cost and quality. (Toto, an abbreviation of Tōyō Tōki (東洋陶器 Oriental Ceramics), is used in Japanese comics to visually indicate toilets or other things that look like toilets; see Toilets in Japan.)

Regional Variants
Different dialects use "bathroom" and "restroom" (American English), "bathroom" and "washroom" (Canadian English), and "WC" (an initialism for "water closet"), "lavatory" and its abbreviation "lav" (British English).

Euphemisms
Crapper – Crapper was already in use as a coarse name for a toilet, but it gained currency from the work of Thomas Crapper, who popularized flush toilets in England.

The Jacks is Irish slang for toilet.[47] It perhaps derives from "jacques" and "jakes", an old English term.[48]

Loo – The etymology of loo is obscure. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the 1922 appearance of "How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset." in James Joyce's novel Ulysses and defers to Alan S. C. Ross's arguments that it derived in some fashion from the site of Napoleon's 1815 defeat.[49][50] In the 1950s the use of the word "loo" was considered one of the markers of British upper-class speech, featuring in a famous essay, "U and non-U English".[51]"Loo" may have derived from a corruption of French l'eau ("water"), gare à l'eau ("mind the water", used in reference to emptying chamber pots into the street from an upper-story window), lieu ("place"), lieu d'aisance ("place of ease", used euphemistically for a toilet), or lieu à l'anglaise ("English place", used from around 1770 to refer to English-style toilets installed for travelers).[49][52][53] Other proposed etymologies include a supposed tendency to place toilets in room 100 (hence "loo") in English hotels,[54] a dialectical corruption of the nautical term "lee" in reference to the need to urinate and defecate with the wind prior to the advent of head pumps,[n 3] or the 17th-century preacher Louis Bourdaloue, whose long sermons at Paris's Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis prompted his parishioners to bring along chamber pots.
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