On being on call
and the subtle ways in which it eats at me
I currently work a job that requires me to forfeit my mind for one of every three weeks.
More accurately: for one in every three weeks, I have to carry around a phone and, should it ring, answer.
The Work Phone seethes within in an abominably chunky, perfectly durable case. Company property merits such protection as to survive a nuclear strike, but if I get hit by a bus my job will be posted before the breaks fully engage. When I am shackled with the Work Phone, this case weighs down my pants with a slight but constant nag.
I loathe this sensation, and am developing a neurotic, non-evidence-based conviction that the asymmetry is contributing to some insidiously-subtle alteration to the alignment of my skeleton. This theory and the ensuing psychosomatic lower back discomfort is clearly hogwash - that’s simply not how bones work - but nonetheless serves as a physical means for expressing a broader, metaphysical malady.
One phone is bad enough. Two phones is ungodly.
I have, as any digital native, grown accustomed to the constant presence of a smartphone existing on my person at all times; the faint heft of metal and glass is remarkable only in its (parasympathetic-nervous-system-igniting) absence, and the constant dull psychic ache that accompanies it goes unregistered as the price of admission for life in the 21st Century.
But two fucking phones? What am I, a dork?
Yes, it would seem, I am.
I am a loathsome dork who needs money to buy food, and insurance, and a little something besides to invest in vague notions of a future or, more likely, beer.
The current exchange I agree to for this involves higher-education property management, and - despite my actual work pertaining really only to the sort of generic email-writing, Excel-shortcut-using, KPI-tracking, inter-and-intra-org project management doings which seem to comprise most entry-to-mid-level white-collar gigs - I therefore have to carry around the Work Phone and serve in the on call rotation for facilities-related issues in the dorm building I work in.
This amounts entirely to being called (at any hour of the day throughout any hour of the week) with the end result of my either A) going “uh-huh” or B) having to call someone else to actually do something.
There is a three-page manual of what to do when certain parties call, and who to call and what to say to them in turn. There is not a single eventuality described in this document which does not end in my either A) going “uh-huh” or B) having to call someone else to actually do something.
The cops like to call me on the Work Phone. Sometimes it will be 4:00am on a Tuesday, and the cops will call me to say that there is a puddle,1 and it is beholden to me to ask if the puddle is the kind that seems to be growing due to a leak, or if it appears to be moving of its own volition or towards anything important, or if some drooling idiot seems to be drowning in it, or if it happens to be made of acid or lava, or if it bears any sort of urgency or even a vague resemblance to a situation which would necessitate my immediate input at four in the goddamned morning.
To stay vigilant, I keep the Work Phone’s ringer on maximum volume at all times. I remain so vigilant that I hear the ringtone even when no call has been made, even when it isn’t even my week on call. The ringtone features prominently in my dreams.
With several brain chemistry-altering exceptions, most weeks on call see only one or two (always inconsequential) occasions for the albatross around my neck to leap to life bite frothing at my ear.
It is my sworn and holy duty to sit around, primed at all times to react to all circumstances with the same glassy-eyed, verbal nod and declare, by virtue of the unimpeachable authority of someone charged with expediting a predetermined outcome, that all is either already in accordance with the grand design or will be after I add yet another link to the great chain of telephonic action and reaction.
There should be a federal holiday for middlemen with discounts on lobotomies.
This really happened, and the answers to those questions (which I confess I did phrase more subtly to Boston’s Finest) were as follows:
The puddle was found on the floor by the sink in a public bathroom, was of a static and unremarkable size, and appeared to be caused by incautious use of said sink.
The puddle seemed perfectly content to remain its in humble position on the bathroom floor until totally rejoining the water cycle through evaporation, as was its mission prior to discovery or my being consulted.
The puddle was, while not completely absent the attention of drooling idiots, free of their noses, mouths, and respiratory systems.
The puddle was composed of the same exceptional-quality tapwater that one might find anywhere in Boston, Massachusetts.
The puddle did not - in the end, I simply agreed to law enforcement’s assessment that a a wet floor sign and perhaps a paper towel ought to do.