This post, over at the RT Cave, about pagers reminded me about a job I used to have. That job made me feel pretty important. I was "a somebody" when I had that job. How important was I? I was so important, that on some days, I had to wear 5 pagers and carry a cell phone. Beat that! You know you're important when you have to wear 5 pagers at the same time.
I was working at an insurance company, doing IT support. They issued me a personal pager that was for getting a hold of me when I wasn't at my desk (Pager #1). I also usually carried both of the "Sev 2 pagers" when I was at work (Pager #2&3). Problems were categorized by severity, ranging from Sev 1 to Sev 4. Sev 1 was the most serious and Sev 4 was the least serious. If there was a Sev 2 or Sev 1 problem, I got paged. One of the Sev 2 pagers was for the North office tower and the other was for the South office tower. We also had a change management system. If a change request was submitted and it was assigned to my group and I was carrying the change request pager, I got paged (Pager #4). If I was on call after hours, I also had the after hours pager on my belt (pager #5). I also had a cell phone, which I usually left on my desk unless I left the building.
I freaking hate pagers. Apparently I will probably have to wear a pager when I'm working as an RT. I wish someone would have told me that sooner :-(
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
just find a hospital that has cell phones instead of pagers. One of our local hospitals is like that
ReplyDeleteThe hospital where I work, the RTs use spectralinks (they look like a cell phone from 1985) and only work in the hospital. I don't know which is worse...you can wait 5 or 10 minutes to answer a page, but you can't just let your phone ring over and over.
ReplyDeleteI once went mountain biking across a river wearing my pager (not from the hospital). Definately took care of that one. I've also worked with a couple of RT's who have flushed their pagers down the toilets. This might not permanently fix the pager problem but it helps in the short term.
ReplyDeleteKeeping track of five pagers can be stressful. Can't they reduce this to just one or two? This is also much easier for the person in charge of sending the messages.
ReplyDelete