Co-worker calling home when on vacation and requesting for solutions to problems?

brandy: Co-worker calling home when on vacation and requesting for solutions to problems?
This co-worker of mine is not new to the job and keeps calling home whenever I’m on vacation requesting to solve problems. She does not ask questions when I’m in the office. If I don’t answer her when on vacation, she would complain to my boss saying that I don’t help her. My boss supports her. I need to protect myself and hence need to know if there is any HR policy which says that you are not obliged for teamwork when on vacation. Also, I do know that I need not pick up the phone when she calls.

Answers and Views:

Answer by kbk823
When she does call, you simply tell her that you are on vacation and will deal with the issue when you return to work. Then, hang up, and call your boss and “gently” remind her (or him) that you are on vacation, and will be unable to answer any phone calls for the next X days.

Answer by VanessaFas
If you are vacation, and not on call, she is out of line. Do not pick up the phone. Contact HR immediately, and report to them the date and time of each and every call. She obviously cannot do her job, and they need to stop wasting money paying her. Good luck.

Answer by HRmom
There are a couple of issues at hand here. If you are an hourly employee, they are required to pay you for the time you take out of your day to answer those questions. If this applies to your situation, start documenting the date, time, length of phone call and description of the call. Turn it in and request pay for that time. If you are salaried exempt and you perform any work on a day you are off, they are not supposed to deduct your vacation time from your accrual for that day. Depending on the state you are in, they either have to pay you the full day or can only deduct a partial day for vacation time. Therefore, if they wish to have you be responsible for answering calls while on vacation, they will need to reevaluate their policy and cannot deduct from your vacation for the full days on those occasions.

Of course, you will have to be careful about how you approach this as you don’t want to alienate your supervisor. But you can certainly call the Dept. of Labor for your state and ask them about those issues. If they are violating labor laws, you can file a complaint with the labor dept. Before doing that, however, I do suggest just speaking to your supervisor or HR regarding these issues.

Good luck to you!

Answer by texicangirl
OH I hated this more than anything in the world from my last job. They even had the nerve to call me a few times when they had temporarily laid me off (reduction in force). When they hired me back, I made it a point to tell everybody not to call me when I was out…..they still did and on the weekends too. They overlooked me for a supervisor position so even though I hated to sound like a jerk, I would say “You need to call your supervisor”. I know it sounds a little petty and b*tchy of me, but it really got out of hand, I actually ended up quitting due to their lack of consideration for all employees. Several of us left within a couple of months.

So my point is that you do need to put a stop to this before it gets worse and you end up quitting too. If the company does not provide your cell phone then you have no obligation to answer it. Contact HR and talk to your supervisor about properly training this person.