or even had caller recognition, you never knew who was calling til you picked up the handset.
Then you could really get lumbered.
Back in the 1970s I was deputy of a library that got broken into from time to time. It always seemed to be me who got called out as keyholder and having to wait until the Direct Works arrived to make the place secure. Well one sunday I was called out by the police at 3 pm and Direct Works did not arrive until 10 pm. You can imagine how pleased I was. There was no where to get anything to eat. Also I had worked the previous day so that was my weekend gone.
Back in those sexist days there was a rule that if only female staff were working in the evening then a male attendant would be sent to accompany the staff (we worked until 9 pm). Yet it was apparently acceptable for a solo female to sit for 7 hours in an unsecure building until late at night! What made my angry was that there were security staff on duty 24/7 in the central library with access to the keys for every branch library. So why could not one of them have been called out to await Direct Works?
The following monday I made a formal complaint about the incident, which was taken up by the Union. I also berated my boss that he was not doing his "turn" at being called out. He said "well we visit the in laws as weekends". So I decided, ok two can play at that game.
Of course I was entitled to overtime (at double rate for sundays) but i took time off in lieu instead. Two full days. They cant tax you on that!
I invented a little code and asked all my family and close friends to use this if they called me evenings or weekends, telling them that I would not respond to calls without the code. A few months went by, and winter set in. One dark saturday night at 10.30 the phone rang 20 times. I knew it was the police and had no intention of going out at that hour while there were security staff sitting on their bums watching TV. Knowing that the police would probably call, I turned out all the lights and watched TV in the dark.
I also warned my neighbour in the flat opposite, who was horrified at the idea of a woman being called out at that time of night. When the police did arrive he popped out and told them I was "away for the weekend". He also said that if I got called out again and had to sit there with no food to call him and he would bring me a take away and keep me company for a bit.
On the following monday there was a real ruckus because neither of the keyholders had been available. However the result was that the union made so much noise that the rules were changed such that we could only be called out within our "normal duty hours" which excluded saturday evening and sunday. Thereafter the security staff at the central library had to come out and babysit the building.
