To refuse to give my personal mobile phone number to anyone at work that wants it in order to contact me for days I don't work

[Sazzas]

I work part time in an industry where this is rare. I get that sometimes things are held up and they would like to contact me. But really I love having a separate work life balance. I get stressed easily and the last thing I want is for someone from work to contact me when I'm not working and I have to quickly get my work head back on and sort something out. I like my job but I don't want to provide support for when I'm not working. They have said they won't "abuse it" but tbh I would think any call would be abuse, unless I was paid a on hold fee.

No one lives or dies with my job, I work in consultancy for web forms.

i don't want to sound jealous - I have enjoyed a professional career, with lots of perks, where I was treated extremely well and had excellent working conditions.

However I relocated to a different part of the country where, believe me, there are very little job opportunities. The job I do (although I do it very well ) could be performed by nearly anyone - my skill set/degree/experience is totally irrelevant. I know full well that if I raised my working conditions/pay (and I have done) I will be told clearly that it is the set wage & conditions for the job and if I don't like it I can look elsewhere.

All things considered, I am prepared to accept the conditions, which are preferable to me to being out of work - but I do think people in 'senior' positions often have no idea of what working life can be like for those of us in a NMW job.

And before anyone says 'why don't you work for yourself' - DH and I have set up our own business which is doing well but we still need my guaranteed part time wage.

I like this idea of passive resistance.

I often miss calls ( generally not deliberately) so it would be easy enough for me to miss ones from work (particularly now I've lost my work phone).

Much less confrontational to let the phone ring out multiple times or answer with loads of child noise in the background than make a huge battle about it.

All these people who think they are revelling against the system just makes their colleagues groan.

Fwiw, I do think that if you have a reasonable relationship with your company and colleagues then there should be some give and take. This year my large multinational employer has given me 2 weeks paid compassionate leave accompanied by the biggest bunch of flowers I've ever seen when my dad died. They even said I could have more paid leave if I needed if and when I came back that I should finish up early to pick the kids up from school a couple of times a week in the month after.

In spite of working full time office hours, I also have not missed or had to take holiday for any school assembly or sports day as I can work flexibly.

Give and take can work both ways.

I work four days a week - and there have been times when work calls on my free day, or I've agreed to join a call. I do it because I know they don't abuse it - and then when it comes to times when I need to finish early or start late nobody is bothered. Simply putting a blanket ban on taking even am emergency call does not reflect well on you - if I thought a colleague was struggling with something I could quickly answer or a project was delayed because I am ALWAYS OFF that day I would not feel good. Flexible working works at my company because both sides are just that - flexible.

Nobody says you have to do it all the time - if colleagues are abusing it then just tell them.

I think the working culture and conditions in the UK are now rather ridiculous. In the public sector it's because there aren't enough front line professionals so everyone, back office included, is working crazy hours. Many don't take lunch breaks. In the private sector there also seems to be a relentless pressure to keep up with our American cousins where the pursuit of profit is at the expense of human relationships and home life.

Other than emergency services, and the most senior management with the highest salaries, I see no reason why employees should be contactable at any time. By all means improve communications, planning and, as far as possible, multi-task workers to improve resilience when people are not in the office but I think we collectively should be resisting the increasing encroachment upon family life and down time. Op YANBU imo.

But I think there is also an issue as some jobs aren't well suited to being p/t, particularly interesting and challenging ones.

As a part timer I know it's a ball ache to everyone else that I can't answer questions past a certain time and am not available one day a week. I try to minimise this by communicating my working hours very clearly - so it's not a surprise to anyone when I'm not there and also by anticipating what requests are likely to come in and have already responded to them and by having some sort of back up in place. I also keep my phone on for the days I finish early.

Because I went down a grade to be genuinely part time I'm not in the most part troubled by calls, and when I am once I let them know I haven't got access to a computer ( I have managed to avoid getting a blackberry ) people are generally fine with it and I either direct them to someone else if their query is urgent, or if not it can wait until I get back.

Like Katiepoes if there's something that warrants it then I will change my day off or will arrange childcare beyond my contracted hours - my employers and co-staff know that this is not something that I can arrange at a minutes notice and I'm open about the fact that I will need to call in favours or pay for afterschool when it happens.

Recently I asked to move from a piece of work I had been assigned as it required regular travel at short notice. This is impossible for me to do so I just let them know and they reallocated me to something else. Far better to be upfront and let people know what you can and can't do rather than stewing on stuff.

However when I was the grade above I found it practically impossible to be part time in any meaningful sense. Full timers regularly work beyond their contracted hours and as the owner of a piece of work the buck stopped with me so regardless if I was being paid or not if I didn't pick up the phone or log in at night it would be me who had to pick up the slack. I couldn't sustain it so moved down the ways. If I had asked for extra money for taking calls on my days off, I would have been laughed out of the office.