Who is being unreasonable, me or my manager?

[Kowaii]

My line manager absolutely loves our job. Which is fair enough.
She made a weird comment on Saturday about the person who worked there before me didn’t “care” about the job, just came in at 9 and left at 5 and that was that. I thought this was odd as it’s literally a 9-5 job.
On Monday morning I got to work and had a load of emails from her that has been sent the previous night. I thought maybe the time was just wrong in the emails.
Today she’s called a meeting with me asking why I didn’t respond to the emails sooner. I said I didn’t see them until I got to work.
She questioned why I want signed in to my work stuff on my personal phone as I then would’ve seen the email was urgent and responded.
Turns out she expects me to basically be “at work” pretty much 24/7. I’ve said I absolutely will not be looking at emails on my time off and directing my work number to my personal number (wtf!).

She seemed genuinely shocked by this. I said I’m paid 9-5 so I will be working 9-5 and no, I don’t think about work when I leave the office. She seems to have made her life about this job.

Aibu to think this is crazy and I’m not being a twat by not having any of my work on my personal phone? I don’t see what I could do from home anyway without my work computer in front of me!

Business emails on personal phones is usually NOT allowed due to cyber security concerns. To comply with accreditation BYOD would require certain security measures.

I assume this is a small company?

Not true. I work for an huge international professional services firm which handles client confidential information and we all have our email on our personal phones. The firm does not issue business phones.

I've worked in NHS, local authority and schools and was expected to have emails on my phone

Oh no we are back to the argument whether texting / email at your convenience is a bad thing to do. In my view you text/email at your convenience and the other person picks up at their convenience. It only makes sense.

The problem the OP has is different. The manager is expecting her to pick up outside of paid working hours. This is not on unless expected in job description / seniority, and covered in salary.

Only if there is a expectation of a reply or action out of hours.
Plenty of big organisatons work in different time zones

I wonder why your predecessor left 🤔.

If you are not logged on vai the secure company systems you are foolish to allow that.

How much of the personal data on your phone would you be happy to hand over to a client or your companies business rivals?

YANBU and she sounds ridiculous.

Unfortunately if she is your boss and there is no HR, then looking for another job in your unpaid time sounds preferable than replying to work emails.

I do pick up emails and respond to them (if I feel they are important) outside of work hours.

It's what I choose to do and what I'm happy doing.

Depending on what the email is, sometimes I won't respond until I'm back at work.

However, if you choose not to read your emails then that's your prerogative too!

It depends on your industry I guess, but in mine (Media related) lots of people do feel they have respond. So I have a rule that if it’s urgent call or text, if it’s not schedule the email for the next day.

It very much is! I only know a couple of people who have separate business phones, those days are long gone.

Well OBVIOUSLY if your company spans different time zones you have a note in your email signature saying that.

If your employees are all based in the same time zone then you use schedule send for standard emails.

I run a company in a tough industry where long hours and weekend work are part of life, so when something isn’t urgent it’s really important not to treat it as if it is.

There’s plenty of data to support the fact that being constantly connected is bad for you.

Not sure what you mean? It’s a secure Outlook App on my personal phone.

What type of work do you do?
I'd just smile sweetly and ask her where it says in your contract that out of hours working is required

Why on earth would I need a note in my email signature telling my colleagues how time zones work? Everyone’s location is stated in their signature, if that’s what you mean?

This just isn’t true. Large companies and organizations have security in place that enables secure connections even from personal phones. I know my own state government allows it for their employees, and they have hardcore security. Microsoft has tools that enable this, I’m sure there are others also.

We can put work data on a personal phone, but to do so requires giving the company control and permission to remote wipe the phone.

By the way, we are a really good way of telling people whether or not things are urgent….we write “URGENT” in the subject line and explain in the text when a response is needed, and why.

If we have to get hold of someone outside normal working hours in their location we do not use email, we use WhatsApp (as we can see if they have seen the message) or we call them. This is by prior contractual agreement that such contact may be necessary from time to time.

I can see why the person previous to you left the role. I'd suggest you did the same.

I often reply in the evening but equally sometimes wouldn’t occur to me to look. She is insane and should report to HR .

I had a boss like this. She'd email me at 11pm, send me a chaser at 6am then call me the second I logged on in the morning (even if that was say at 7am when my start time was 9am) to ask me why I hadn't replied / done the thing yet. She was the main reason I left...she was very senior and part owner of the business so basically untouchable / not worth going to HR with.

You’ve told her, conversation over. Stick to your guns, YABNU 🙂

This is poor behaviour. If she wants to work all weekend then that's her choice and she absolutely should not expect it of you. As you say, you are paid 9-5 mon-fri. If you start to give an inch she'll keep trying to take a mile.
My ex manager would WhatsApp me in the middle of the night cos she was awake. I responded to her and said it had kept me awake all night worrying and to not WhatsApp me - keep all work stuff on worknemail not my personal phone. My new manager was horrified that I had had to even point this out as nobody she be bothered in their downtime (unless an absolute emergency which it rarely is)

Well fuck that then.

Maybe if you were very highly paid but she's being ridiculous.

My boss is similar, sending an email recently declaring if anyone is keen to shadow them then we’d be expected to shadow them during their work hours before declaring ridiculous work hours including in at 06:00 working all day then back online to work in the evening. We are paid to work our work hours that are in an office. Office is open at 08:30 until 17:00. A number of us are already early. I’ve covered for my boss when they had a period of leave, I didn’t need to work such hours to cover their job. I’m also well aware that their job/role is not without challenge. We’re each under contract for a certain amount of hours, anything worked above this isn’t paid. Overtime isn’t offered. Within reason, I do work a bit more than paid for (as I leave as soon as we close to collect kids) but I refuse to be unofficially ‘on call’ into the evenings etc to answer my boss’s requests. I’ve actually put a footnote on my emails stating what my working hours are. I also have an out of office response on outwith office hours. I’ve raised it with HR, nothing has been done.

And to add, I would definitely go to HR about this. It is unacceptable that she called to into a meeting to complain about it!