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!

She's deranged. Before Inet and mobiles I would just say that I havent got a phone so no you cant contact me outside work. I feel for anyone who's on 24 hour call from abusive entitled employers who think your life belongs to them. Be firm.

Her attitude to your work/life balance is unhealthy and a bit crazy. Don't fall for it.

I've had this before where I was told that I work the hours the job needs. It meant I worked long, long hours. It got me nowhere and it reduced my income in effect because my hourly rate went down. It also meant that everything everyone did to give us a decent working week I was ignoring. Not no more!

Get everything in writing including your response to her.

You work from 9am until 5pm and you will respond to work requests during these times only. If there are exceptional cases and if you are paid overtime you will consider working outside those hours.

If she keeps on about your working outside your hours respond to her in writing each and every time.

You need to hold a very firm line.

Join a union.

No, I wouldn’t answer any emails or respond. I turn off my computer and that’s it. I don’t log on again until I’m next at work the next day. I don’t look at anything on my personal phone. I’ve not even set it up to log in through the numerous security paths. It would never be required that I log on either, so I don’t do it. A manager who behaved like yours would be spoken to. I work in media. If there was an emergency, I would be phoned. But it’s never happened.

I have work emails on my personal phone and sometimes read /answer emails in the evening BUT I'm head of service, it suits me to have flexibility for when I need to do school pick up and I would never expect a response outside of our normal office hours . If I'm sending emails after hours its always on a delay so they don't land in inboxes till after 8am. I do need to be available and I'm paid accordingly I would not expect my employees to be available outside of hours unless they are paid for it

If she hasnt already been mentioned, follow Loe Whaley on insta/tiktok for what to say in response to this kind of nonsense from managers!

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJggnYNQ/

Depends on the job and the role.
Once I became a manager it was expected that I'd be on call for urgent business matters.
What is the job OP and we're any of the emails urgent?

Actually I would probably expect my manager to be in before me and just after.

And in a 9-5 job I wouldn't arrive on the dot or leave on the dot, but certainly no more than 15 minutes (depending on how much I had to do to sort myself out)

But outside of work hours - nope. And no to work stuff on my personal devices

@RoadSignFool

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.

Brilliant. You should offer training to people on how this works. Podcast, video demonstrations. Clearly would be useful based on comments here. 🤣

Kidding aside, I worked for a company that required us to take an email etiquette course as part of onboarding. I thought it was stupid, all seemed very obvious.

-Choosing recipients and using to: vs cc: currently.
-Constructing an appropriate subject line
-The importance of writing clearly
-Using paragraphs
-Not using CAPS

Then I moved companies and was astonished by the number of people with terrible habits. The worst was the guy that would put a record amount of info in the subject line so that it became impossible to even see it all. He also never used paragraphs and wrote massive walls of (often angry) text.

I’ve got vague recollections of a court case relating to this where it was deemed unreasonable for employers to “own” their staff like this out of office hours

I regularly work in the evening or at weekends/outside of working hours. So I don't think that it's that weird that your manager does.

But your manager is being 100% unreasonable to be expecting you to do anything outside of your working hours. And also weird for them to be surprised that you're not working outside of your working hours...

If this was normal for your industry then you'll fall behind in performance, but based on what you've described it sounds a lot more like she's extra dedicated. Which is fine, so long as she's not measuring others by that standard.

This is why the French government legislated to make such demands illegal. A bit draconian, but good for people who lack your confidence in standing up for themselves.

Emails shouldn’t be on a personal device either. They won’t have the same level of encryption and gdpr issues I think too.

I chose to download slack and other apps on my phone because in the morning I go gym and just check through work I have received. I can do work on my phone easily as it’s technology based.. I use Salesforce. I go to get my face waxed at lunchtime so need it in case anything urgent comes up, usually fine.

Your manager is being unreasonable.

You're right.
I remember being really keen in a first job and replying to parent at 2am and copying in Headteacher.
Who was furious as it woke her up.

You've done the right thing by being very clear straight away - completely rightly so!

If someone wants to work like that, fine. But you cannot expect that of anyone else, and if you start down that road, it quickly becomes an expectation but is rarely respected as much as people think.

Depends on your role really. In my role there's an unspoken expectation that I'll reply to urgent business out of hours but I also have a lot of responsibility and I knew the deal when I accepted the job. But then I also have a company phone, iPad and my salary has that factored in.

Your employer can't demand this of you and even more so on personal devices. In any event lots of companies have rules about accessing private company business on personal devices - we're not allowed to as we're sometimes handling personal data.

It all sounds a bit nuts. If you have a HR dept, you need to talk to them.

So you need to log in to a company system.

What happens to the data if a file is opened is it possible for you to copy or forward any of the data via the non-work software on your phone? And what powers did you give your employer to recover their data?

Google Denis O'Brien and Red Flag ( i think its still in the Irish Courts). Mr OBrien asked for a court order for the personal tec (phones & other computers) of employees

It's perfectly possible for work-related materials to be kept securely on a personal device, as is having forwarding of numbers etc so employees can have a work number that diverts to their own phone. Countless companies manage it.

Giving employees seperate work phones is usually a completely unnecessary expense and a pain in the arse if you have to carry 2 phones about.

Microsoft enables a secure outlook client on our phones. Much of the world are using their tools for this. Company Portal. Authenticator. Yes, there are policies you agree to when you install. Large and small companies. Public and private companies, governments and institutions.

This reminded me of a short person who deals with situations like this and how you manage them

Loe Whaley

Her attitude is quite common, but IME it's usually implicit; I don't think I've ever heard anyone say things like that so explicitly.
Good for you for making your lines clear. I know you've said there's no HR, but I think you should write down as much as you remember of the conversation (I'm assuming it was verbal), just in case she brings it up again and you need to show what's been said.

And what happens to the secure work product stored on a asset the organisation do not own which walks out the door into a new job with an ex-employee?

Giving employees seperate work phones is usually a completely unnecessary expense when the employee is providing a free work tool and paying a network provider out of their personal money.

Are you punking us?