I'm on-call at work every 2 or 3 weekends. I got called once, and since my wife was out in the car; I told Plant Assistant that I would be there in about 35 minutes. He told me to call a cab, and I'd be reimbursed. I was at the plant 1-1/2 hours later. Nowadays, when called in on an emergency, I don't even mention the fact that I'm bicycling. I just do it.

yeppers... 24/7 on call here

I am on the ER Team. (Emergency Response) <--- that hasn't happened as of yet, for an emergency call ((( KNOCK ON WOOD ))) That would be for Chlorine/Sulfer Dioxide leaks etc.... 4 more months to go to reach my goal of 1 Year of (100%) Commuting!

And able to cover if need be.

I'm on call as a network engineer every 5th weekend. My commute is only 4 miles and it only takes me about 5 minutes longer to ride it than drive it, but I usually drive in the rare event that I get paged in an on call situation.

Just curious, how would you respond if called to an emergency?

I'm on call sometimes, but it only takes me 15 minutes to ride in. A lot of coworkers who take call have longer car commutes.

I have a friend who is the chief radiology technician at a hospital in the U.K. He has an electric bike, and can go from phone ringing to walking in the door in about 6 to 10 minutes. If he takes his car, add 2 minutes because he has to deal with it at either end of the trip.

Can't imagine calling a cab if it's a 35 minute trip. A cab would take at least 10 to 15 minutes just to get there, and at that point it's a wash at best, and will certainly be slower if there's any amount of traffic.

Yep...on call too. As long as I get there and it isn't something like two hours later, nobody really cares how I do it. But yeah, I don't bring it up either. In my experience though, it is always faster just to ride than it is to wait for a frikkin cab to show up.

I am on call constantly at night. Usually I can fix problems from home. In the rare event that I have to go down to the office (15 minutes away at night without traffic by car, 30 minutes by bike) I'll take the car. If its a cataclysmic event that means I'll be there all night and the next day, I'll take the bike so my wife can have the car for the day (we only have one).

I'm soon to be on-call 24-7. I recently joined the local volunteer search&rescue team, and am still going through the process of getting all the training/certification I need, so I'm not yet a full-member. After March I'll have the basic cert. and be issued a pager.

I've mentioned my concerns about response-time and bike-commuting but it didn't seem to be a major issue. I'm still not sure quite how I'll handle it if I get a page on a commute-day. Will they tell me to not bother if I call in and say I can be there in 1.5 - 2hrs (My commute takes me an hour, and I'd have to ride home and retrieve my gear before going to the staging area, which is about 20 minutes, by car, from my house.)?

One of the other new team-members lives nearly an hour and a half away, and they approved him for membership. It sounds like it usually takes quite a while to get the team organized and deployed, so for us new guys who are mainly going to be muscle and not running ops, perhaps response time isn't quite as critical.

Perhaps there's someone on the team who works or lives near my work, that I could grab a ride with in those situations. That's something I'm going to look into. I'm pretty new to all this so I guess I will soon find out how it's going to work out.

-Trevor

This is a really interesting thread. My job has absolutely nothing related to on-call situations, but I do occassionally get an "emergency" phone call and need to be at a friend's or family member's house quickly. I like hearing how y'all can respond (relatively) quickly.

I ended my on-call responsibilities by:

1) getting a Mac instead of a PC. The network bigots don't allow Macs.

2) getting rid of my car. At night it would take me at least an hour to get to work by bike.

Now they are much more willing to bother someone else

I'm on call a lot. Sometimes I'm on call 24/7. Sometimes I even take call for other departments that I really shouldn't. I've been doing the call thing for about 5 years now. It's one of the biggest downsides of my job. They even try to call me when I'm not on call. One thing is I only live 3 miles from work. I can be there in 10 to 15 minutes. By car it takes me, in city traffic, at least 8 minutes to get to work. Thank goodness I can handle most of the emergencies over the phone. I wish there were more people to take the call but in my position a lot of the other managers shirk off their call. At least I get to ride to work if I have to come in. I guess there's good and bad in every job. Have a good night.

I'm on call nights and weekends. I've been called 3 times since July and took the wifes car each time. Sorry. The calls were between 11pm and 2 am all 3 times. I have to get up and ride to work again at 5:30am. My daily bike commute of 25 min and occasional daytime car commute of 15 min with traffic is less than 5 min at night by car. All green lights and no cars at 30-50 mph. I feel like I should be riding my bike but then I would just take a sleeping bag with me and stay in the lab till morning. I shower there anyways.

I did get asked to do some overtime one weekend (1.5 time, yeah!!!) and arrived feeling awake and very chipper at 8am on a Sat and stayed in shorts and t-shirt all day. My co-workers were all grumpy and sucking coffee and talking about what a waste of a weekend this was. I even adjusted my brakes and some other things during some down time. They griped about me being in a t-shirt and shorts with flip-flops while they were in leather shoes, khakis and nice shirts but then one of them noted that no supervisory elements were there and no clients would be either. This was just lab maintenance stuff. They felt silly then.

I'm on-call one week out of every four. I can do everything I need to from home though so its no problem. If I can do 100% of my job from home when on-call, why won't they let me do that all the time during the week too?

Oh well, wishful thinking.

Spider,
Your situation sounds a lot like mine. Let me guess. 24/7 Industrial Production facility. Union shop, which means sometimes the qualified experienced Technicians are working, and sometimes it's the rookies.
You're salaried, and an expert in the control system architecture and software. Probably PLC expertise. Not IS, otherwise you'd be able to solve the problem from home like a number of the other Posters. Close?

I'm on my county's Emergency Services Response Team and the County SAR team. At work I am 10 minutes from the OES office, and 30 minutes from the staging area(20 minutes to home, 10 to gear up and get there). Most searches around here are prepared for more than 1 shift in case the subject isn't found quickly, so while you may not be able to respond immediately, perhaps you would be available for a second shift. If it isn't a major issue with your team, don't worry about it.

Don't want to Jinx myself now!!!

We haven't had a serious situation at work for some time. BUT... if need be I have a full size Bronco ( I think it still starts) and a '04 Harley-Davidson... I would find a way to get there.