Defining "on-call"

If I hear one more person bitch about how bad the "on-call" is in their line of work or how horrible (or cool in some cases) it is to carry around a pager, I'm going to lose it! (Not just "get upset" lose it, but "put on a bunny suit and try to catch pickup trucks with my elbows" lose it!)

On-call sucks... we all have to deal with it in some form or another, so frickin' get over it people! If anyone thinks that their on-call duties in jobs like accounting, journalism, or public relations are so bad, then I encourage you to enter into the world of a systems administrator that manager 24x7 global ecommerce sites. Computers don't rest, and neither do a certain percentage of people around the world at any time of the day/night. I deal with it at that level, so the rest of you can too. Furthermore, to stop tooting my own proverbial horn, think of what "on-call" means to people like fireman, military peronnel, the Red Cross, etc. Do you hear firemen bitching that they have to get up every time a call comes in? No! Why? BECAUSE IT'S THEIR F%$(#*G JOB.

In the words of my brilliant little sister: "Shut up and deal!!!"