How to be truly off when you are on PTO

[Anonymous]

My cell phone is my work and personal phone and seems to be the biggest issue I have to being truly checked out on PTO. I was out for only 2 days a couple of weeks ago and despite telling everyone multiple times AND including a "soon to be out of office" notice in my signature for 2 weeks ahead of time, I was still bombarded with calls while I was out. And I am the type of person, if I even see the call, I can't ignore it and it stresses me out. Particularly when they call repeatedly. Is the only solution to get a work cell phone?

Similar situation for the evenings. People can call/text me whenever. I do put on DND, but I can still see the missed call/text. I don't have my email push notifications so I've got that covered.

It's driving me crazy.

[Anonymous]

Get a separate phone for personal stuff?

[Anonymous]

If you don't want to do a separate phone, you could get a google voice number and turn off notifications for that during set hours. But it would be hard to train people to use that number.

[Anonymous]

Are these known contacts/colleagues/clients that are calling you? I would block them for the duration of PTO if I could.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don't want to do a separate phone, you could get a google voice number and turn off notifications for that during set hours. But it would be hard to train people to use that number.

I didn't even know this was a thing... I might look into it, but yeah, I've been in my particular industry so long with the same number ... I feel like I'd be better off changing my personal number which is annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are these known contacts/colleagues/clients that are calling you? I would block them for the duration of PTO if I could.

Generally yes, but not always. I have done that when I'm desperate, but it's a LOT of people. What happens when you block someone? Does it ring like normal on their end?

[Anonymous]

I think getting a new number for personal stuff is going to be your best course of action if you really want to be able to unplug. Blocking/unblocking is going to end up blowing up in your face and will be much more work in the long run.

[Anonymous]

Are you a time traveler? Who uses a phone to make and receive phone calls at work?

[Anonymous]

To be honest, the first few trips I went on at my current job took me out of cell phone range (either out of the country and I didn't want to pay for roaming or mountain retreats with no cell towers). I was great for training people to leave me alone because I got stressed about the missed calls/emails only when I saw them when I got home. I think it your case I would maintain a separate work phone and turn it OFF when you're on PTO. Include that your phone is not with you in your OOO autoreply and voice mail so people know not to expect to hear back from you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you a time traveler? Who uses a phone to make and receive phone calls at work?

Huh?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you a time traveler? Who uses a phone to make and receive phone calls at work?

+1, this is all on Teams and I can forward it to my cell phone, or turn that off

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you a time traveler? Who uses a phone to make and receive phone calls at work?

+1, this is all on Teams and I can forward it to my cell phone, or turn that off

I have external clients that don't all use Teams (or any video conferencing software for that matter). And to top it off, I have contractors calling me from a job site to trouble shoot things. We don't all have big corporate machine jobs where we only speak to people internally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you a time traveler? Who uses a phone to make and receive phone calls at work?

+1, this is all on Teams and I can forward it to my cell phone, or turn that off

I have external clients that don't all use Teams (or any video conferencing software for that matter). And to top it off, I have contractors calling me from a job site to trouble shoot things. We don't all have big corporate machine jobs where we only speak to people internally.

External people call what looks like a normal phone number but that is administered through Teams. You could set up a Google number in the same way.

[Anonymous]

Why do you use your personal phone for work?

That is your problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do you use your personal phone for work?

That is your problem.

It’s required. We don’t have landline/desk phones