can I have a few drinks when I’m always somewhat on call?

A reader writes:

I have a role where I’m always sort of on call. I don’t get called after hours a ton, but maybe one to two times a month. Discussions well above my pay grade continue about having a more sustainable after hours process, but for right now there are some problems for which the solution is … call my cell phone.

Is it okay for me to have a few drinks knowing that I might have to solve a problem but probably won’t? I have felt comfortable getting together with friends for game nights and things, but those are usually sober events since we all drive to a friend’s house for it. If I had to, I could take a call and drive home within 20-30 minutes to solve the problem. Anytime I’ve been gone overnight, I always bring my work laptop just in case. I was able to take a vacation and leave things with my boss’s boss and a colleague for that week (though I did leave them lots of instructions and my cell phone number just in case).

But what about hanging out at home and having a few drinks on a regular night? Or staying the night with family and enjoying my in-laws’ delicious brandy slushes? It feels like I should stay on the sober side of tipsy just in case, but that also feels weirdly uptight when I probably won’t actually get called at all! Any suggestions? Or language to ask my boss in a way that doesn’t make me sound like I have a drinking problem?

If the arrangement isn’t really that you’re officially on-call but just that if something goes wrong after-hours, you’ll be the person they phone … well, I’d say you can live your life the way you want to, but if you’ve had more than a single drink, don’t answer the phone — just like you presumably wouldn’t answer the phone if you were sleeping/having sex/camping in the woods with no signal/acting in a play/outside looking at the stars while your phone is inside/any of the other hundreds of things people are entitled to do with their off time without being tethered to a direct line to work. (Obviously, if you’re in the middle of a major server migration or something, that’s not the night you should be outside stargazing without your phone, drinking, etc. I’m talking about normal, more routine nights.)

If your boss would disagree with that and you are in fact expected to answer at all hours, no matter where you are or what you’re doing (as opposed to just when/if you happen to be available) and you need to constrain your activities accordingly, your job should be paying you a pretty significant premium for that. And even then, they’d still need someone trained as a back-up for emergencies.

But frankly, you not being available to answer every call might help them realize they need a more realistic system. If you want to, you could push the issue now by explaining that you’ll be spending more of your off-hours out-of-range or otherwise unavailable and so they shouldn’t count on your availability as much as they’ve been doing.

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