[geeks] What do you get paid for wearing a pager?

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 01:47:57PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> I hate to put words in Geoff's mouth, but I think he was hinting at
> something I meant to touch on but forgot to.

You got it. What I was eluding to was that if you sign such a contract,
you will probably loose all of your current clients.

> Let's say you're at a client's office fixing something, possibly even
> with a machine apart in your hands.  Then you get a page/call/whatever
> from your client who is paying this retainer.  Do you leave your current
> call in a state of disrepair, or do you annoy the client paying the
> retainer by showing up late?
> 
> Hint: There is no right answer to this scenario.
> 
> Hint 2: This sort of thing will happen, frequently; BTDT.

When I was in such a situation, I had a pager of my own (this was before
cell phones). All of my clients knew how to reach me and none paid for
the service. As a courtesy, I would take calls and each client understood
that this was a courtesy and they would extend it to the other clients on
the basis that when they needed to reach me, they could interupt me
at the other clients.

They also understood that calling me did not guarentee reaching me, reaching me
did not guarentee that I would drop everything or anything, etc.

I later limted my client list and dropped the pager. It never really worked
properly. This was before numeric or alpha numeric pagers, so they had
to leave a message on my answering machine and then call the pager.

One Saturday night I went out with a friend who worked retail, so we met
for dinner at 11pm and went off to a Lebanese restaurant we were friendly
with the owners of. We hard a large mezze and consumumed much arak. I came
home around 2:30am, and collapsed. When I got I up the next morning, I
called in and they were so grateful that I called back at all, I
got a raise. :-)

Note that those days are long, long gone.

Reading the other responses, I think that you are best saying, "no thank you"
to them. In the end you will get screwed. 

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667  Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/