Great Team = Cell phone off?
Yesterday was a long over due vacation day… not long over due because my employer is overbearing… but rather over due because I kept kicking this vacation day further out on the calendar because of ‘this’ or ‘that’… so possibly long over due because of my poor planning I suppose…. So I spent my day doing what I wanted, slept in a few extra hours, spent time with my wife and watched about 7 episodes of 24. A fairly unproductive day by some standards, but quite a nice day by mine.
I have to say thanks to my staff once again. In the past it would not have been possible to take the day after a work night off or any day for that matter. And before you scoff…. know it wasn’t just a pizza and soda work night, we moved our ChMS Terminal server to a new host and installed two HP2800 switches (not too shabby of work for one night). Now that I have an awesome staff in place I can take a day away without a lot of stressing that my phone will ring and my 24 watching will be halted by an ‘emergency’. I think it says a lot about my staff when I can turn my cell phone off (insert surprised look and gasps here) and know things will be in great hands. Once again my team handled several minor bumps in the road with flying colors! Linda C., Jim and Jeremie you guys are a great and I am very fortunate to have you working with me.
Now another note, as IT professionals, when should we make it a best practice to not just silence our phones but actually turn them off? Do we use this handy little feature frequently enough to create healthy margin? Its not like the off button is a new feature but my guess would be no. Thankfully my supervisor, Linda M, does encourage this behavior (within reason of course 
), but do you like me not take advantage of this encouragement often enough? Do you utilize this freedom to put your family first? I think I might need to become a little better acquainted with that little button on my phone so rarely used.
So with those thoughts I must thank my staff for the opportunity to power down to take a day to recharge.