Part of the new day job includes having a Blackberry. So now I'll be cool like all the other kids, of six years ago. Yeah. My cell phone is a basic phone. And it's a pay as you go kind (Tracfone if you must know).
One of the benefits of Census work is that I got very good at texting. But now I'll have a whole damn keyboard. Yippie!
But the question is, oh great internet brain, should I transfer my personal number to the work Blackberry?
I'm of two minds. First, I like my number, have it memorized, and I don't want to lose it if anything happens to the day job. Plus, my phone gets double minutes for the lifetime of the phone. I have my writing and freelance business first contacts as my cell phone. Tracfone will supposedly allow me to forward calls (although there is mixed reviews on this over teh interwebbies, and I can't find how to over their website).
But, it would be easier to just have one phone. Just one thingie to keep track of, one thingie to keep charged. The company will pay my cell bill as long as I'm there and their comment on personal use was, "yes, everybody does it, we're not worried about it."
So, what say you oh great internet brain? Transfer number, or keep my own phone separate?
3 comments:
There was a big court case on this recently--police officers were issued pagers(?), and then told they could use the pagers for personal use as long as they paid for any overages.
Some time later, the police dept checked on what the most prolific users were doing, and found that consensual naughtiness was involved. Officer involved was fired and case went to court.
I cannot for the life of me remember what the result was once it went up through the court system, but it reinforced for me that work e-mail (phones etc) are for work, and keep personal stuff to a minimum on work technology.
I'd keep the Tracfon and look into forwarding and then make sure the forwarding works.
But that's me. Ms Paranoid. YMMV.
(My husband has separate work and personal cell phones; also WVU has a policy that if you get your phone through their paid provider, you can get a monthly stipend if you use your personal phone for work.)
Also: CONGRATULATIONS on the new day thing!
I'm looking at a similar situation. I've never had a cell phone, mostly because it was an extra expense on a limited budget. The new boss thinks I should have one for the rare occassions I need to make evening/ weekend calls to clients - I'm not exposing my unlisted home number.
We're looking into possibilities, maybe a pay-as-we-go option.
Thanks everybody. Yeah. I've been through the phone looking for the forward option (it's there in the manual, but not on the phone). But I still think I'm going to keep them separate.
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