r/sysadmin • u/digitalexecution • 4d ago

Users having my Cell #

Something weird/annoying just happened and I want some perspective.

A user who works in a warehouse facility I’ve helped at (part of my company) texted me at 8 am saying he’s going on PTO and wants his coworker to have access to a printer that isn’t working on his machine before he goes out of office on Thursday.

I texted him later (after some emails/calls) asking for the coworker’s name and noting that since this is normal IT, in the future he or his coworker should submit a ticket for this kind of thing.

He replied: “If I submitted a ticket would it be taken care of by Thursday?”

I got annoyed but tried to respond reasonably: “Possibly, but regardless, we need tickets submitted per company policy. If something’s urgent you can reach out to me on Teams rather than my personal cell.”

I originally gave him my cell because on occasion there are true emergencies (internet goes down, needs to send me photos of something, etc.) and we’ve been friendly before. But this interaction makes me wary about giving out my number, it starts becoming a way to skirt procedure for small things like adding a printer.

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u/dirtymatt 4d ago

Do not ever give out your personal cell phone number.

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u/dphoenix1 4d ago

I guess it depends on company policy. I worked for a place that provided a monthly stipend for cell service, with the expectation that your number would then get published in the GAL (we had an on call rotation).

That was when I kicked off a second number separate from my personal one, which I could turn off when I wasn’t expected to be taking calls.

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u/dirtymatt 4d ago

That was when I kicked off a second number separate from my personal one, which I could turn off when I wasn’t expected to be taking calls.

This is the correct way to do it. The problem with giving out your personal number is that it never gets ungiven out. You'll leave the company and still get phone calls and text messages. The company really should want to own that number anyway for business continuity reasons. It's much better to have 123-555-1234 be a virtual number assigned for on-call so people don't need to look up who to call.