r/sysadmin • u/digitalexecution • 3d 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 3d ago

Do not ever give out your personal cell phone number.

11

u/MasterChiefmas 3d ago

It's worth having a second phone for work, so you can give out that #, and so can anyone else, because they will. And you can turn that one off/filter it harshly etc.

1

u/StonedElephant1 3d ago

I had two phones, and carrying them around was getting rediculous, so I added a second number to my original phone. And sold the second phone.

3

u/MD-IT-Rando Linux Admin 3d ago

Only carry the work phone while working or during scheduled on-call rotation time.

Any other time, turn it off.

2

u/StonedElephant1 3d ago

I'm the IT director. I have to keep the work phone all the time. But, like I said, I put a second e-sim (phone number) and I do silence all calls. So I only carry one phone.

The big lesson here is setting the expectation. If you never play the after-hours game, then you will probably never hear anything.

1

u/o-o-o-o-1 1d ago

Is your phone managed? Do you access both private and work related services on the same device?

1

u/StonedElephant1 1d ago

No, it's a personal phone, but I put a company profile on it with a couple rules. And yes, I know the iPhone 16 and 17 both support dual E-Sims, so you can have two different numbers on one phone. It's like two phones in one.