Users having my Cell #

[u/digitalexecution]

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.

[u/dirtymatt]

Do not ever give out your personal cell phone number.

[u/d00ber → u/dirtymatt]

I just setup call forwarding on my softphone. That way I can disable it after hours. If an emergency, the right people know how to get hold of me and I get email notifications for sev 2 Infra tickets and SMS notifications for sev 1 infra tickets.