> Your kid is better off not going to school for a day, or arriving late. They're not doing anything important in school.

Not sure, if you are serious.

Maybe we should become slaves of corporations? Should we divorce maybe with our partners because sometimes we go dining and on-call is more important than me having a dinner with my partner?

Don't you remember school?

> Maybe we should become slaves of corporations?

That's why school exists in the first place, because parents are stuck at their jobs and new corporate/government slaves and cannon fodder have to be indoctrinated.

A corporation that wakes you up at 3 am is dysfunctional by definition. It exists only to waste investor funds and burn people out while producing nothing of lasting value. There is no reason why it should be actively allowed to harm one's health too.

Expand your perspective. Things happen at 3AM in the real world. A tree falls over a power line in a storm, etc.

Indeed. Things happen, but in a well-functioning firm, they're supposed to be auto-handled by automated contingency processes that have already planned for it, with actions that are already in place. Alternatively, they have dedicated staff, possibly offshore, and onshore if needed. It is only at dysfunctional firms that one has to wake up for it.

What kind of "automated contingency process" is going to drive down a rural road in a blizzard with a chainsaw to get a tree of the power line?

Even the best organizations have emergencies, that's just life. A business which has everything perfectly automated and organized to handle anything that happens is also a business that has no employees, because they won't need anybody working for them.

Huh. There are supposed to be dedicated pre-scheduled staff for it. If a storm is forecasted, the power companies have staff already waiting in trucks, ready to go anywhere in their designated zones. They are getting double or triple pay for it too if it's outside regular hours. Do not make the mistake of confusing it with waking someone up.

I know people who work with this stuff and are home on-call (and paid for that). A forecast is never 100% accurate? Very few people prefer to sit waiting in a truck for nothing to happen, rather than being on-call in their cozy home with their family.

Getting paid for that PER INCIDENT is important. If I got paid $1000 per incident when on-call, I would accept it. This amount is significant enough for management to develop processes to really avoid people getting paged, and that is the point.