work and communication

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Does anyone else have experience with an expectation that because you have email you check it off work hours. I work as a IT administrator, I understand my bosses need for me to be available however, I struggle to be as available as my coworkers expect. I regularly forget to keep my phone charged, and I don't remember or think about checking my email over a weekend. I answer the phone when it rings and my coworkers have my home phone number if there is an emergency. When I am at home on my time I am less than thrilled about the expectation of my availability. I mean I don't go out on the weekends I spend them at home alone but this is time that I need to be able to decompress and relax. I'm struggling with the balance of work and life, I am at the edge of my desire to continue working for the current company. Perhaps I need to find work where there is not an expectation of 24/7 availability.

Does anyone have any advice on how they may deal with off hour communication for work?

I've only ever made myself available out of hours if they're specifically paying me to be 'on call'. If they make it too difficult for you then you might need to consider looking elsewhere.

I wish I had a job where I could specify "ON Call"

I currently work as the primary System Administrator at a company I take care of about 90 servers and a couple hundred processing machines, and 30 or so user laptops / devices. If I could specify ON call that would make my job much more appealing. I have been at the job for 3 almost 4 years.

It's difficult. I suppose it depends what it says in your contract. You could just stand firm and not answer the phone out of hours, and tell them if they want to be able to ring you out of hours then they need to give you advance notice and it can't be a 24/7 thing. I work in development and have never stayed in the same job for more than a couple of years. I find they treat you more like a part of the furniture and take advantage if you stay longer. Good luck.

I feel like a janitor for the computers more than a piece of furniture. I was brought on as a developer, through my friend (his fathers business) and ended up becoming the systems admin.
I think my contract doesn't specify much of anything other than my employment is at will.

I almost quit my job yesterday for no good reason. I think my current medications might be making me angry. I'm not sure if this is still part of my original post although it has to do with after hours work and being asked to go out of my way when I was just starting to decompress after a day at the office. I fortunately was able to get myself under control before I had to interact with people although I think my mother got quite a show of my frustration. I'm trying to make the best of the situation I am in, I have had my current diagnosis (asperger's, and treatment resistant major depressive disorder) since prior to my starting this job. However, recently I think my depression has taken a further hold of me an caused a more difficult time for me dealing with people and a job. I know these things have been difficult for me in the past, however, I see and feel that it may be going downhill rather than getting better at the moment.

It might be worth trying to talk to whoever your immediate line manager is, and explain the things that are causing you problems, e.g. the out of hours work. It's probably better that than getting pushed to just quit in a rash decision.

I'm still alive an kicking with the job, not making any rash decisions trying to keep my cool. My manager is under more stress than I am so speaking to him isn't going anywhere unfortunately. In fact his conversations with me over the past two months are my reason for asking about how others deal with off hours work and the expectation of communication during non business hours. I'm typically better off when I get a call during off hours than if someone expects me to be constantly checking an email account which gets several hundred emails every day.

No, because we are not allowed access to work email at home. You should get a job where you're working with classified material

Srsly though, that does sound like a sucky situation to be in. In the past when I've dealt with IT, in several different jobs, we've just had to wait. At my work they call it 'managing expectations'. I'm not sure if it would be hard to clean the slate now that you've been there for a while, might be time to start looking for another place of employment where you're not expected to work 24/7.