> I discuss a similar scenario with someone all the time and I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I think of work/job/career as an evil necessity that interferes with your life.

Just to clarify, this isn't one of the premises of my thinking on this. If you have a job that is no better than an evil necessity, you're in a bad position whether you carry a pager or not.

Nonetheless, I think it critical for the psychological health of all but maybe a scant few with special types of personalities to be able to "go home" from their jobs (and not just their jobs, for that matter, but practically everything one does in life). Some will handle it better than others; some will be able to handle it for longer than others before it builds up to a noticeable problem.

Maybe Ellie would be able to handle it just fine, but even if so, I don't see that it truly *solves* the problem -- it simply works around it while potentially introducing more. Let's define what the problem truly is. Is it that Ellie missed the verdict on Friday, or *that* the verdict was missed on Friday? I say the latter, making this the paper's problem, not hers. The production of a newspaper, as with so many things, requires teamwork. She cannot do it all herself, and anyone that expects her to (including herself) has a problem. In short, someone should have been doing a better job covering for her. So either someone at the paper was not meeting his or her responsibilities, or the team is not set up so that someone *can* cover for her.

But if that's the paper's problem, what is HER problem? Is it that she wasn't working Friday, or that she isn't working every day, 24 hours a day? I say neither. Is it that she feels she has failed at something for which she is not responsible and for which she *should not be* responsible? Yeah. Although the fact that she feels this way makes me respect her greatly for the dedication she has to her job and the importance she places on success, nonetheless this very positive attitude is being channeled in a very harmful way, as the despair in her post indicates. Putting her on call with a pager will, I think, only make matters worse: it will reinforce the idea that not being around to work at a critical time constitutes "failure" (regardless of whether what she's doing instead is attending a different life matter of equal or greater importance), in addition to encouraging her to prioritize her job higher than it should be.

And since I feel very rude, now, for using so many "shes" and "hers" to refer to someone in our presence, I shall remedy that by addressing Ellmyruh directly: Hi!!