Categories
Antiwork

Personal vs. Work Phone?

Apologies if this isn't the right space for this but figured this would be the group that would have the best insight into aspects I might be missing for a recent proposal from my boss. I WFH. My work involves taking customer calls and communicating with business partners and coworkers throughout the day, primarily via text. Previously I had 3 phones at one point (personal, company 1, and company 2). All customer communications were via the company phones, but all other communication was with my personal line. About a year ago, we switched to routing the company line through Verizon Onetalk so I am now down to only one (personal) phone for everything. I do prefer only having one phone to worry about, but was not terribly inconvenienced by the extra phone(s). Boss approached me yesterday about wanting to cover my phone expenses and there are a few options. I…


Apologies if this isn't the right space for this but figured this would be the group that would have the best insight into aspects I might be missing for a recent proposal from my boss.

I WFH. My work involves taking customer calls and communicating with business partners and coworkers throughout the day, primarily via text.

Previously I had 3 phones at one point (personal, company 1, and company 2). All customer communications were via the company phones, but all other communication was with my personal line.

About a year ago, we switched to routing the company line through Verizon Onetalk so I am now down to only one (personal) phone for everything. I do prefer only having one phone to worry about, but was not terribly inconvenienced by the extra phone(s).

Boss approached me yesterday about wanting to cover my phone expenses and there are a few options.

  1. I get a new work phone, with a new work number. This will be for all work communications, including text moving forward. Drawbacks:
    1. I will be back to carrying two phones.
    2. Due to the volume of texts, it's important that I can text via my Mac. I'm not sure I can connect two phones to iMessage and would rather not have to switch accounts since that eats up a lot of space and time (based on previous experience). If anyone has info on if/how to make this work under one AppleID that will help with decision-making.
  2. I trade in my paid-off phone for an upgrade, keep my phone number, and my entire phone bill (work & personal) is fully covered and I only have one phone to carry around. Drawbacks: I'm not sure where ownership of the new phone lies if/when I leave and to what extent my data is accessible once it's under the Verizon business account.

I'm leaning toward #2 since no phone bill would be nice and I'm essentially already doing this, but ownership and privacy are concerns. It's a tiny company (2 owners, myself, and 1 newly hired employee). I've been with them for 10 years. We have a strong relationship and I generally trust them to not totally dick me over, but just want to make sure I'm not opening myself up to trouble.

Any advice for how to proceed, anything I'm not considering, or another option altogether?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *