I worked in IT for 30 years. That usually meant you were on-call every other week to fix problems at night and on weekends. In the early days we had pagers that would just show a phone number. Eventually the pagers became smartphones, but we still called the alerts we got “pages”.
Some nights we got a lot of pages. Some weeks we would have a lot of those nights in a row. Sometimes we got pretty tired of it. I wrote the following on one of those weeks.
Rainy Day Pagers #12 & 35
(To the tune of Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 by Bob Dylan)
Well, they’ll page you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll page you, just like they said they would
They’ll page you when you’re trying to go home,
And they’ll page you when you’re there all alone.
But that should not make you feel amazed,
Everybody must get paged.
Well, they’ll page you when you’re at the breakfast table
They’ll page you when you’re trying to watch some cable
They’ll page you when you’re riding in your car
And they’ll page you when you’re playing your guitar
But you should not feel so disengaged
Everybody must get paged.
Well, they’ll page you when you’re standing in the shower
They’ll page you every day and every hour
They’ll page you when they’re trying to pass the buck
Then they’ll page you and then they’ll say “good luck”
But your salary will not be getting raised
Everybody must get paged!
Well, they’ll page you when you’re freaky with your wife
They’ll page you till you think you have no life
They’ll page you when you’re riding on a horse
They’ll page you till your wife files for divorce
But that should not make you feel enraged
Everybody must get paged!