[carlosjobim]

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.

[OutOfHere]

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.

[carlosjobim]

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.

[OutOfHere]

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.