On-call Gift Guide for the Holidays

Gift-giving is hard, isn’t it? But what do you do when the recipient is someone whose body and mind have endured the hazards of countless on-call shifts?

Forget the eggnog and mistletoe this year—celebrate your on-call heroes with these thoughtfully curated gifts, perfect for every step of an incident lifecycle.

For a relaxing on-call shift

Custom-made ear plugs for the on-callogist’s family

It’s not just the responder who feels the impact of duplicated alerts in the dead of night. Life as an on-callogist spouse is not easy. And can someone please think of the children?

I personally had my custom-made ear plugs done at my local audiology center (although they were not good enough and I am now single).

Red Bull Tasting Set (with crystal glassware)

Help your responders feel like they’re not 21-year-olds staying awake during a night out pounding back off-brand energy drinks, but bourgeois engineers delighting themselves in the finest classic of the season, Red Bull Winter Edition.

I recommend including Riedel crystal glasses to elevate the experience. I do not recommend using flutes or wine glasses in this case; those sharp bubbles can hurt your nostrils in the early cold hours of dawn.

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For recovery after a tumultuous shift

Sonic Bomb Dual Extra Loud Alarm Clock with Bed Shaker

If you’re asking your SREs to go to the office after an on-call shift, the least you can do is help them wake up. Make sure they do get up on time to drive through the rush hour with the Sonic Bomb.

I recommend choosing a colorful version to cheer up responders upon their forceful awakening.

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$10 Uber Eats Gift Card

CrowdStrike set the compensation standard for large outages in 2024: sending a $10 Uber Eats Gift Card to its partners for the inconvenience.

Just make sure Uber doesn’t flag your gift cards as fraudulent (as it happened to CrowdStrike).

For a merry post-mortem

Reverse Uno cards

Set up your on-call staff for the most effective blameless post-mortem with a set of Reverse Uno cards.

You’re saying this outage is my fault? Well, well, NOW IT’S ON YOU, SAM!

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Office pizza party

An old-time classic. Bring back that 2010s nostalgia by attempting to rebuild tired teams who just fought each other with a pizza party.

But make sure to stay on-theme and order cheap chain pizzas and serve sodas in plastic cups.

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Ok but seriously

Being on-call is hard work and should be taken seriously, not on one particular season but systematically. Check out our On-call for Humans guide to get ideas on how to develop a sustainable SRE practice.

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