A quiet phone can accompany different kinds of evenings. In two first-person essays, Maria Gullickson and Monica Law describe the distinction between remaining available for work and reaching the end of that responsibility. Their accounts concern different workplaces and publication periods, rather than a shared or observed routine.
Writing in the CarMax Engineering Blog on May 29, 2024, Gullickson described a round-the-clock on-call week once every four weeks. Her account emphasized how uneventful those rotations could be: she reported stretches of months without high-priority alerts or needing to log in beyond regular working hours. Quiet, in this account, could coexist with continued availability. Gullickson’s essay
She also described documentation that helped colleagues resolve problems without contacting her during weeks when she was not on call. That is a separate detail from an uneventful on-call rotation. Her employer-branded essay presents CarMax’s engineering approach favorably; it is her account, not an independent audit of company policy or alert records.
Law’s September 24, 2026 essay, published in her Grace for the Journey newsletter, begins from a healthcare-IT rotation lasting a week every five weeks. She described taking work equipment with her when leaving home during that rotation. Recalling a Monday-night conversation after it ended, she expressed excitement that she could turn her phone off for the night because she no longer needed to remain available. Law’s essay
Law uses that moment within a personal spiritual reflection about responsibility and trust. It is not an employer policy document. Her statement establishes the choice she described having that night, rather than documenting whether she switched the phone off or how the rest of the evening unfolded.
The comparison turns on availability, not how often a device makes a sound. Neither essay establishes a bedtime, sleep duration or current practice. The publication dates also do not supply exact dates for the experiences recounted. Together, the accounts show why describing an evening as quiet leaves an important question open: was work still able to call?