My manager's five-minute calls keep starting after my workday

At 5:42 last Thursday, while I was carrying groceries from my car, my manager messaged: “Quick call?”

The call lasted thirty-eight minutes.

There was no emergency. He wanted to talk through the order of slides for a presentation scheduled the following Tuesday. We had a one-to-one on the calendar for Friday morning, and the deck was already on our shared drive. Nothing about the conversation required that particular Thursday evening.

This has become his favorite way to work. At some point between 5:30 and 6:15, he notices something, sends “five mins?”, and calls before I have answered. If I pick up, five minutes becomes twenty or forty. If I do not, he sends a second message asking whether I am around.

My official hours end at 5:30. His begin later because he takes his children to school and often works into the evening. I do not begrudge him that schedule. The problem is that his flexible hours have quietly become my extended hours.

I have tried soft signals. I changed my status to offline. I stopped responding immediately. I mentioned that evenings are difficult because I help my dad with dinner twice a week. None of it changed the pattern. The next morning he is never angry, exactly, but he will say, “I tried to catch you,” in a tone that makes the missed call feel like a small failure.

The calls are also difficult to record. He makes decisions verbally, I take notes on whatever is nearby, and the next day I turn them into a proper recap. Last week he questioned why I had changed a deadline until I reminded him that it came from an evening call. He said he had only been thinking out loud.

Nobody has told me I am on call. This is a salaried office role, not an emergency function. I am willing to stay late for a real deadline and I have done so without complaint. What is wearing me down is the assumption that every passing thought deserves immediate access to the rest of my day.

I want to say: “I can take urgent calls after 5:30 when we agree they are urgent. For routine questions, please put them in the deck or send them for the next morning.” That feels clear when I write it here. In the moment, with my phone already ringing, it feels confrontational.

Would you set the boundary in a one-to-one, decline each call as it happens, or ask for a shared rule about what counts as urgent? I am less worried about one late conversation than about making permanent availability the price of being seen as responsive.