What I did with oncall was taking the time back from incidents, like working only the afternoon after a midnight page that screwed up my sleep. It's not like I'd have been productive anyway, and people will understand if you cancel a meeting at 2am.
The real annoying part of it is not being able to detach from work the weeks I was oncall, and having to plan travel to ensure that acting in time remains feasible.
Now,if a job requires permanent on-call that is just a bs workaround from having the organisational structure to properly deal with emergencies.
