I’ve heard, and I assume it’s true, that the midnight-to-eight shift* in a hospital is not referred to as the ‘graveyard shift’, for obvious reasons. What’s it called, then?
When my dad was with the FAA, he called that shift the ‘graveyard shift’ or the ‘midwatch’.
*Or whatever similar span. Dad was FAA, so had 8-hour days.
Technically, it’s the “third shift.” But I’ve heard people call it the graveyard shift, probably more often than third shift.
1st shift- days
2nd shift- evenings
3rd shift- nights
When it was on a form it was “third shift”. But everyone on the mid shift called it the mid shift or the grave yard shift.
Every shift is the graveyard shift at the cemetery.
Every place I’ve been called it nights.
In the printing industry it’s called the “lobster shift.”
Why wouldn’t they just call it the night shift? That’s what it always was in fast food (back in the day).
At the mental health facility where I work the three shifts are referred to in casual conversation as the AM, the PM, and the 11/7 (or “the eleven to seven” if you are not into the whole brevity thing).
Ever since I was nursing in the 70s I think in NSW they have been C shifts or nights. The standard A is 7 - 3, a B is 3 - 11 and a C is 11 - 7.
Usually, “nights,” to distinguish it from “days” and “PMs” but I really just want to post on the idea that Hospital workers are somehow sensitive souls who don’t want to offend by using the term “graveyard” since so many patients circle the drain on nights and end up exiting in the horizontal mode instead of being returned to Death Camp.
In the ED, at least, we sort of invented political incorrectness and callous disregard for emotional human suffering.
Oh, I know that hospital workers have macabre senses of humour. But I’ve been told that ‘they’re not supposed to use “graveyard shift”’. So it sounds like a policy thing, rather than people trying to be sensitive. (For whatever reason, I was never able to ask the question.)
I used to call it money. Double differential over day pay and, being a young healthy idiot at the time, a per deim in lieu of benefits. Worked out to about quadruple over base.
As I recall noone out on smoke break had any qualms against graveyard. But the scheduling term was nights.
Why?
That TV drama about late-night emergency services called it “Third Watch” but “third shift” is what I personally have heard more often.
Perhaps political correctness has creeped in, but I personally worked “the graveyard shift” at a Dunkin’ Donuts and a convenience store in West Texas back in the 1970s. Possibly it was a more common term than today?
What industry does use “graveyard shift” as a formal term? I work in a toxicology lab, and the term “night shift” is the formal term for the 11pm-7am shift. After all, who’s going to apply for a job posting for a graveyard shift? Of course the workers when talking to each other use “graveyard” and “overnight”.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used as a formal term. It’s just what everyone said way back when. Perhaps it’s gone by the wayside more today.
At the convenience store I worked, 7am-3pm was “the morning shift” (despite three hours of it being in the afternoon), 3-11pm was “the swing shift” and 11pm-7am “the graveyard shift.” But none of those terms was used formally.
I’ve heard it called the graveyard shift all my life, so it’s not surprising that you’d hear it at a doughnut shop. But the term seems to be frowned upon (at least officially) in hospitals because people die in hospitals.
People have died in doughnut shops, too. 