Anyone with experience working odd schedules?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I might be changing jobs in a few months, and the new job will be one where it is possible and preferable for me to work 2nd or 3rd shift. I’ve never done that before, though I did have a couple of semesters in college where I had only night courses.

Anyone with experience, can you tell me how it went for you? Did you go to work first thing in the “morning” and then come home and live your life, or did you go to work last thing, come home and go to bed? Did you live with anyone? Did they switch schedules to match yours? If not, did you ever see your loved ones?

Any and all info would be great.

2

I work a constantly rotating shift roster. When we’re on the proper rotation (which we’re not at the moment), I end up on late or overnight shifts every six to seven weeks.

Personally, I just sleep when I feel like it on those shifts. Sometimes after graves, I’ll get home at seven thirty am, not head to bed until about lunch time and then get up just in time to go to work. Other times I’ll go to bed almost as soon as I get home, and get up in the early afternoon.

When hubby’s not working, he changes his sleep patterns to meet mine. When he is working, I generally wake up when he gets home and spend a couple of hours before work with him. Depending on which job he’s doing (he temps at the moment so he’s often in different jobs from one grave shift to the next), I’ll try to catch him before work, and sometimes will accompany him on the train as he goes into work, so we can spend a bit more time together.

It depends on what you want to do with your days. If you’re wanting to do your bill paying and gym workouts etc, etc, I personally find it’s easier to do those in the mornings after getting home from work, and then sleep until it’s time to go to work again. Otherwise, you end up starting your work day already tired, and that’s never a pleasant feeling.

3

I was the night copy desk for awhile–about three months. Went to work at 9pm, got off at 7am. It worked out great for me because I had a fairly new baby (2 mo.) and he never had to miss a feeding. I went home in the morning, climbed into bed with my baby and took a nap while he had breakfast. (The Mom is closed. However, the bar is always open.)

The down side–it was supposed to be a four-day work week, Sun-Mon-Tues, Wednesday off, Thurs., Friday & Saturday off. This would have given me some recovery time. But they called me in. Only every week, always on Saturday, sometimes Friday and Saturday, and once they actually wanted me to come in around noon on Sunday (what, and work around the clock? No thanks). That was why I only lasted three months. Those are, by the way, very excellent hours for job hunting elsewhere.

4

Right now I am working an off schedule, though I like it. I have worked straight second shifts, straight third shifts and right now I am working a very odd second shift with 2 days working days [mon, thur and fri are 11am to 8 pm, and sat sun are 8 am -5 pm, with tues wed being my weekend] mrAru works 8am to whenever he shows up at home, mon-fri.

Over the years together, I will admit to being in the unusual circumstance of being a navy family, so I have had periods of mrAru vanishing underwater for varying amounts of time, so I just schedule to suit myself.

When working straight thirds [11pm to 8 am] I wake up and give myself enough time to get breakfast and go to work, and stay up for 4 or 5 hours after I get off work. I find that is the best way to not fall asleep in the middle of the night shift, after all most people get uip in the morning with a minimal amount of time before leaving, and stay awake after they get home. I found that it was more disruptive trying to sleep in the early part of the day [assholes making noise, people a tthe door, friends trying to get you to do stuff because you are home all day …sigh]

When working seconds [any shift that starts noonish and ends eveningish] just forget having a social life on any day other than your days off. Make friends with your tivo/vcr if you are hooked on any shows on TV at all. Blockbuster and cable tv are your best friends. Again, I tend to sleep until I have to get breakfast and go to work and stay up after I get home, again for the same reasons. MMORPGs online are also your friends and a great social activity becaus ethere is usually someone on 24 hours a day.

As to mrAru, as I said, being military is a very different lifestyle and set of expectations - he was missing more than he was home for much of the past 15 years. (shrug) We are both the solitary stay at home types, so for us it worked then and works now. We sleep together, he needs less sleep than I do so I just sleep in for an extra hour or 2 in teh morning, and he putters on weekends around the house when I am at work on whatever is on his HoneyDo list and on my tues/wed off I run any errands we need, grocery shop and the like. It works out.

I think most couples could actually benefit from less contact, People can very easily get on each others nerves if they are always together. People need ‘down’ time and privacy, and different schedules are great for that. We still have a fair amount of good quality time together =)

5

A recent study, say, three years ago, revealed that night shift nurses lived five years less than day shift nurses.

So, whatever else the schedule has going for it, night shift careers have a definate effect on your retirement plans.

Tris

6

Well, in my case, I was working 12-hour shifts, so I was asleep most of the time I wasn’t working–I went to bed right after I got home most mornings, and woke up a couple hours before going to work. Overall it wasn’t bad–took a couple days to get used to the new schedule, but after two weeks I was well settled into it and it wasn’t that much different from working days–I preferred it actually. Unfortunately, after those two weeks the contract I was working ended and I got thrown into a pretty random schedule, which was a lot worse than working a steady night-shift.

7

I worked for a few years in psych nursing mostly doing rostered shifts and I got to really like it. I was young at the time and shift work didn’t present any physical difficulties. As there are far fewer staff on at night my roster used to be something like: mornings, afternoons, mornings, afternoons and Friday Saturday Sunday nights, afternoons, mornings, then monday - thursday nights, then start again.

I found the trick to enjoying it was to take advantage of the odd hours you have off, particularly with afternoon and night shifts. Don’t fall into the trap of going home from night duty and crashing. Adjust your hours so that when you finish work early in the morning you get to enjoy a few hours while everyone else rushes off to work. I used to go to the beach for a morning swim or go visiting friends - I’d cook them breakfast while they got ready for work. A few times some of us went to an early opener (pub that opens at 6 or 7 am) to have breakfast and a beer and dance to stuff on the jukebox. Then off home for a sleep, get up early evening and do something before going to work.

The same principle with afternoons - get up early enough to do something in the morning and when you finish work make sure you have some fun before bedtime - even if it’s only watching a tape of the show you missed while working.

I work 9 to 5 now and find it far harder to fit in other things than I ever did while working odd hours. Anything that requires a few hours of attention on a work day requires a day off - even my 6 monthly checkup with the doc. If I was shift working I could fit it in before an afternoon shift or after a night shift.

8

One of the reasons I’m considering doing 2nd or 3rd shift is that my husband has a ton of medical stuff all the time. I’m constantly taking time off work, which is fine in my current job, but definitely not ideal for a new job. I’ve been working 9-5 for nine years and I’m still not used to the schedule.

9

I’ve worked 2nd and 3rd shifts. I would never come home and just go to bed.

The idea of sleeping and getting up before work to have your personal time just didn’t wash for me. But about half of the staff did it that way. Whatever floats your boat.

The weekends where the strangest. I’d get home at 7am on a Friday and be ready to have a few beers while most other folks where still in bed.

My schedule usually got pretty screwed up on the weekends too. I started to take a sleeping pill on Monday to make sure that I would get to sleep, and get back on track.

I lived with my brother at the time, and the arrangement worked out well, we where both very considerate of each others schedule. Though, when I look back on that time in my life, it’s sort of a blur.

Some things worked out real nice. Stores are less crowded since everyone else is at work, and things just generally felt less rushed. I picked up cooking as a kind of hobby.

It was often tough to socialize, but since I’m pretty much of a loaner anyway, it didn’t seem to bother me. I had one very good friend at work, so I usually had someone to hang with if I wanted to.

For myself, there was a big difference between 2nd and 3rd shift. I liked 3rd shift much better. On 3rd shift, I was just getting off work when the world was waking up (I’m a morning person). Businesses would open soon, and I could go about my day until 2-3pm.

On 2nd shift, I would get off at 11pm when most folks have already turned in for the night. Since I would not just go to bed right after work it got a little boring. And I found it hard to schedule the things I needed to get done.

Then maybe, it won’t really matter to you. I know though that some people had a real hard time working odd hours. You have to commit yourself to getting the proper amount of sleep. Some folks just couldn’t do it.

But in todays world many things run 24/7. That should make it easier.

Luck

enipla

10

Well, I still work odd hours, because my days of work are not fixed. My schedule changes every week (one reason I don’t go full time-I try to lessen the impact of this constant change on my kids and me).

I work 12s, day shift as a nurse. I used to work nocs-8’s then 12’s. 12s are better for off shift, because you have more days off for “recovery”.

I never got used to them. Never. I could DO them–I am something of a night owl, but all I could do is sleep when I was off. I am convinced that this off shift led to a bout of depression for me.I self medicated with ice cream and gained 20 pounds. I had mood swings. Planning for sleep, adequate sleep became a major focus for me. I worked nocs all through my first pregnancy and then went to days. Never again will I work nocs.

I would get home at 0830, shower and go to sleep-I had to. I would force myself to get up at 5:00 pm or 6, to have some sort of a life. I didn’t see friends (we were all in our twenties and while they were at work, I was asleep, when they were out for drinks after work, I was at work). I call it the Black Hole in My Life. It lasted 4 years.

Best of luck to you, just thought you ought to hear some of the downside of it.

11

I’ve worked odd hours before, and it completely messes up my natural cycle, as I prefer to work early hours and then come home to enjoy the rest of the day, having all my free time in one single block. Mid-day shifts suck because there isn’t really enough time to do much of anything in the morning before going to work, and after work it’s the same thing. Before you know it, three or four hours have already passed and already it’s time for bed again. Swing shift (starting in the afternoon) isn’t much better, either. While I get the single block of free time as opposed to having my free time split in two by work, it’s not as relaxing having to constantly watch the clock and see how much time you have left before you have to get to work. I’d much rather have the work day behind me so that I can relax.

A shift bid is coming up at work and I don’t want to lose the morning slot that I currently have. At least I won’t be working any later than 9:30 PM if I do wind up on the swing shift. At my last job I didn’t get off until after 11:00 PM. That was a difficult schedule for me.

12

That’s not necessarily a cause and effect relationship; many people who work nights do so because their job pays a shift differential for evening/night work. I would guess that people who need the money badly enough to work the shift in that case may also be stressed out over money, unable to afford the best medical care, and so on. (Another reason I’ve seen people work evenings is so that they can be home with their kids during the day while their spouse is at work-- this is hard on a relationship, and very stressful for the person trying to sleep and watch the kids at the same time.)

I love working overnights, myself-- I get home between 8-10 in the morning, depending on the day, do grocery shopping on the way home, poke around and have breakfast, and go to sleep about the crack of noon. I get up around 7:00PM at the earliest (I have one day where I have to be up at 7, and I go to bed early that morning) and socialize with the human world before work. Sometimes I sleep in until 9 if I’m being a lazy bum. I rarely, if ever, set an alarm. I hear not getting up to an alarm adds years to your life, and since I’m in the rare, privileged position of being PAID to spend time by myself (which I adore)… I plan to live a long, long time.

13

If you have trouble sleeping in the daytime, here are a couple of tips. To get the bedroom really dark, get some good roll-up blinds. If that’s not enough, cover the windows with aluminum foil. If daytime noises bother you, you can drown them out with a fan in the bedroom.

14

I used to work 3pm-12afor a television station five days a week. It was part time.*

I would sleep until noon, which gave me time to have a leisurely shower and meal before work. I would get home by 12:30a, and I would watch a bit of TV before bed. I had enough time in the mornings to run errands, or I could wait until the weekend to do my shopping.

*Technically, my hours were 3:30p-6:30p and then 9:30p-12a. So I had a three hour break in between, but it wasn’t really worth it for me to drive home, so I’d hang out, watching episodes of Star Trek TNG that we’d recorded off the satellite. Sometimes I’d help the news department write news stories, or we’d play around with the graphics and CG.