Well I just found out through a conference call this morning that I may be forced to in July. We are losing a major client in July, and in order to keep them we may have to be “hired” by their new contractor. Wether is would be a dual employment situation or I would be switching employers is uncertain. My life sucks right now. Time to look for a new job
Thanks all. Some of the advice here is heartening, but I’m not kidding myself that this is going to be anything other than an ordeal. Fingers crossed I can find a higher-paying day job soon so that I can avoid the whole graveyard-shift thing altogether. To be honest, it’s my fault that I’m on this mess in the first place, but I’m not prepared to borrow the money from the bank or from family, I’m gonna have to work myself through it.
For almost two years, I had two jobs, but at the same company, and only got paid for one. I was the Budget Director during the day, System Admin at night. Day job was a 7am to 6pm type of job. Then I would go home, spend a couple hours with my wife and young daughter and then work on systems stuff from 9pm to 1am or so (remotely). I would spend many Saturday and Sunday evening working too.
Originally this was only supposed to be until they found a new sysadmin. It became obvious after a few months that their requirements were out of sync with the compensation. So the first two they hired were useless and did not ever take over the job. Then they simply seemed to give up, and finally the position was just eliminated.
I was suffering all kinds of health issues by that point, and I finally had to take a stand. I ended up taking a lateral move, and watched the train wreck that ensued with a mixture of relief, concern and glee. Finally, they outsourced the whole financial systems management.
But my doctor told me point blank that every year I worked in those conditions was taking a year off my life. My weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol were rising. I got an attack of shingles. I didn’t play tennis or swim any more. This was during the really bad economy of 2009-10, or I would have quit sooner. But my wife was facing a layoff too, her company was in bankruptcy. In the end I decided that I would rather be healthy than rich. I am lucky that I could make that choice. Thankfully, I didn’t need to as the CFO refused to accept my resignation, and offered me a different job that I just love.
I built scenery in a scene shop for 10 hrs a day, M-Th, and 6 hours on Fridays. Then I’d leave on Fridays and come home, change, and walk up the street to bartend from 4pm-2am, then bartend again Saturday nights, same time. I did this for about six months. One Friday night I was so wiped out, I was drawing a beer and the keg went out. When it goes out, the beer sort of sputters and sprays the last foaminess of the beer from the tap. I was so tired, I had actually started to drift off in the 3 or 4 seconds between pulling the tap handle toward me, and when the foam started to sputter out, that when it did I sort of jumped and I almost dropped the glass. The regulars who were sitting at the bar watching the whole thing nearly shat themselves laughing.
For about a year in my early 20s, I was working full-time nights in a 7-11 and commuting about half an hour each way to my “local” community college for a full-time course load. Mountain Dew and No-Doz were a food group, I napped when I could, and I did have a helpful college advisor who was quite good at helping me work my schedule to have on-campus time as compact and fitted to my work hours as was possible. I was living with my grandfather at the time. Didn’t see him too much for part of the week, was able to be an interactive family member on days I only had either work or school.
Can your spouse get a job instead? Or is he/she already working?
Eat as well as you can. When you are not getting enough sleep, food is key. When you are at your desk job, try to have a fan blowing on you. I find having air moving over me helps keep me awake. Cold air is better. Make it a habit to keep paper and pen with you all the time, so if you are in a meeting you can take notes to keep yourself awake.
Good luck. I worked mutiple part time jobs while in college, and I can’t imagine doing it at 37.
Does your night job have to be full time? I used to do a full time day job and 16 - 24 hours at night, with the night hours being 6:30-10:30. It was tiring, but doable and I got out of debt pretty fast. I was in my mid to late thirties then. I don’t think I could ever have done two full time jobs.
I don’t see how sleeping 3 hours a night is sustainable at any age. As corkboard pointed out, even a bartender is going to have their performance suffer at work.
I did this several times.
Not in any specific order…
Full time School, Full time jobs, Part time jobs, Part time School, Weekend jobs, Home School, Home Projects, Bands, Rehearsals, Shows.
If your not getting a fat bank account from it…It’s just pointless time filler for exp points…which equated to $0 in the end for me.
Oh, I’d get these strange dreams where I have way too many jobs and forget if I’m at the right one on the right shift. Then have to get up and go to work again.
The last two years of my life are the first two in probably 20 years where I’ve only had one job. I was lucky in that they didn’t require quite that many hours. But when I was working three jobs and going to school fulltime (not to mention raising a tween and a baby), I had to get by on 4 hours or less a night for about a year and a half. I did everything I could to get enough sleep…I would nap at a desk at school between classes and working, sleep in my car on breaks, etc.
Another thing that helps is to get as much personal stuff done on jobtime as possible, paying bills online, making business calls etc. (if that’s allowed at your job of course). Try trading household duties with a family member or friend as well. Make kids do chores to help take up slack at home (if you have kids), or hire a teen on the cheap.
You find a way.
bolding mine..
I should have added that times 10! As I said in my earlier post, I did manage that for a year and a half, but the downside was, (and for YEARS afterward), I craved sleep like a drug and guarded it with the cranky demeanor of a pit bull. It took me a long time to get over the horror of that time of sleep deprivation.
It sounds silly in type, but I would live in fear of being somewhere where I’d be trapped and not able to get a decent bit of sleep.
A friend who had his own shop and did about 60 hours a week there and worked a few nights per week as a DJ told me that he coped with it otherwise just fine but he had started having memory problems - which he quickly demonstrated by having forgotten that I had always crashed at his place during our September meetings, every year for over ten years. With him that might’ve been partly stress though, since his shop barely stays afloat.
At a factory I used to work one of the old guys near retirement age told me how he used to work two shifts for a few months years ago when he was young, so 16 hours per day. Can’t remember how many days per week it was, but at least 5. He slept at the factory though so he had no commute either between sleeping place and work or between the two work shifts, so he could sleep 7 hours if he didn’t do anything else. He said it wasn’t too bad, but there’s a huge difference between 6-7 hours of sleep and 3.
Good luck with it, the whole thing sounds insane to me.
Kind of. I went to school full time and worked swing shift. Had class from 7:30 to 12:00 or 12:30, work from 14:30 to 23:00. I’d get home around midnight. I was 18 or 19, the job involved driving fleet vehicles between locations and the service center.
I had to drop my earliest class at the 6 week mark because there was no way I was going to pass it considering I could barely make it there most of the time and was completely fucked for concentration.
I quit the job after about 8–9 months. Swing shift didn’t work very well for me, especially with a 45 minute commute. I was lucky I managed to keep the vehicle on the road most nights. I was constantly tired. I’d fall asleep in the break room for the 10–15 minutes it would take the motor pool to bring out my replacement vehicle.
Sleep deprivation like you describe is not likely to be sustainable over more than a week or two at the most. If you can get 5–6 hours a day, you’ll probably be okay. Less than 4, you’re going to kill yourself. Not “someday”, I’m talking like within a month, driving off the road at 60 mph, psychotic break with hallucinations kind of killing yourself.
During Hell Week in SEAL training, the instructors give recruits up to 4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period, and by the end of that they are semi-coherent, at best. There was a sleep study where they gave participants 4, 6, and 8 hour blocks of sleep, and after only a couple of days there were significant deficits in concentration and memory; by two weeks, the 4 hour people were so messed up that they were performing about as well as a legally drunk person.
There’s no way to make it better. Stimulants will just cover up some of the symptoms and make you feel okay when you’re not really okay. The concentration and memory problems — as well as reaction time deficits — will still be there, even if your alertness is higher. Even amphetamines won’t keep you from eventually becoming a drooling idiot. You’ll just be an awake drooling idiot.
Although I have worked multiple jobs and worked full-time while studying full-time, the longest I’ve doubled up hours like that was two weeks where I got in one night’s sleep. I was hallucinating badly by the end and so clumsy and slurred that it seemed like I was drunk. And that was when I was 21.
You’re not planning merely to sleep only 3 hours a night, but to work or commute all the hours in between, and you’re 37 and you have other responsibilities, and you plan to do this for *six months. *. You haven’t even allocated time to shower or eat, though I know at least you don’t have to spend long washing your hair.
Can you not arrange to have at least one evening off, say the Wednesday? That might make it manageable. Otherwise being so sleep-deprived could easily end up with you making mistakes at your day job and losing that; in fact, I’d say making mistakes at both jobs is a virtual inevitability, though the sacking isn’t.
Sleep deprivation makes you clumsy and inattentive, too, possibly so clumsy that you injure yourself - a knife slips while you open a package, you walk into the road not seeing a car - or hurt somebody else, especially if you do any driving.
Your immune system will be shit; I’d bet hard cash that you’d end up taking a lot more time off work sick than if you weren’t working this schedule - that’ll lose you money and make you look bad.
You will essentially be an absent father for this time; that’s probably bearable if it’s only for six months and I’m sure your kids won’t be traumatised or anything, but there are practical considerations to take into account when making your wife a single parent on weekdays. What are you going to do if your daughter comes in and says she had a bad dream, can she talk to you? Ignore her because you’re getting the tiny bit of sleep you have time for? What if your wife gets ill - can someone else look after the kids? Does she do all the housework or will you have to do some of that too?
It’s a terrible idea. You say you have no other choice, but there’s a pretty big likelihood that it’ll actually make your situation worse.
I know that’s not the response you’re looking for, but there you go.
I do, right now, and I love both of them. My daytime job is a database administrator and my evening job is running my Taekwondo school.
Long days (alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m., I get home around 9:00 p.m.), but very satisfying.
Ok, I’ve roughed out a schedule and it looks like this:
8.15am: walk to train station
8.25am - 8.55am: commute by train/SLEEP for half an hour
9am-1pm: eat breakfast at desk and work day job
1pm-2pm: SLEEP for one hour
2pm-5.30pm: eat lunch at desk and work day job
5.50pm-6.25pm: commute home by train/SLEEP for half an hour
6.30pm-7.pm: grab dinner & play with kids
7pm-9.30pm: SLEEP for one and a half hours
9.45pm-10pm: drive to night job
10pm-2am: work night job
2am-3am: work break/SLEEP for one hour
3am-6am: work night job
6am-6.15am: drive home
6.15am-7.45am: SLEEP for one and a half hours
7.45am-8.15am: wake, wash, dress, kiss kids
If I’ve figured correctly, that gives me 6 hours of sleep in every 24hour period. The problem is that these won’t be 6 consecutive hours.
Will this kill me?
Bear in mind that this would happen Monday to Friday. I’d probably sleep half of Saturday, then rejoin the living for family stuff until Monday morning when it starts all over again.
Yes. No way will you be able to sleep properly in those breaks. Cut the amount of time you think you’ll be able to nap by half at least.
Sorry, Bib, I reckon that little sleep broken up so much actually could kill you. The longest consecutive sleep you get is an hour and a half - you won’t get any deep sleep at all. That’s the kind of sleep schedule done in experiments to see how easily people get driven mad by lack of sleep. It really could kill you.
What kinds of jobs will you be doing? You’ll definitely be making more mistakes there, buy I take it that at least lives aren’t at risk. Will your day job be happy with you sleeping through lunch? Will you have to put your head down in the staff room or something, while others around you eat their lunch and whisper so as not to disturb the drooling dude? And do you always get a seat on the train?
A couple of nights a week would probably be manageable if you knew it wasn’t forever, especially if you could maybe do Friday and Monday. Could you maybe do that and get a loan for the rest of whatever you need?
My day job is marketing - a nice, quiet desk job with no heavy lifting, sharp objects, spinning machinery or air-traffic control.
The night job will (fingers crossed) be as a night loader - sorting and loading parcels onto lorries. If I screw up then I assume the wrong package goes on the wrong lorry, but nobody gets maimed or killed.
Day job will be fine with me sleeping through lunch - they actually have a nice quiet “chillout room” on a different floor which has huge beanbags and sofas. I always get a seat on the train. As an added bonus I can wear a baseball cap to pull down over my eyes, and my hearing aids function as very effectively ear-plugs when I take the batteries out, thus cancelling out any background noise.
I’m going to think about taking out a loan and working fewer days, but I’m going to have to give this my best shot first.
I don’t think this is a sustainable schedule, beyond a week or so. You need longer periods of uninterrupted sleep. If you could figure out a way to schedule your jobs back-to-back (i.e. 7-3 then 3-11) you might be able to survive 6 months doing it.