At one point when I was working 6AM -2:30PM, I sub-letted my room to a friend pulling 2nd shift. Worked like a charm. We both had a place to sleep, rarely saw each other and I made a little extra cash. The fact he liked to go out after work and was never home before 4AM helped.
Bri2k
I’ve done all – first, second, and graveyard. During holidays it sometimes rotates from day to day :eek:
I’m a bit of a night owl, so I’ve always preferred second or graveyard. Nowadays I go into work at either 4 or 5AM, depending on the day, which means I’m up by 3AM at the latest, reasonably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I’m lucky if I can fall asleep by 8PM the previous night, though.
One of the nice things about working an off shift is that you can get all your errands run MUCH easier. Grocery shopping - easy. Christmas shopping - easy.
It is hard on a social life or a family though.
In the 2 jobs I had before this one, we did a variety of shift patterns.
The first one I did was a 2 shift pattern with 6 days on - 3 Early (8-4), 3 Late (4-midnight) - then 3 days off. Sometimes a couple of midshifts were thrown in when extra cover was required. It was really good to work with - holiday planning is really easy with regular shifts, and this one had the advantage of getting 12 days off for the price of 6. You’ve got plenty of time to do other stuff when it’s not busy as well.
Then I moved jobs and started working for a company that was just starting a 24hr operation. Initially, those of us doing nights were on a 2 shift pattern, which was OK, but this later changed to a 3 shift “pattern” which met the company’s need of having more people in during the daytime but with little consideration for what the pattern would do to the people involved. Also, the shift timings were moved from starting at midnight, 8am and 4pm to 10pm, 6am and 2pm.
What did I learn from this?
Shift times matter just as much as shift patterns - finishing at 8am meant I could pick up a bacon sandwich at the local bakery; at 6am nothing was open. Also, it meant walking in on weekend early shifts as the buses didn’t start until after 6. [I only lived a couple of miles away, so this wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds]
A regular pattern to shifts is far more preferable.
A consistent progression within the shift pattern from earlier to later or vice versa is better.
More shift possibilities require greater regularity and a bit more recovery time between changes - I always found the first early after a set of nights to be particularly bad, while others found the first night to be worse. This effect only appeared once we switched from 2 shifts to 3.
I work 3 ten hour graveyard shifts followed by one 10 hour day shift and I really like it. The beauty of the night shift is that I see my boss for 1/2 hour per week, I see my co-workers for about an hour before they leave and there is little or no office politics to put up with.
I start on Tuesday night, then Wed & Thurs night and get off at 9:00 am Friday, which I just did an hour ago. Then I go back to work tomorrow morning for an easy Saturday day shift and am off again until Tuesday night.
The way that works best for me sleep-wise is this: when I get off work on Wed and Thurs mornings I stay up until about 1 or 2 in the afternoon and then go to bed and sleep a full 7 1/2 or 8 hours, get up eat and go to work.
But on Friday mornings I don’t usually go to bed at all, I stay up all day, eat dinner early in the evening and get a full nights sleep, maybe 10-11 hours, and then I am a day person again starting in the morning. Yeah, I’m usually not worth a shit by Friday afternoon but I hate to waste the day sleeping because then I will be awake all night again and I have to work in the morning.
I tried going directly to bed when I got home and getting up mid-day with the plan to take another nap in the evening before going to work. This does not work because after a few hours of sleep I am rested and can’t get back to sleep later for the evening nap. Makes for a weary night later.
My wife works two 12 hour day shifts, 24 hours off, and then two 12 hour nights, then 3 days off, and she likes that.
This confuses the hell out of the cat because she is on the bed whenever one of us is sleeping. Depending on how our days overlap, the poor animal sometimes tries to spend 20 hours sleeping on the bed.
You may find these threads useful as I did: