I work late, I'm a Night Owl, and I'm SICK of people waking me up in the morning!

The BBQ Pit
41

Smeghead says:

I’m with Smeghead. I gave RickJay the benefit of the doubt with the first post, but now I agree that he is a goat felching ass licking son of a cockroach! :mad:
I tried working “normal” hours for three years. I was always tired and cranky and sick. My body hated it. When the weekend rolled around I was awake until 2 or 3 am and slept until the afternoon. Now that I work overnights, I feel better when I wake up, don’t need an alarm and am a happy person in general. Oh yeah, and since I rarely see the sun, see if I get skin cancer. :stuck_out_tongue:
I work overnights and do not have a shit job. Thank you very much.

42

I was certainly prepared for the cries of protest from lazy boneheads, but the level of noise from people with poor reading skills is pretty surprising, too.

Read slowly and carefully:

IF YOU HAVE A NIGHT SHIFT, OF COURSE YOU HAVE TO SLEEP DURING THE DAY. DUH.

IF you don’t want people calling early, take the fucking phone off the hook, or turn the ringer off. How hard is that? How do you expect people to magically know when you’re sleeping? Do you send out magical ESP rays? Have you send little cards to every mailing address in the country to the effect of

          Mr. and Mrs. Jumping J. Flash
       request the honor of your presence
       Anywhere except on the phone with us
           up to 11:30 AM on weekdays

Whiners. Christ! STOP COMPLAINING AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I’ve worked every imaginable late shift thatere is, fuckmonekys - 12 to 8, 8 to 8 on both sides, 11-7, you name it, and I was never once woken up by a phone call because I can unplug a phone cord without hurting myself.

(If you have people actually coming to your door and ringing the bell, that’s something else entirely. Disconnecting the doorbell is troublesome and they could still knock, and yes, I know people ignore “No solicitors” signs. I would suggest shotgun blasts but you would damage your door. Perhaps an electrified doorbell button. We could start another thread about people who come to your door selling shit, I am sure. Especially people selling religion, holy shit.)

As to the teenagers who complained about their parents bugging them to get up, your parents are your problem. People bugging you all the time? Welcome to adulthood. And no, Yosemitebabe, I did not miss your point; your point was wrong. You directly compared “night owls” to homosexuals. I say again: Har.
Oh, and another thing: Boy, you people are easily riled up, considering this is a flame area. What easily manipulated puppets people can be, I mean, really. Perhaps you were all tired. Lexicon impresses me though, and Bluemonchichi’s sudden burst of profane fury in the last post wasn’t shabby either. I was going to call you all a pack of fish-fellating fuckfaces, but “Goat-felching ass-licking son of a cockroach” tops that.

43

Then what has your whole ranting flame been about, then? News Flash - many Night Owls work the Night Shift. And we still get crap for it. We still are called “lazy”. Read the comments on this thread.

This is one of your comments from an earlier post:

The world’s not waiting for your lazy ass slackers who insist on having all these services available to you when you get off work at 5. What? Why can’t you rent that video before 5 pm? Lazy slacker. Get it done earlier, why don’t you? Why can’t you call tech support before 5, or order that pizza, etc.? The world does not revolve around you. If the whole world gets up early (except for a few lazy slacker night owls) then no need for such services should exist.

Besides, this crap about “exempting” people with night jobs, while ragging on all “night owls” in general is bullshit. All these night people - well, these are the people that take the majority these “shit jobs”, so you can shop after work, or avail yourself of many “after hours” services.

Once again, read the comments on this thread. Some of us have relatives that we need to hear from in case of an emergency. I have a handicapped sister - I sure as hell don’t want to block out a potential emergency call from her, in order to avoid all the assholes who insist on calling too early.

I’ll quote Matt here:
“New word: diurnofascist. It means “one of that subset of early birds who traipse through life expecting that everything and everyone naturally obeys their sleep cycle.” They’re no better than the heterosexuals who think that everybody naturally shares their sexual orientation.”

You act as if you can speak as an authority on everyone’s sleep cycles. Like you know how they are, know how their inner body clock works, and you have deemed that anyone who says they have trouble getting up in the morning is just “lazy”. That anyone that claims that their natural cycle is that of a “night owl” is just lying about it. That’s what you claim. You are the expert on all people’s body clocks now.

Now, explain why my comparison to the straight person who just assumes that all gay people are not really gay, but not “trying” to be straight “hard enough” is not relevant to your claim that all “night owls” aren’t “night owls” at all, but are not “trying hard enough” to be day people. Please explain the flaws in my logic clearly, don’t just say “Har”.

44

  1. Philly PD stopped following biorhythms in the 90s. Maybe if they had, they wouldn’t be fucked up.

  2. Yep, if I tell you you can’t call me in the morning and you do, you are breaking the law.

  3. Turning the phone off isn’t an option with my phone, for example. There is no mechanism to turn off the ringer short of unplugging it, which then means that REAL calls also don’t come through. Turning the phone off doesn’t stop all of the other crap, include idiots like Rickyjay calling us lazy.

  4. Yeah, Churchill was one of those worthless night people. And that slob Proust never wrote anything. And Wittgenstein, what a putz! Way to go on using your broad and amazing experiences to make a compelling point.

I revise it, not only do many morning people suck,but Rickyjay felches.

45

Just yesterday morning :

10AM, NM is just drifting off to sleep when . . .

the phone rings. OK. I answer. I get a recording -

"Hello, do you own your own home ? Well if you need cash we are ready to serve you . . . "

SLAM.

I live in an apartment.

AAAAAAAARG !!! Takes another hour to go to sleep.

Oh, and Rickjay you insignificant turtle dick. You have no idea what it is like to work our hours, live our hours, or deal with imbecilic “time-discriminators” (like that ? just made it up) like you. No one invited you here. So please, take your bulbous, toilet crushing, sunlight stealing, teen frightning, baby killing, car crushing, bloated, infected, furry, pimply ass (where obviously your head resides) out of this thread. Oh, but don’t worry about losing weight on that Sputnik shaped thing - it still won’t help make your 3/4 inch penis look any bigger.

With all apologies to the greatest Wally (hate to waste this on such vermin) . . . .

PUTZ.

46

Nothingman, if you think for one instant I’m going to leave this thread because some half-assed monkey-humping turdburglar told me to, how gravely mistaken you are.

And as to the comment about how Winston Churchill was a night person - as God is my witness, I actually predicted someone would use Churchill as an example. Well, guess who else was a night person? Adolf Hitler. Loved to stay up late and sleep in. Slept right through the first part of D-Day. I’d say those balance out.

(Hitler was also a vegetarian. Another thread, perhaps.)

And JESUS H. BALDHEADED CHRIST, here we go: “But night owls work the night shift!” Man.

Perhaps I have been unclear, though it’s been stated a million times; I have complete sympathy for anyone working a night shift. Really. I’ve worked enough of them. My honest, no-flame apologies if I roasted you.

But Yosemitebabe, your comparison to homosexuals is still fucking crazy. Let’s review:

It is your assertion that saying people can change their sleeping habits is equivalent to changing their sexual orientation.

Well, no, it’s not equivalent. Sexual orientation, be it biologically predetermined or unconsciously determined after birth, appears to be unchangeable. If you want to have sex with women, you can’t just decide on Thursday you want to have sex with men.

You CAN, on the other hand, wake up at any damned time you please. Do it long enough and you’ll be more or less used to it. Even if it is your position that you are predisposed to waking at hour X, the fact is that you can folow a different schedule and get along pretty well, provided the schedule is consistent and offers you enough sleep time. It’s simply not equivalent to sexual orientation, which can’t be changed at will, and can’t be ignored through alternate behaviour without serious problems.

I take back my comment on unplugging your phone since you have a pretty damned good reason to keep in plugged in, though. But let me ask you this: If people are assholes for calling YOU in the morning, when should they call anyone? Since every possible shift is being worked by someone, is it not possible, then, to inadvertently catch almost anyone sleeping? What the hell are people supposed to do? Read your sleeping mind?

Of course, I may be biased by having spent years at university with people who didn’t have jobs AT ALL and only had fifteen hours of class a week but did get rip-roaring drunk four night a week and the following day complained about having to get up. Of course, for those of us who did get up and slam back a coffee and make it to our 8:30 class, it was a little frustrating when these worthless shitwits didn’t show up, especially when group work was involved, and don’t get me fucking started on group work.

In the school paper, some mouth-breathing fuckwad wrote an editorial that - I swear I am not making this up - said that the government should ban church bells because he studied so hard that he had to get drunk on Saturday nights and it bothered him that St. Mary’s rang its bells in the morning. These are the “night owls” I dealt with for years. So forgive me if I am projecting the sins of one group onto another, which wasn’t my intent. (You’re still all knuckle-dragging no-good snake felchers, of course.)

47

Listen up, Rickjay, I’m tryin’ to help you…

numbering mine
You haven’t been unclear, man, you’ve been a dumb ass.
From your posts I gather that you aren’t a mouthbreathing idiot. You sound reasonably smart. But in this case, you’re acting like a grade-A shitforbrains.

Try to follow me, okay, bud?

1)You say that want to exclude shift workers. Fine. But you can’t. For one simple reason…

EVERYONE HERE WHO IS A “NIGHT-PERSON” IS A SHIFT WORKER, GENIUS!

That’s why your ass-squicking appeal to fractured logic continues to be ignored.

  1. You don’t need to apologize to anyone. You couldn’t flame my 3 year old niece. Much like one of her favorite TV characters, you just give me and other adults migraines. Apologize for having your head in your ass if you feel the need for attrition.

Let me bottom line it for you, as a friend:

The people that think you are retarded like Rainman think so not so much because of what you’re trying to say, but how you’ve been saying it… Check it:

You want to exclude a group of night people, but the only night people you’re talking to here are in the group you want to exclude.
Got Dichotomy?

If you had said something like:

“Night people who don’t make changes to their lifestyles in order to accomodate their sleeping habits are weakminded sacless shmucks. I don’t give two fucks about them. Any night person who works a night shift has their head screwed on straight, so I got nothin’ but props for them. I can’t stand it when a night person bitches and expects me to have consideration when they don’t have enough consideration themselves to do something to avoid what they’re whining about.”

I would have high-fived you, nimrod, if you had put what you’re trying to say in that manner. But the way you posted was equivolent to putting a sign on your crotch that says “kick me… HARD”.

Do you get it now? Do you see why everyone got their panties in a bunch? You’re new here, but that makes no difference to me. I think we could be friends and I think you could be a great Doper.

But if you keep your head in your choad you’re only going to piss people off and get banned.
I’m sayin all this in the best way possible, I’m tryin to help you out. If you think I’m being a dick, feel free to e-mail me. I will take prompt action. By prompt action I mean I will look into hiring an acoholic chimp to beat your nuts with a tac hammer because you are a MORON.

48

If people are assholes for calling YOU in the morning, when should they call anyone? Since every possible shift is being worked by someone, is it not possible, then, to inadvertently catch almost anyone sleeping? What the hell are people supposed to do? Read your sleeping mind?
=-=-=-=-=-

?? What are all these vital calls we’re talking about? If it’s regarding telemarketers, headhunters, pollsters or the like then they shouldn’t be calling cold to anybody at any time. But that’s obviously a completely different topic. Surely you are not siding with that particular brand of scum?

Lately I’ve been trying to get a game written for an October 1st deadline, so I’ll buy a case of Coke on Friday night and start writing code. I turn the ringer off on my phone before turning in and all is good… or at least it would be, if not for my fricking room mate.

The guy is the kind of sunshine-tripping flowersparky whom I have historically had a deep loathing for. So overjoyed by the shining miracle of the rising sun that it seems he just wants someone to scratch him behind the ears and tell him what a “good boy” he is for waking up. And inadvertently, he’s banging on my door for every inane Saturday morning call. If someone called for him at 2 AM on a Friday night I would not consider for a moment waking him up. Obviously, he would be asleep. The reverse logic should hold true in my case, but of course it doesn’t because people who stay up late are BAD. The fact that I have never, ever responded to such knocking is apparently meaningless – the stupid bastard can’t get it through his skull that lately, even at eleven AM on a Saturday, I am on five hours sleep and couldn’t possibly care less about any possible news I might get at that hour. Oh, no! Everyone should be Up And At 'Em!

This is partly why I’m kicking him the hell out of the place next month.

I guess I’ve just never understood why the typical “early bird” is so goddamm proud to be awake – as if it is some special skill and/or talent. If a clock makes a loud enough sound, a human will get up. BFD. They usually want to engage in deep, meaningful conversation when you’re just getting up, too.

Jackass> (Imagine a smug grin) “Hey! Welcome to the real world, lazy bones!”
HolyAvenger> “Yeah you right.” (searches for some pop)
JA> “How ya doin’!!”
HA> “Yeah. Great.”
JA> “Yeah!” (momentary confusion as I have not correctly responded to his sincere query)
JA> “So! Gonna sleep all day!?!” (Hee-hee! ZING!)
HA> “I’m changing the locks at the end of the month.”
If I go down to the football field and kick a 75 yard field goal then I should be happy. I have done something quite remarkable. If I wake up at six in the morning? There is absolutely nothing to be proud of. Christ on the cross.

And anyway, while the early bird may get the worm, the second mouse gets the cheese.

=-=-=-=-=-
BB&G
the Holy Avenger

49

Oh excuse me I’m sorry I didn’t realize that I was an adult and well and able to take care of myself. I realize that there are many things that we have to do when we are adults despite us not liking them in the slightest. I am 17 and I realize this… actually I’m quite mature. I realize many things and despite being sheltered I am knowledgable in things other then what my peers know. I also realize that I need to get up in the mornings and go to school and graduate so I can then go to college and then get a job and work until I can retire and finally give into my biorhthyms(sp?). Unless I manage to get a job which accomadates my rhythms or die of a heart attack because I am stressed out.

I wasn’t complaining exactly. I was speaking of my experiences. If it came out as complaining well I don’t give a damn. Everyone complains about something in their lives. Mine just happens to be my sleeping and the shit that I get for it from people like you. If I could have changed my sleeping patterns believe me I would have long ago because I am one of those kids who hates adult disapproval and will do pretty much anything to avoid it. Now that I am adult I still hate other peoples disapproval and I realize the consequences of not sleeping ‘normally’ I realize them quite fully and I don’t need people talking to me about it because I can give myself the lectures and am harder on myself then anyone ever was on me. It still doesn’t change things.

The saying goes that wanting to change things is the first major step in changing them. Well its been six years of wanting adn trying. It still hasn’t worked so I just hope I can learn to live in a sleep deprived funk because its gonna be a long time before I can give into my sleep patterns instead of being ‘normal’

50

Leaving aside the comparison to sexual orientation, this is where you are simply wrong. Just plain wrong. I spent over a year and a half at a job where I had to get up at 6 am every single day. That’s a year and a half. That’s much longer than the week you proposed earlier as the minimum time to adjust a sleep schedule. Let me tell you, waking up on the last day of that period was every single bit as difficult as it was on the first day.

Every day I wake up at a “normal” hour, regardless of how much sleep I’ve had, regardless of how long I’ve been having to do it, I am fucking miserable, exhausted, and on the edge of sleep all fucking day. I do not adjust. Period. If you do, well, spiffy. I’m sure it’s just the shits. You go off and have fun with that. Make a game of it - see how many time zones you can adjust to in a month, then try to beat that record. But do NOT sit there on your self-righteous ass and tell me that I can do the same. No matter how many times you say it, it won’t make it any more true.

As for the phone thing, it’s not really an issue for me, so I won’t comment, except to say I used to be on call Saturday mornings, when the shift started at 8 am. If “normal” people, like RickJay want to know what that’s like, I’ll be happy to call you once a week at 3 am.

Overall, I have found day people to be fairly considerate. I have no beef with them. My roommate does a good job of not waking me, even though my bedroom is right next to the bathroom. It’s those people like the ones Holy Avenger mentioned who feel so damned smug about waking up early every morning that piss me the hell off. It’s monumentally stupid to make judgements about someone based on one fact about their life. Luckily, there’s no one around here that would be that asinine. :rolleyes:

51

Thanks Smeghead, you expressed my feelings exactly about the body clock thing.

I had a job for about 3 years where I got up at 5 or 6 am. And I NEVER got used to it. NEVER. Was always miserable. A day didn’t go by when I didn’t have to fill myself with caffeine of some kind to get through the morning. I think 3 years is a long enough time to determine that “adjusting” to mornings is not a seamless option for me. Obviously Smeghead feels the same way.

To reiterate the gays comparison, my exact words about it were:

I think my comparison is dead on. I am not comparing “night owls” to gay people, I am comparing presumptous jerks who think all “night owls” who are just not “trying hard enough” to be morning people to presumptous jerks who think all gay people are not “trying hard enough” to be straight. See? It’s not about gay people and “night owls” - it’s about presumptuous jerks like you.

52

Holy Avenger, great post. Had me LMAO.

Welcome to the MB.

  • NM
53

Actually, yes it is. If you are asked not to call and you do anyway it’s call harassment. Last time I checked harassment was a crime.
It’s 4:30AM. I’m wide awake. And I need to get up and get ready for work in a few short hours. But, of course, I have no right to complain - I just haven’t really tried to get to sleep. Why should I? I just love feeling like crap all day at work. Well, I guess that’s the price I pay for “wanting” to stay up all night. :rolleyes:

I do have a question. Do any of you other owls find that sleeping pills have no effect? I’ll take them and still be awake until my regular time - I sometimes get groggy and a little fuzzy headed, but I never fall asleep. I don’t take them as a rule because they make me feel awful the next day - way worse than if I just didn’t get any sleep at all. Well, that, and the fact that I’m just not into taking pills/medication of any kind unless I have to. A few other owls that I know have the same reaction. Yet, they put out most of the early birds I know very easily. Just trying to figure out if this is a widespread owl phenomenon - or just a coincidence with my friends and me.

54

I’m a night person for no good god-damned reason other than that I like it that way. I don’t have a shift job where I have to be in at a particular time. I program computers, mostly without interacting with others. If I call meetings, they’re late in the day. If others call morning meetings, I will sometimes decline, and sometimes make an exception in my schedule. It works out pretty damn well, good-natured ribbing about my unusual schedule aside.

I do officially have the policy that anyone who wants to can call me on the phone any time, day or night, and I will answer it if I feel like it. I don’t expect anyone else to keep track of when it’s ok to call me, because I don’t tend to keep track of that information for them. I try to call people during times when I think they’ll be awake, but if I call someone at 11pm and they get pissed off, I’ll tell them to turn their phone ringer off. I’m a little more understanding with old people, because they grew up when phone calls were a bigger deal, and it was rude to even call during dinner time.

Not having a phone ringer “off” switch is a pathetic excuse, by the way. Not wanting to turn your phone off because you might get important calls is a better excuse, but with requirements like that, you gotta accept the pros and cons. Personally, I’m not so worried about calls I might get. After all, cellphones notwithstanding, we have gotten by for years without being reachable by phone 24 hours a day. Would you forego trips to the store because you might receive an emergency phone call?

Further on the flame-inducing topic, anyone who thinks that everyone should get up and be at work by 9am is a jackass, and can eat my shorts. Luckily for me, I’m employable enough that those retards really don’t have anything to say about my hours. “Wah, those programmers don’t come to work until late morning, or sometimes gasp early afternoon! And I need them to solve a problem for me RIGHT NOW!” Gosh, Mr rise-and-shine-and-put-on-your-appropriate-business-attire, I guess you better learn to program your own fucking computer. I’ve successfully warded off complaints about my hours from previous bosses by explaining that I would quit if I were required to be at work at a specific hour every day.

Ah, about time to turn in for the evening. I think I’ll give RickJay a ring first.

55

It’s totally off topic, but has anyone having trouble sleeping thought of the possibility that they might have narcolepsy? No joke or flame here; my sister has it and it did cause her significant problems until it was diagnosed.

56

And Galt, you never called. E-mail me at

rick.jones@csa-international.org

and I’ll swing you my number. Call any time. I’m adaptable. I won’t take collect calls, though.

57

Yes absolutely yes. My doctor prescribed them and I tried them but I could not sleep normally with them. It was so much worse because not only was I tired as I normally was I was also still groggy from the pills till late in the afternoon after having taken them the night before. So I was running around even less awake then I was before. Didn’t help with my grades much either.

58

I (obviously) am not a night owl but sleeping pills don’t affect me, either. Nor does caffeine keep me awake.

My uncle had some prescribed amphetamines a number of years back and I asked for a couple during a hefty essay-writing time at school. No effect at all. They may as well have been M&Ms. Similarly, I can take basically any medication that’s supposed to make you drowsy - Benadryl or anyhting with codeine, you know - and they sure don’t make ME sleepy. I know other people who report the same thing. Other medicine works on me so it’s not some weird digestive thing.

On the other hand, some people seem very susceptible to the same drugs. If my father has a coffee at 5PM, no sleep for him. My wife falls asleep just looking at an allergy pill.

It can’t be a dosage thing (I don’t think) so maybe some peope,k are just resistant to depressants and/or stimulants.

59

I’ve never had occasion to try sleeping pills - I don’t have trouble sleeping, I just have trouble sleeping at the time of day others think I should be.

Caffeine has no effect on me. If anything, it usually makes me more tired. I’ll sometimes drink a Pepsi before going to bed with zero effect.

RickJay - you seem to be attempting to back off your previous stance of assholitude, which I appreciate and will respect, but I was curious to see how you’d respond to my assertion that some of us can’t adjust our sleeping schedules. Comments?

BTW, I just now woke up. Thank you.

60

Truth be told, Smeg, I was being an asshole for fun. Some people took it seriously. My mistake.

No, I don’t buy that you cannot adjust your sleeping schedule (with one caveat. Nobody scream until they read the whole thing.) OF COURSE you can adjust it; anyone can voluntarily choose to wake up at time X and go to sleep at time Y. Providing that

A) You do get sufficient time to sleep - nobody can adjust to waking at 8 and getting up at 8:15 - and

B) You account for needing a period of adjustment,

You can function at more or less any time of day. I had the opportunity to work in factory with offsetting 12-hour shifts whereby everyone worked BOTH shifts at different times, and not one person in the plant couldn’t do it. I also worked in the Army, which obviously presents a lot of fascinating and bleary-eye-inducing shifts, and again, I never met a soul who didn’t get used to it. I have a lot of difficulty believing that the world’s full of people incapable of functioning at 8AM when I was on course with hundreds of people and not one of them couldn’t do it. I’ll grant that in the latter case I sometimes had drill sergeants screaming at me, but if this is a fixed biological thing all the Gunnery Sergeant Hartmans in the world shouldn’t make a difference.

Now, if it’s your assertion (which I think it is) that you can adjust your schedule but will only operate at peak efficiency at certain times, and that some people have peak efficiency hours that for some reason are at night, that’s possible. To be brutually honest, I don’t buy it, but I could be swayed. (I was given some references earlier in the thread but haven’t had the opportunity to get to them and I couldn’t find them on the Net.)

This is starting to sound like it’s not a Pit thread so let me add: “Grandma-felching dogfucker.”