Sleep? Who needs sleep?

The BBQ Pit
1

Not us, apparently. The graveyard workers. The creatures of the night.

We were just informed that we have some mandatory training classes Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The assistant-director lady sent us an email Friday, off-handedly adding, “Sorry about the short notice, I thought I already told everybody.” :rolleyes:

So. I come in at 11:30 tonight and work until 7:30 Monday morning. Stand around and suck air for a half hour until the class starts, then stare at overhead slides for 9 hours (with an hour off for lunch). Get home around, oh, 5:30, and sleep for 5 hours (at most, assuming the husband and children don’t want to do anything weird like, say, talk to me for a while). Get up, get to work by 11:30 and work until 7:30 Tuesday morning. Repeat the sucking air and overhead slide bit, throw in several cans of Pepsi One and hope the caffiene generates enough jitters to vibrate me awake if I doze off.

Tuesday night I’m off work, thank God, so I can sleep all night and be fresh the next morning; or at least as fresh as anybody can be at the ungodly hour of 8 AM. But at least one of my fellow graveyarders has to work all three nights and attend class all three days, and somewhere in there she has to sleep, eat, and study for the test on Wednesday.

1st and 2nd shifts have managed to avoid having to work any doubles those three days, simply because the class overlaps both their shifts and they can’t be in two places at once. Fuckers.

How sleep-deprived must one be before one starts hallucinating? Because if I start seeing little insects with Christina Aguilara faces crawling on my boss’s head, don’t think I won’t try to squash them with my keyboard.

2

At last, a valid complaint for a Pit rant. Is there any process for appeal?

3

Nope, not this late in the day, which I suspect may be the reason the announcement of the classes was delayed. We’ve sent a group email to the bosses, whose response will be, “Sorry, we sympathize, but there’s nothing else we can do.” We can complain to their bosses, I suppose, but they don’t like us; as far as they’re concerned, we’re glorified clerks who are only on the county payroll as a token gesture to the community, and we don’t actually do anything important :rolleyes: (for anyone who doesn’t want to click on my profile, I’m a 911 dispatcher). At most we’d get a dismissive “I hear you, and I’ll talk to your director about it” which will happen when purple cows tap dance down the main street while mooing the Battle Hymn of the Republic and juggling blueberry bagels.

I guess we could boycott, but they tell us the class is mandatory to remain employed here, and after all my beef isn’t really with the class; it’s over emergency medical dispatching, which is handy stuff to know, although this class had damn well better be substantially different from the class we took last year or I’m gonna be pissed.

Eh. We’re just screwed. And come Wednesday we’re going to be screwed and sleepy. We might be able to get some of the cops to speak on our behalf, because a tired dispatcher makes them nervous, but nothing is going to get resolved before tomorrow.

It’s a good thing my husband (another graveyarder) starts his vacation today, or else we’d both be sleepless and grouchy.

4

Oh. Government. My sympathies, dear.

5

Do you at least get overtime?

6

Just had to say that this was the best phrase of its nature I’ve ever seen. Thank you!

p.s. I sympathize with your problems.

7

You had better be getting overtime for that crap. And I bet those 9-5’ers are getting comp time for it too! Gotta love that (if thats the case), you work somewhere else while on work time and you get a comp day, what a sham!

My father would get shit like that all the time. So before he was laid off, he would tell them what he really thinks (he was told in advance of the layoff months before, what could they do?). They would have a manger meeting every thursday morning at around 08:00. That’s fine and dandy if you’re already at work, you can just dial in. But my fathers shift was weekend nights, so he had to call in on his day off. So for the rest of his employment he would give the day people shit about it saying that they should have the meeting at 03:00 Sunday, because that’s when he was at work. Of course, they didn’t want to do that. Fucking assweepays.

8

Yeah, the curse of working nights - nobody bats an eye about depriving you sleep. It’d be completely unthinkable to make other folks working days stay after 5pm or come in at 4 or 5 am, but making a person who’s normally sleeping at that hour come in at 1pm and not only is it okay but you get absolutely no sympathy!

Someone calls you and you’re sleeping in the morning because you went to bed at 6am, and it’s “Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” I’ll see how you like it if I call you at two in the morning and scream in your ear.

Urgh.

9

So you’ll be sitting in a dark room, for nine hours, supposedly looking at slides?

As long as you don’t snore too loudly, I don’t see a problem.

10

I’m so sorry, Lib, that I didn’t run my Pit thread by you first before posting it. I might have reconsidered if I had known you didn’t think it was a valid complaint. As would, I’m sure, most of the other people who started threads here that you don’t believe warrant a complaint.

Maybe you should ask Lynn for a Sticky thread so everyone can run their ideas by you for approval before posting. :rolleyes:
Marlitharn: That sucks much ass. I would be just as pissed off as you. And the thought of tired 911 operators worries me too - and it should worry your bosses. That’s just plain stupid.

11

My first thought as well. I’m a greedy sort, if I were getting time and a half to zone in some dorky government training class (and unless this one is WAY different from others I’ve taken the tests are just gimmees that a first grader could manage), I’d just fight on through the three day sleep deprivation.

If not, that’s gotta be some kinda illegal isn’t it?

12

You had a Pit thread?

13

One other thought, if first and second shifters are attending this class during their normal work hours, who’s doing their work?

Why couldn’t they have had a second, smaller training class for you vampires (what we used to call ourselves once upon a time when I worked nightshift)?

I so sympathize with you, my best friend used to work for the government, he said, just before he finally got another job, that he was ready to go bonkers in the office with large caliber weaponry.

The people are idiots and the system is pathetic, no wonder our country is in such trouble.

14

How quickly one forgets. :stuck_out_tongue:

15

I blame society. Unhappy childhood. Yeah, that’s it, premature potty training. :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Don’t forget circumcision - the root (heh) of all that is wrong with you men! :wink:

17

Sounds like it is time for a union. Call one that you like. They will send you a petition or signature cards, get your 30% showing of interest and have an election.

And, at the appropriate time, tell a blabbermouth that it was the lack of notice about the training that precipitated the whole thing :smiley:

18

As a long-time graveyard worker, a while back when I was younger and more resilient than I am now, I can speak with some authority about

(a) idiots who don’t seem to realize that you don’t sleep at the same time they sleep,

(b) idiots who don’t seem to realize that you can’t simply turn yourself off whenever you need sleep (so catch a nap before you come in! Have some coffee! You’ll be fine!)

© miserable rotten sonsabitches who regard the entire situation as YOUR problem, and if you wish to stay employed, you will somehow find a way to work around your piddling little biological needs, you silly little employee.

When I confronted a combination of (b) and © one year, when I was subject to training review, and I was expected to work a full week’s shift at night AND be available for training in the middle of the DAY, I dealt with it by sending a letter to my supervisor.

Dear Supervisor,

You are by now aware that I am scheduled to work all night five days this week. You have also scheduled me to work four hours a day in the middle of the day, four days this week. Please note that short of using drugs, I cannot get enough sleep to function as my job requires me to if I attempt to adhere to this schedule.
Please note, also, that my job involves the safety of (mental patients and the facility). I must, therefore, in all fairness, inform you that if I am incapable of remaining awake while on duty, I cannot and will not accept responsibility for any events occuring during my shift, due to your failure to accept my physical inability to work day and night.
Please note, also, that any civil or criminal case arising from any situation that might occur will also take into account your orders that I work day and night this week.

Sincerely yours,
blah, blah

CC: Supervisor’s boss
CC: Supervisor’s other boss
CC: Bosses’ boss
CC: Corporate Headquarters
CCs: various other persons scattered around in the company

My boss chewed me raw about that… but he also arranged for special training sessions for the graveyard crew. He didn’t much like the idea that we might be testifying against him if anyone dozed off and someone got hurt.

And after that, he was a bit more careful about scheduling insane stuff for the graveyard gang. It’s a different show when YOUR tail’s in the wringer.

It occurs to me that you are in much the same situation…

19

Where were you 20 years ago?!

I coulda saved a bundle on psychiatrist’s bills.

20

Oh, I’ll get comp time at time-and-a-half. Three whole hours of it. See, my original plan, back in happier days, was to burn off some holiday time starting on Thursday, since Tuesday and Wednesday were supposed to be my regular days off. So instead of working a regular 40 hour week this week, or the 16 hours + holiday time I’d been cheerfully anticipating, I’m working 43 hours Sunday night-Wednesday afternoon.

I’ve got saved-up comp time coming out of my ass. I think it’s time I started taking some of it.

Master Wang-Ka, I like your letter. May I borrow it? Because you’re right; it totally fits this situation.

What kills me is there’s three seperate sessions of this class scheduled this month. Why in the hell couldn’t they have scheduled one for days, one for evenings, and one for nights? Oh, wait. That might be logical. Good heavens, we can’t have that.

The class overlaps both 1st and 2nd shifts, plus they have more people than we do; a few of them here and there are working a few hours over on a couple of days, but nothing like what us vampires are expected to pull off. We will be spending a grand total of 17 1/2 hours in this basement; if you don’t hear back from me it’s because I burst into flames when I finally walked out into the sunlight. Nassty yellow face.

Damn daylight-supremacists. FIGHT THE POWER!