the negative affects of working the nighshift.
 

i have enough seniority..plus i do a lot of project stuff and rub elbows with big-wigs. that has to happen regular day-shift.

i dont mind short stints of night work. it can be fun. it can be refreshing..and my phone NEVER rings. i tried to volunteer to work the next three nights, but management denied it, since they need me in the daytime to figure things out.

but we have this young kid. no seniority. plus, he spoke up to the wrong person.. they buried him at night. i havent seen him for months. today, i hear some country music outside my office window. i look out, and i see a guy i didnt recognize. it was HIM!! he must have put on 30-40lbs. his eye and skin..whoa. i believe the word is "pallor?"

i tried to pull him into my project. man, he must have pissed someone off bigtime. the answer was NO. damn..i'll keep trying. i think a day shift along the california coast for the next several months will do him good.

One of the reasons I changed jobs is that I frequently got to work the day shift AND sometimes the night shift. And for someone who already has insomnia, it's just not a good combination.

I'm exempt. There was a week almost a year ago where I worked and implementation (Sunday midnight - 2:30 AM), checked in again later Sunday morning and found a problem, so put in a few more hours, worked some (non-paid) overtime each day and worked (non-paid) overtime for another implementation Wednesday night. I'd hit 50 hours by Thursday morning (which was going to put me at around 70 for the week). I asked my boss if I could come in late Thursday morning (I wasn't going to get to bed until 2:00 with the overnight work and I come in at 6:30) and she graciously allowed me to use a few hours of vacation to sleep even though I was already over 40 for the week. I thought that was BS.

I worked night shift 11pm to 7 am through most of undergrad school. To say it was awful is over simplification to the max.

Pallor is right... When I was flying at the regionals, there were guys who loved to bid what we called "stand ups." You would leave at night later to a destination, spend 3 or 4 hours at a hotel, then first flight out back to base. They liked it because they could be home all day and not gone on a multi day trip. I would see these guys coming back sometimes as I would start an early morning departure. Pale walking dead. Blech.

Now, at a major we have redeyes. I avoid them like the plague.

I did this too, but only made it a year. Rolling off work and into a class within a couple hours was brutal. Pay was far better than just about any other job you could get in a college town.

My first job as a real machinist at a major aerospace firm was on nights.
There was an old guy that lived in the apt complex that would hang out in the garage area during the day, which, as chance would have it, was right below my bedroom window. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep because of this. When an opportunity opened up to go to another shop on campus on day shift, I jumped at the chance. Guess I pissed my then supervisor off when I did that. Years later, my new supervisor could never understand why the, by then, big boss always saw red whenever my name came up. Needless to say I didn't see very many promotions no matter how good my machining skills became. Corporate politics, gotta love 'em.

I worked a rotating shift in a factory the summer before college. 18 years old. Hard physical labor.

I felt hung over every day. Awful.

The large commercial complex I used to work at had facilities guys who had 3 shifts (day, swing, and night). Most of the older guys with seniority choose day, but there were two or three guys who wanted the night shift. I don't remember their specific situations, but they loved it, hated the day shift and would tolerate swing.

at that time in my life (newly out of college) swing sounded pretty good...didnt have to get up early and I already stayed up late. Most of the guys said you had to have the discipline to go to bed when swing was over and not stay up goofing off.

I miss the days I worked the graveyard shift at Carl's Jr. Hell, I miss working a simple fast food job. That was about 35 years ago.

Hospitals never sleep.

I never could work the midnight to eight shift. I couldn’t stay awake. On the other hand I had a job for a while where I worked from three in the afternoon until 11 at night. Turned out I loved it. Still get off in time to hit the bars if I wanted to and when I got off Friday at 11 PM I didn’t have to be at work until Monday at 3 PM!

The scourge of circadian rhythms.

Hard stuff, and real.

Over 25yrs ago while working on a road car project we got a little behind on the build schedule so the whole factory worked two 7 day weeks with 12 hr shifts, one on days and one on nights

My 2nd week was nights so after the last shift I thought to keep myself awake until normal bedtime I'd have a look around the shops

Negative affect was I spent all the extra money I'd earned before mid-morning buying a pair of big hi-fi speakers I had no need for. Still have the speakers and I still don't need them

Night shifts weren't bad. Rotating shifts could be an azz kicker without the long break each month. Did it for 5 years.

7am to 3 pm Thursday, Friday, Sat, Sunday off, Monday Tuesday, Wednesday

Then to
7 straight 11 pm to 7 am Friday through Thursday night.

Break from 7 am Friday until Wednesday 3 pm where you would th3n work 7 straight 3 to 11 pm. Then Wednesdsy off and back to day shift on Thursday and repeat.

You could use two days vacation around the long break and have a full 7 days. Bring single at the time I was a party animal for those 5 years.

My gf used to be a night bartender, 8-4am closing. Then close the books and make sure everything was set for the next day On weekends if it was really busy with lots of credit card charges, she wouldn't leave until 6:30 am.

When I was a field engineer...

I was the startup/controls guy for large gas turbines. When I arrived, a "mechanical" guy had been around for months working the install. My job was to check everything he had done, get everything powered up and checked.

On the lead up, swing or night shift could be great doing the electrical/control/instrumentation system checks, since no one was around to get in the way. But that could only last a couple of weeks.

Once actual startup occurred...nothing ever seemed to occur on day-shift. You planned some major test and it would never start until 7pm. After working all day...And since we were the prime mover, even after we were started up, we had to be around for the boilers and steam turbine.

You might get a 4 week stint of 100 hour weeks. At least we were paid OT. After the unit was turned over to the customer, you went back to 40 hours per week and it seem like so little work.

My first job out of college I was working for Motorola Govt Electronics Group in Scottsdale AZ. I got assigned to a space communications program that had an around the clock testing phase underway. Engineers were assigned different shifts throughout the 15-20 day cycle. The lead engineer made out the schedule. I was okay with being assigned and working 2nd shift pretty consistently. The issue was when someone was on vacation etc and the slots had to be changed. More than once - he filled out the next week's schedule without looking at the current week's schedule. Each time, I got assigned double shifts - 2nd shift on Sat (4PM - Midnight) and then on Sunday (Midnight to 8AM). I pointed it out to him and he revised the schedule.

I did 'naps' at the regionals for a few years.. because when i landed in the morning i went to my second job. I was a zombie....

Now at the majors, I avoid the early morning stuff like the plague. (11pm-6am stuff.. ) I'm sitting on a lower paying airplane to avoid lower seniority and AM flights on a higher paying fleet.

I work nights every day. I get about 3.5 to 4 hours of sleep a day. I feel constantly jetlagged. If I'm not at work, I'm working on my house. I am legitimately active 20 hours a day. I come home from work,and I'm sleeping within 10 minutes of walking in the door.

...and this is better than my old schedule of working: 1500, 1500, 1330, 0630, 0600., 0600 (or some times I'd finish with a 0600-1400....then go back at 2300 that night and work the mid). THIS was hell.

I just completed three years where we would work 0530-1730 for 3-days
3-days off
1730-0530 for 3-nights
3-days off
Repeat
I’ve become very homicidal....
It’s over now, I’m retiring.
FIRE at age 52.
Goodbye