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Four months ago I received a promotion at work. I have been lobbying for this promotion for the last 8 months. So finally I got it, only to be told it was on the night shift.
I work from 10pm - 6:30am.
Pros:
† I'm netting an extra 800 bucks a month.
† At night time the plant kind of shuts down. The atmosphere becomes really chill since all the upper management has gone home at 4-6. The pace is really laid back.
† The job is ridiculously easy. It's so stupid how this works. Most of my adult life was spent in construction. I would work really hard all day, come home sweaty and covered in grime and muck and concrete dust.
This is the complete opposite. The vast majority of my time, I am literally sitting down on a small plastic folding chair, trying not to fall asleep.
I work at a Hershey chocolate factory and my job is to oversee the production of several different types of chocolate. Like these for example:
+ Show Spoiler +
Anyway, computers take care of 95% of the workload. It's my job to monitor the production of the chocolate, and if anything goes awry, to input data into the computer to correct those errors. So if the chocolate is becoming too hot, and the product is sticking, I simply waltz over to the console, *tap tap tap..tap...tap...tap tap*, and presto!, chocolate becomes cooler.
I would say in an average day, I do maybe 40 minutes of actual honest work. And that's the most I CAN do. I'm not slacking off, it's just what the job allows. I sweep up, keep my area clean, and fill out paperwork. I'm not allowed to leave my room because theoretically the machines could screw up and then thousands of dollars worth of chocolate would be ruined.
† I"M NETTING AN EXTRA 800 A MONTH. I went from making 17/hr to 24/hr. Quite the jump. Golden Handcuffs.
Cons:
† There's a ton of responsibility/pressure. I oversee other employees now, and not only am I accountable for them, I'm accountable for over 9000 dollars worth of chocolate each hour.
† Sleep and my social life. The reason for making this blog. Home by 7, up by 1. Hopefully.
This weekend my bro wanted to do something, so this became my sleeping schedule:
Friday, home by 7am from work, up at 11am. Fell asleep watching a movie at 9pm. Up again at 11pm.
Stayed up from 11pm friday night until 8 am Saturday morning. Passed out on couch from 8am to 10am. Went back to sleep at 4pm until 12am Sunday.
Stayed up from 12 am to 2pm, fell asleep for an hour, woke up for an hour, and then fell back asleep until 11:30pm Sunday night.
Wide awake now, won't fall back asleep until at least 4pm where I have to be up at 9, to leave for work tonight.
This wrecks my social life. I fall asleep at random times. I can get myself into a pattern, but only if I sacrifice doing things with my friends on the weekend. My nutrition has gone in the crapper. I have no energy to make things anymore, so the vast majority of food is processed junk. I keep a close eye on the calories so my weight is remaining the same, however the composition is taking a serious beating.
I look permanently tired. I want to switch back to day shift so bad. My non-work life has become hell because of this shift.
But I'm making so much more money. The last four months I've netted an extra 3200. Especially considering what I do to make that money, I feel like I can't leave now. I'm trapped. I can get laser eye surgery by the end of July, and start putting some serious money aside for school.
I'm 27 and this is my 25th different company I've worked for. This by far pays the most, and is the simplest job I've had to date. I guess I should be happy and consider myself lucky, I'm making more money than a lot of my degree friends, but this random sleeping pattern is just destroying my body and mind.
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That kind of job is exactly what handheld gaming is perfect for.
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I don't know your whole situation, but no amount of money is worth your health. That being said, maybe there's adjustments you can make... perhaps other people with experience will comment.
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I hopefully found a job working as a doorman in a hotel doing the night shift. Hours would be more or less the ones you have right now. Any advice on how to make time pass? cause in my experience if your doing hardly anything time passes much slower
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
I usually have my workers swap shifts every two weeks.
I'm worried too long on a night shift will drive someone insane
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there are some reserach-papers about nightshifts and how they mess up your body-chemistry.
(in german). the tl;dr version is that its a fact, that nightshift mess up your internal chemistry and increase the risk for some nasty things (not sure if there was diabetes, but some other serious things aswell). not only temporary problems but also permanent defects.
maybe you should add that part to the CON-section.
if youo cant leave the room, try to learn sth there, like bring some tools and learn to juggle. or bring drum-sticks and drum on your chair. do yoga / pilates / tai chi / normal workout. mb learn another language or study for a higher degree (if possible).
paint pictures or write haikus ... there is plenty to do ^^
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another question poppes up, how much more night shifts by % are supposed to be paid, in your country?
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On April 21 2014 17:14 Rodberd wrote:
there are some reserach-papers about nightshifts and how they mess up your body-chemistry.
(in german). the tl;dr version is that its a fact, that nightshift mess up your internal chemistry and increase the risk for some nasty things (not sure if there was diabetes, but some other serious things aswell). not only temporary problems but also permanent defects.
maybe you should add that part to the CON-section.
if youo cant leave the room, try to learn sth there, like bring some tools and learn to juggle. or bring drum-sticks and drum on your chair. do yoga / pilates / tai chi / normal workout. mb learn another language or study for a higher degree (if possible).
paint pictures or write haikus ... there is plenty to do ^^
I'm not allowed to bring anything onto the work floor besides my pen and knife. I suppose I can try and learn how to draw. I used to work out in my room. Yoga, situps, pushups, jumping jacks, squats and planks. But then my boss caught me once and I got written up for not acting professional. Good call on the language study, I'll try and integrate it into my night.
On April 21 2014 17:00 pebble444 wrote:
I hopefully found a job working as a doorman in a hotel doing the night shift. Hours would be more or less the ones you have right now. Any advice on how to make time pass? cause in my experience if your doing hardly anything time passes much slower
Ya time really drags on. If you encounter a problem in your life, it does give you ample time to formulate multiple possible solutions so that's always good. The worst is sometimes you get a movie or tv quote stuck in your head, and there's nothing to distract you so you keep saying it over and over in your head.
If you ever watched futurama, there's this one episode where Fry gets parasites and this one part where a waitress says to him, "Freshen your noc-a-tina?". That one little line kept replaying in my mind all damn day.
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On April 21 2014 17:35 pebble444 wrote:
another question poppes up, how much more night shifts by % are supposed to be paid, in your country?
I'm not sure what everyone else gets paid, but I get 8% more which equates to an extra 130 bucks gross a paycheck.
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On April 21 2014 17:39 Fumanchu wrote:
If you ever watched futurama, there's this one episode where Fry gets parasites and this one part where a waitress says to him, "Freshen your noc-a-tina?". That one little line kept replaying in my mind all damn day.
lol i am futurama fan and coincidentally that line popped up many times as well. comes up usually while waiting for a train. Thats the episode where he becomes intelligent and smart enough to work with his emotions. Also the one where hes going to the top of the mountain to look for bender with a telescope, screaming if people don' t believe in you you gotta go blahblahbha and believe even harder. Or the one in season 1 where "he can' t just stay in the dark listening to classical music"
On April 21 2014 17:40 Fumanchu wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2014 17:35 pebble444 wrote:
another question poppes up, how much more night shifts by % are supposed to be paid, in your country? I'm not sure what everyone else gets paid, but I get 8% more which equates to an extra 130 bucks gross a paycheck.
Thanks for the answer. Trying to get as much info on my rights and duties, any info especially external helps.
As for me, in the night, i havn t got a problem with staying up other than getting bored sometimes. I believe they did a study on sleep patterns in outher space, and the result was that the sleep pattern of human-beings is something around 27-28 hours, ideally, and not 24. The father of my ex is a security gaurd and he worked for 5 years on the night shift. He told me after some years it was impossible to get decent sleep during the day due to outside noises and day-life activities, so he requested to go back to day-shift, and now occasionally does a night one. Can' t say anything more than this, hope this helps
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Buy a PS Vita. Eat healthy.
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I do and don't miss working nights... I've worked 4, 8 and 12 hour shifts at different jobs. + Show Spoiler +Fortunately all of them allowed me read...
First, get black out curtains! Second set a sleep schedule. You need to accept that you don't keep normal hours. In the same way most people wouldn't make plans for 1AM you shouldn't be making plans during your sleep time. Don't agree or try to do anything between that 7AM-1PM (but probably 3PM) period. Keep this schedule for at least a few months or so to really get your body used to the change. + Show Spoiler +Once you're more adjusted to it (not falling asleep randomly) you can do things like staying up in the morning or waking up early to interact with more normal people.
If things don't work out apply for a different position. Nights don't work for everyone.
edit: get up and move around. I assume you get something like two 15 minute breaks every 2 hours and a 30 min lunch in the middle? (Most labor laws also stipulate that these breaks must be allowed AWAY from the work area - check.) Get out and walk (or even jog). Even if you do want to eat something, try to at least spend half of your breaks moving around and getting away from your workstation.
The mellow atmosphere (and usually lighter workload) of nights makes it a lot harder to stay awake at work compared to days so again you have to treat it differently.
edit2: depending on the workstation you have (you mentioned sitting in a folding chair?) try to get an adjustment where you can stand. At my last night job as a 911 dispatcher we had desks that could adjust from sitting to standing and that really helped to ease up the monotony.
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Been working night shifts almost 2 years now full time. Agree with the guy above, get black out blinds and if you need to, earplugs or whatever too. Get your 8 hours every day as best you can, don't fuck with your sleep and eat healthy (will help you to not be crashing after eating sugar/carb/caffeine loaded stuff.)
Usually I try to get my schedule to line up to the opposite of a regular day job so I work 10pm-6am and then sleep from ~8am-4pm. I get what you mean with weekends though, my friends know my schedule so usually we do something in the evening instead of morning/afternoon on the weekends since we're all free at that time. Don't know what to do if you want to be doing things early the day after working though.
Really sucks you're not allowed to bring anything, lucky for me I'm allowed to bring laptop/book to pass the time. Not even allowed to listen to music? or have the radio on, postcasts or whatever?
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Did the night shift at a hotel reception for about a month during my training.
So usually it is a team of two in charge of the whole hotel. Shifts are from 11pm to 7am. Most of the time it is pretty laid back and most of the work is done by 2am. Since it is a hotel all kinds of unexpected shit can happen, though.
It really fucks you're life, worst for me was that I still had to attend school once a week at 8am which ultimately fucked up my sleeping.
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I had a very similar job for about 2 years, though the shift times varied.
Went into workshop, did an hour of maintenance, and then was essentially on call to quick-fix any machinery for the next X hours until one of the higher technicians came in and could fix it properly (if needed, was pretty rare).
The organisation only allowed one technician on at a time apart from special events, so I never really got hands-on training for any of the serious machinery faults.
Only thing that really got me by was listening to music, i'm sure I would have gone crazy otherwise.
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I did this for a few months at the post office plant, mostly sorting parcels and magazines, not bad work in that it was pretty brainless and you could use headphones most of the time. It did take a while to adjust to the schedule for sure, but this was actually the first time I could follow Proleague live! (During "lunch" and breaks ofc)
Since I was living at home during that time it was also kinda nice to avoid bumping heads with my parents for most of the day 
The other thing I loved about it was the commute! It was kinda far so I was taking highways, but such little traffic either way was glorious.
Overall, since I was a young single guy the hours vs increased pay trade off was favorable for me on the whole, I'd say. I quit though because I realized that I didn't want to be doing manual labor for the rest of my life, and that I should actually try to make something of my undergrad degree (from an Ivy League, no less >_< )
My advice is, set a strict goal for yourself in terms of how much extra money you want that you can get from this shift, then once you've made that, switch back. Get what you can, but overall better to be a little poorer and a lot happier, imo.
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You got a warning for exercising? You should explain to him, that fresh air and exercise is the best way to stay awake and focused when you don't want to rely on caffeine and the likes which is more than unhealthy in the long run. I can't drink coffee, so when i had a boring shift with nothing to do, push ups kept me awake.
I worked as a night manager in different hotels for about 2 years and in changing shifts for 3 years at a hotel reception and later in an electronics factory. Honestly the changing shifts were worse. The worst was when i did every front office job there is with changing shifts on a daily basis sometimes with the occasional double shift. I lost 15kg of weight in 6 months during that time...
When only working nights i completely adjusted my life but it was tough on my personal life. Basically i started working from 10:30pm till 7/8/9am then went shopping, cleaned, took care of any business, cooked something (which relaxes me like nothing else) then proceeded to watch movies, play games etc. Also had a beer or two from time to time in the morning. Went to bed between 2-5pm and startet to work again at 10:30. Main reason i did it that way, was i was only working during the week and had the weekends off, so all my personal life took place then. During the week there's not much going on anyway. Still, you start to feel lonely at some point... Good thing was i could do whatever i wanted as long as everything went smooth.
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Money vs. social life - your choice.
If it were me, I would keep working the night shift for 6-12 months to continue working and putting it into some kind of pension investment - if you've got lots of income to spare, you can benefit from the accrued interest much longer. You could also use the "free" time you have at work to study or as the others suggested, play some games - buy a PSVita or Nintendo DS and play Pokemon 
Since your work schedule seems pretty rigid, I would set up a good sleeping schedule and then plan your social life around that - that sleeping twice per day to meeting your family/friends sounds unhealthy.
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Unfortunately, like I previously mentioned, I can only bring a pen and a knife onto the floor. That's it. No exceptions. Their reasoning is that excess materials have a chance of falling into the chocolate. No books, no portable music player, nothing. I don't know how you would accidentally drop a stereo into a 10ft high vat of chocolate, but there you go.
Right now my expenses for the month are 1700. The difference between this position and my old one, which I'm free to return to whenever I want, is being able to save 300 or 1100 bucks a month. Life is so much more comfortable at 1100.
I'm going to try what r00ty did and switch my sleep schedule so that I wake up and go into work, rather than my current schedule of sleeping right when I get home.
I'm going to stay on this shift at least until the end of July, when I should have enough money set aside for laser eye surgery. Then I can re-evaluate my life. Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.
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Congrats on the raise but night shift is pretty hard on the human body. That being said, as long as you get quality sleep for the right number of hours, it should be fine. You'll have to be disciplined and sacrifice your social life a bit. So yes, agreed with one of the posters above, black out curtains will help you out quite a bit.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OpxrUiu.jpg)
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