Hello all of AD. After 17 and a half years working the afternoon and night shifts,I will now have a normal life of a day shift worker starting monday! YEEHAW!!!!!!!!!!. I was on days about 5 years ago when they got rid of all the tempory workers on day shift.They brought 2 of us over and had 10 other people being released to go until they changed their minds. They cut quality assurance department to a skeleton crew,and brought back all those temporaries a week after I got thrown back on night shift. Robots being slapped in right and left didn't help either. What use to take 5 people to work a line,now takes 2 people and 4-6 robots. Averages out to about 2 robots to do 1 person's task! No more waking up at 2 am on the saturday of my weekend-just like now, lol No more drinking 3 or 4 beers every morning and popping a couple melatonin's just to get some sleep. No more sleeping while the sun is shining. Night shift does have it's advantages,but they only pay you 40 cents more to work those shifts. Not even worth it.
Days off is what kills me. Like this morning,waking up at 2:30 a.m. and nothing to do but hang around here.It's 6:30 P.M. now and I'm already dead. Sunday nights are also a killer. At least I won't have to worry about that any more. Would you believe I don't drink coffee! Only 1 cup in the last 6 years,but lots of Mountain Dew Code Red! I'll be able to cut back on that also. I even ran into my new coordinator at wal-mart earlier.That dude is always at Wal-Mart. I'm sure that 40 cents an hour extra I lose is going to hurt, NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I work a rather odd night shift since the company i work for only operates in 2 shifts , i currently work from 3 pm to 2 am.
Im still on nights but i like it. I work from 6pm to 6am, so i know what you are talking about saugmon. Been on this shift for the last 5 years. They pay us 12% extra to work nights. I get 4-5 hours of sleep per 24hrs. Weekends are a pain also as you are up at 3am with nothing to do. Fortunatly AD is on 24hrs a day. It is ok to make noise during the day when i sleep, but if i made the same noise when im up, they send the cops over to tell me to turn the stereo down . They can fire up their leaf blower while i am sleeping, and i cant do squat about it. I made my room into a cave. All the windows blacked out, and sleep with earplugs in many times. Ppl working nights are supposed to have a shorter life span also. It is also hard to meet women when you work nights. Most of the ones you meet are day workers, and being on different sleep schedules makes things difficult. But really, sleep is overrated. And if you sleep less, you are awake longer, thus living longer.. Kinda makes sense, at least to this crazy person..
First day of working the day shift. Sweet!!!! I feel a heck of a lot better. No more walking the nights like a vampire. I do have a lot less stress now because the last several months I was being paid Team Leader pay and in charge of my furnace. I had many shortened and missed breaks because of all the less experience workers that are on my line.The temporary workers almost outnumber the full time workers. If our factory paid 12% shift premium for the off shift,then I'd been on days a long time ago. If they did a mandatory drug test,I'd been there 15 years ago, LOL I had black plastic bags taped up on the windows,all doors shut,and have a fan turned on just to muffle out the background noises.
I work 3 shifts on a rotating pattern. My worst shift is 7am-3pm, I HATE MORNINGS!!! I get an avargae 22% premium for my trouble so i can put up with 1 early shift in 3. I don't have any trouble sleeping on nights, lates i get by on about 4-5 hrs, days I am zombie squad. if I could do permanant nights I would be well happy. (33% premium for that shift!!)
Yes, I don't miss night shifts either...did that for only three years (Hotel night audit) but that was enough. In a way it was great because there was no brass around but still wasn't worth it. I remember the routine too Saugmon...the heavy drapes to keep out the light, I had to wear ear-plugs because of the street noise and there was something about it that made it seem like all you ever did was work or sleep. I had a client at work who was a bus driver working rotating shifts and she actually developed a really nasty sleep disorder...I forget what it's called, but she would just drop off and go to sleep no matter where she was...almost like fainting. It was rather strange but curable.
My plant opened up about 20 years ago. The first couple years,they worked a swing shift which is just like ktulu14 works. They would rotate every 2 weeks.I'm glad they just got rid of that before I hired in. We've got a sister plant in Kentucky that works those 12 hr shifts.They'd work 3 days one week/4 the following week.They only get 1 full weekend off a month! That'd really suck too! They tried to get us to do that,but we'd get a union in quicker than sh*t. My factory is owned by the Japanese and they don't like messing with unions over here. Narcolepsy? Here's the word of the day from my favorite web dictionary which fits in well with this thread: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=four-wheeling
No, it wasn't Narcolepsy...that is still a seizure disorder. I'll have to see if I can find the file; I wish I could remember what its called. It is a totally curable sleep disorder. Damn!
four-wheeling? LOL A couple months ago there was an old tempory worker-known as a rent a bum. He kept falling asleep while inspecting glass.The line he was on was next to mine-25 feet away, so we were all watching him go four-wheeling. His head was bobbing around everywhere.The coordinator came up behind him and his head was still a bobbing so he called some more boss's.Then the coordinator's boss came in and the associate relations member and all 3 were watching this guy sleeping,only a foot behind him.By this time he was laying against a conveyor,and out light a light. We were all laughing our butts off as all 3 of those boss's were standing right behind watching that guy sleep.He was in lala land so my coordinator woke him up and escorted him out of the factory. My sleeping disorder is I am a very light sleaper. Once I'm up,it's very hard to get back to sleep.
Hey saugmon my homie,, that link was da bomb. I guess your personality should match working nights. I dont like crouds, so working nights has less ppl to deal with. Im kinda anti-social. There isn't much good you can say about working on the nightshift. The daywalkers make you feel like a second class citizen. And try to find places to eat or shop at night. There are some, but you have to know where to look. And talk about weird ppl. Nightworkers are [bold]really strange,[/bold] i mean really strange.. i should know as i count myself in that category. And if you hang/party with daywalkers, and are partying late at night, most of them will crash out by midnight or later. For me, midnight is like NOON, so i aint sleepy. Had to leave a party last night for that very reason. Everybody zonked out by midnight. Could of stayed, but wasn't sleepy, so i hit the road. Geeze, this is starting to sound like a nightsift tales of woe thread... Ok, heres what i found to cope with working nights.. Lots of chemicals (name your poison) .. lots of movies and music.. lots of AD time.. carrying on more than one conversation with the voices in my head.. sometimes they don't even let ME get a word in edge-wise.. Feeding my invisible pet, some invisible giant rats i invisibily caught with my invisible trap....(how do i see these things you wonder? special invisible glasses of course!) Yeah, i keep pretty busy, and thats just on this planet..
MaxBurn, you're a laugh-an-hour. Get it? "Laugh-an-hour?" Huh? *Nudge nudge* *poke poke* Hey? You awake? Guess not... LOL Yeah, I would like to work a night-shift. I'm more of a night person myself, but get stuck with crap hours because everybody else around me sucks.
