How do you guys cope with midnight shift work?
Does the shfit work wear down your body quickly?

I just applied for Help desk IT job that requires shift work. I cringe at the thought of grave yard shift.

I have never had to do extended overnight work (meaning everyday). Set some strict rules in regard to waking up and sleeping don't let your friends suck you into drastically changing your schedual, if you have a child...well good luck. Don't become a caffine addict if you are not already. Force yourself to take breaks and get up and walk around (stairs are great). Put something visually interesting about 6 inches next to your screen and farther back it will keep your eyes adjusting and help keep you from getting bleary eye'd (I use SI's swimsuit calender) <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Drink water for 2 reasons, one its good for you plus the more bathroom breaks the better, use the bathroom on another floor if you can (take the stairs). If you are going to be working in a cube (which you most certainly are) get a mirror so you can see behind you.

Some other things I do -
plant: oxygen is good, even if you're a plant assassin like me..just keep replacing them <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
Fan: oxygen is good, I have one of those cheap desk fans to keep the air moving around me, and no computer chasis fans and CPU fans don't count
Radio: just keep it on very-low playing whatever music you like
Food: eat properly i.e. not pepperoni hotpockets 3x a day, fruit/veggies are your friend
Water: keep the largest bottle of water at your desk you can, shotguning Red Bull and coffee will not help in the long run

Like everything else, take care of your body and it will take care of you

If you are addicted to something on TV, invest in a Tivo box.

As mentioned, hydrate. A lot. Don't rely on caffiene or other stimulants. I've done this schedule, and orange juice is much better for you than coffee. I'd say nothing harder than tea, and not for a couple hours before the end of your shift. Vitamin C is your friend. I used to go through a gallon of OJ every other day when I did this shift.

Pee early and pee often. I like the idea about using a head on another floor if possible. If it's quiet, invent things to do, don't read and surf. If need be, buy a bag of beans and if the shift goes to poo at oh-dark-thirty, be ready to explain why there are beans all over the office.

I don't suggest three meals a day, though. Four. Wake up around 6 or 7, and eat with your family if you have one. Let dinner be a real dinner most days. Have a small meal twice during your shift, then a normal breakfast without coffee or tea when you get home. Run any errands you need to first thing in the day or on the weekends. If you need to talk to your doctor about sleeping meds, do so, but try melatonin first.

You'll want to be able to black out your sleeping area, and set up a fan for white noise during the day. If you have pets, block the door so they can't get it open. The same goes doubly for kids.

I suggest getting exercise, particularly right when you get home. Run or lift free weights. Eat that normal breakfast I mentioned, shower, and go to bed.

Weekends are going to suck. Does your week start Sunday night, or Monday night? If Sunday, get up early on Friday so can sorta be with it on Saturday and Sunday, go to sleep around 3 or 4 on Sunday with a 8 or 9 wake up. If you have to work Friday night, social life? What's that? At least you'll have the first half of Monday to take care of stuff.

Make sure you see your family and friends. And the sun. On the weekend, such as it is. Otherwise, you won't be a vampire, you'll be a zombie.

Oh, and cut the alcohal out of your diet. Give up smoking if you do so right now. These are both going to really, really mess with you. Your body is going to be doing funny things as it is.

The worst job I had was 3 years graveyard shift. I made VHS videos under the late Jose Menendez. If you want to rot your brain, stare at 100s of monitors playing either pornography, This is Israel travel documentaries or Gumby cartoons. My G/F at the time was a born again christian punk rocker. Mary Katherine said I was irish, male and had the same wretched shift and we were therefor going together. The security guards were insecure with soldier of misfortune magazines and prominently displayed handguns. One fell asleep 4 nights running. So I organised the removal of Jose's desk past the guard and out to his designated parking place. I also removed the firing pin from his Star 9MM. You will want to turn off every device of communication. Back then there were no cellphones. But I'll never forget a call at noon. " Hi, my name is Tiffany, and I am writing a disssertation on W.B.Yeats. Your classmate XXXXX says your fluent in Gaelic and versed in irish history. So I want you to tell me if Sailing to Byzantium is really a metaphor for the rebellion with references. " I ripped the phone from the wall hard enough to leave a bulb of percussion potmark in the drywall. Mary dropped it into the fish tank. You will say things and not remember them. We were all teminated two days before Christmas. I told Jose he was such a macho jerk cuban someday somebody would take a 12 guage to his big mouth. Guess who was interviewed a few months later? Save some vacation time. When you do come off this shift take it. I was a full year getting my bio rhythems, appetite, chakras, aura or whatever you want to call your internal clock back to normal. Mary Katherine moved to a cranberry farm in Washington State and I bought my first horse on Christmas day with my severence package. Along with the vacation reward yourself at this adventure's end.

I have worked graveyard shift at a hospital for over 4 years now. As everything in life there are some advantages and disadvantages to this.

Advantages: generally less work then during the day, no boss around, sometimes its possible to take a nap, generally better pay and less hours worked.

Disadvantages: during the winter I sometimes don't see the sun for weeks, you work opposite to your spouse and sometimes you dont see her for days, its more taxing on the body (if you don't take care of yourself)

Some tips that I can give from personal experience:
1. Very important: make sure your room is completely dark, not even a little bit of light coming in, and as quiet as possible. Your body needs to be fooled that it is night when its actually daylight and kids are playing outside.
2. Come back from work and don't screw around, go to bed immediately. The longer you wait, the harder it is to fall asleep.
3. If you have a hard time sleeping for 8 hours straight, then take a nap right before work. This technique is very helpful.
4. Don't eat too close to bedtime
5. Once again, make sure you get your normal amount of sleep, otherwise you will have "sleep debt" accumulated and you will be cranky and tired.
6. Melatonin is very helpful if you start having trouble sleeping. It is specifically indicated for shift work disorders.
7. At least some exercise is a good idea.

As you might have guessed from my post, sleep is very improtant for shift workers. If you are not able to sleep during the day, for whatever reason , perhaps you should switch do days in the future.

I actually prefer graveyard for the above advantages, and since I can sleep during the day well, I handled it pretty good till now.

Alex

How do I cope? I was young, energetic and stupid. Now I'm older and a little less stupid......but I left the shift. Ask yourself if YOU really want to wake up the nice medic and have him calculate YOUR drug dosages at 0400 hours.....I'd had enough......

One little trick I've found. Wear sunglasses once the sun starts coming out while you are driving home.

Is this a pemanent shift or will you rotate. I rotate and about every "weekend" I wind up sleeping a night of 10 plus hours to get reoriented.

Just make sure if it is a fixed shift to have a routine for eating and sleeping. If you have to rotate you get used to functioning sleep deprived and have to watch what and how much you eat. Its real easy to gain weight if your rotating. the comments on caffine and such are great, but usually not followed. You just have to get to know your own body.

Take care, and stay safe.

I've been doing the 3rd shift thing for most of going on 20 years. Part-time during college, and full time since then (with a year or 3 of 1st shift thrown in there).

All of the recommendations given so far are great. If you need the caffenated(sp) beverages, stick to the diet stuff. The extra calories from the regular stuff will add up after while, trust me I know. I tend to stick to water until about mid-shift, then I bust out the keys to the soda fountain and grab a liter of diet cola that lasts me until the end of the shift (i'm not a coffee drinker).

OGRE

PLants don't tend to photosynthesise at night, they just respirate. Which means they'll be lowering the local oxygen levels. (If the effect of the plant is even noticable.)

</geek>

eeph

I worked graves for years. In the USAF I worked a weird rotation, five different shifts in five days, lots of fast rotations. Youth is the only way to handle that. Got out and a new job, worked graves four years straight. Then for 26 years I worked one month of graves in every five months. I do things a little differently than most. I do not go right to sleep as soon as I get off. I found that doing that made the last few hours of my shift unbearable. Instead I go home and do whatever needs to be done, yard work, get a haircut, work out (yuk), whatever. Then around 1100 or so I would sit down with a cold beer and read or something. By noonish I would be getting really fuzzy, so then I would hit the bed, wearing earplugs (light does not interfere with my sleeping, but noise does). With any luck at all I would sleep like a baby 'til around 8pm, then hop up, shower, shave, eat, go to work. Still be wide awake at the end of the shift and do it all over again. At the end of my last shift of the week I would just tough it out and stay up all day, then go to bed at a 'normal" time. That would instantly get me back into normal sleeping hours for my days off. Before my first shift of the week I would try to take a nap in the evening, then just tough out the first shift...

I used to work all three shifts weekly... My sleep patterns and my body were all messed up. After 7 months, I was totally burnt out, ill and very stressed. Every time I stopped moving, I'd fall asleep, including several times IN the running shower. I asked my boss for a week off to rest, he said "no". I quit right then and there. It took me months to recover. Never again shift work or midnights for me.


RIP Tigress TFC Carpenter, 7/3/06

I listen to Coast to Coast AM radio during the night shift. It discusses everything that is "weird, strange, & unusual".

Listen to The Commodores & Marvin Gaye: ''Night Shift.'' <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

I have been working rotating shift work / night shifts since 1986, i have found for me going to bed right away when i get home and sleep for about 6 hours
then i will go back to bed for 2 hours more right before my shift , not including time needed to get ready for the shift, i have found if i dont get this 2 hours of sleep right before, i am useless the whole shift
Yukon

It helps if you are a night person. I worked swing shifts for 28 years, then went to straight mids. The swing shift sucked but I loved the midnights. I sleep just fine during the day without the shades drawn. I normally stayed up until 3-4 am even when I was unemployed or working afternoons, (4-12pm). I once got fired for tardiness when I had to be there at 6:00am. If light bothers you, a towel over yer head works better than window shades. The only serious vehicle accident that I had was my fault, going through a stop sign at 5:45am, raining & dark, & brain still asleep, from having to get up so early. I'm much better at that hour if I've been up all night.

I work a very wierd shift. 6PM to 6AM. One week I work 3 nights the next 4 nights, then 3 then 4 etc.
Sleeping during the day is difficult for me, I like a very dark cave-like sleeping zone and also need lots of quiet to fall asleep.
I've found that the thing that works best for me is to plan on between 5-6 hours of sleep. I go to be around 10-11AM and wake up with an alarm at 4:30PM.
One of the most important things for me is to not try and re-set my sleep patterns on my nights off. Took me a few weeks to get into the pattern and now most of the time on my nights off I stay awake until around 4-6AM.
This week I'm on vacation so sleep patterns are all screwed up.
Hope this helps some

if men work on shift work, how can they find women to date?

Would women be open to dating men who work shifts?

Do like I did (the second time)...marry a woman who works shift too...

I won't do it, plain and simple. In fact, my company has decided to do a 9 hour day starting in mid December, 4x9 hour days, 1x8 hour Friday and every other Friday off. Sounds cool, but consider going to work in the dark, getting off in the dark and how little time left in the evening when you get home. Missed time with the family mainly.
Also consider that if you take a day off, you get charged 9 hours of personal time, an odd number and with 160 hours personal time per year, it shorts your actual vacation weeks.
I feel strongly enough about it to consider going part time, 4x8 with ALL Fridays off, that will teach 'em! I'm pretty stubborn you see!
Midnight shifts are hard because it forces sleep during the day, that can be difficult with all the noise and light. I sure cannot sleep enough during the day to feel rested enough to work all night. Some people like it and get used to it but almost all prefer day shifts. If you need a job, you mayy have to put up with shift work, if you do well, there is always an option to change shifts, hopefully. CHeers

Midnight shift work usually involve poorly paid jobs. They are often factory type jobs or pseudo white collar jobs which operate in boiler room operation. Real jobs are disappearing fast. I wonder if everyone becoming slaves to the corporations.

Not a problem here since my wife won't let me date <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

If you already knew the answer, then why did you ask the question?

"...Midnight shift work usually involve poorly paid jobs..."

Yeah, those doctors you see in the ER's at oh dark thirty don't make nearly as much as the day time only Beverly Hills plastic surgeons. Far as that goes, give LAPD a call and see what they are paying officers these days, then add in the shift differential...

I've never worked a graveyard shift but I have worked the late shift. This was when I was on a film crew several years ago. The shooting schedule goes for 10-12 hours which means the support crew works 12-14 hours and because of union/guild rules regarding turnaround time, the schedule gradually rotated around the clock during the week. One week I would start at 7:00 and eventually switched to starting work in the afternoon.

It screwed up my internal clock big-time. After a while though it almost felt normal to head out from the office to the set at 1:00am. The only way I could feel normal was to sleep as much as possible during my off time to offset the time differential. I guess it was like working constantly in different time zones. After the last movie, I basically said NO MORE and went back to my regular job in construction.

The upside was that I sometimes managed to get 9 or even 18 holes of golf in before I went to work! <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

"Midnight shift work usually involve poorly paid jobs. They are often factory type jobs or pseudo white collar jobs which operate in boiler room operation. Real jobs are disappearing fast. I wonder if everyone becoming slaves to the corporations. "

Next time you see a fire fighter helping you because you did something stupid just remember what you said. Oh and when the helo comes to pick you up because you did something even more stupid remember what you said.

I have more education than most yet I choose to work midnights to help when people do stupid things like you. Next time you want to insult people...THINK. You never know because in either situation it might be me.

Ok maybe I read the post to harshly.... If so sorry.

Anyway are we slaves to corps. Only if you let yourself be. As with everything you always have a choice. It might not look pretty or be the nicest road but the choice is always there.

Yeah, my wife won't let me date either! Some people in the military (rifle company) work strange hours like 30hrs straight & preparing for a battalion (647 men)size movement at 0300. I had permanent jet lag for six years. You adapt. After a while, you don't care whether it's day or night. You just do what needs to be done.

Years ago I did this kinda work ... maybe 30 years ago.

I fell asleep at the wheel. Crashed through a brick wall. Screwed my car up royally.

Never will I do shift work again.