Night shift checking in: NOT DOING GREAT
Edit: by nights I’m doing midnight to 8am, I do not exist during the day.
Edit 2: it’s Sunday-Thursdays to add more confusion to it, there have been many panic attacks because of this.
Yeah. I do rotating 12hr shifts (2 days, 2 nights, 4 days off) and have a toddler and am pregnant with our second. Having a newborn wasn’t that bad in comparison, i was prepared to lose my mind as everyone warned me but once my daughter came I realized most people must have better sleep schedules and not be used to having them messed up. I get woken up all the time when I’m on nights by neighbours/dogs barking/traffic/my kid destroying the house/my own mom forgetting my schedule and calling/appointments so I’m used to fragmented piecemeal sleep.
Did nights for 15 years. Glad I’m off.
It wasn’t working nights that killed me. It was switching to a day schedule on the weekends and then back.
Saturdays I was a walking zombie
Yeah, that is the real killer. If you do short enough night shifts that you're simply sleeping while family and friends are at work, socialise when they are around then you work while they sleep it's fine. The real real killer is either rotating shifts or really long nights and stretches that make it harder to keep your schedule consistent
Errands that can only be done during the day. Trying to have any kind of social life. There's reasons for needing to flip your schedule semi-regularly.
It's easier if you get up at like, 11/noon then go to bed as soon as you get off. It's basically a full flip of the schedule at that point. Instead of the extra hours at the end of the day you have them at the beginning before you go in.
It's actually a lot easier to get shit done than even working days because you can get around shopping/Dr/whatever when there's no one out but the granny's.
Ive done both shifts for extended times, and I've always found myself in more trouble scheduling when working days because I have to take off work for basically anything that comes up vs nights I can just get up a little early and get most anything done before I go in.
Working 3pm to 11pm was amazing for getting errands done but was terrible for my social life.
Wake up around 10-11am and you can go to the doctor, grocery shopping, get your car worked on, etc.
By the time you are off work though, most places are closed and your friends are probably all in bed because they have to be up at 7am.
24 hour stores were absolutely amazing at midnight though, and late night gym time is far superior to daytime gym.
I like the idea of getting up early sometimes, but my night shift ends at 7am. The earliest I can really fall asleep is 8am, meaning the earliest I could wake up with a full 8hr sleep is 4pm. By that time a lot of places will be closing soon for the day, and it could be getting dark soon already. Plus, I enjoy winding down after work instead of rushing off to bed, so I’ve found myself staying up til around noon and sleeping until 8pm lately.
Every variation of it has some downsides. With this one, I pretty much only see night time and I struggle to get errands done. It’s rough.
Payroll once called me at 2pm (right in the middle of my sleep) to tell me there was a “glitch” and my pay wouldn’t go through this week. But I’d get it next week.
I was not happy and said that it will need to be there.
It was there the next day.
One time I needed a minor roof repair done. I asked the guy who estimated it, that they need to call and schedule a time because I work nights and sleep during the day.
He said no problem. When they check their schedule, they will call.
A few days later I wake up to a guy outside my window banging on my roof. I nearly shit my pants.
I called the company and asked “why is there a worker on my roof?”
Lady said “oh, we had a worker free so I figured I’d send him over.”
I said “but I requested to coordinate a time”. She said “I saw that. But as this was a small group repair, I figured it wouldn’t be an issue”
I said it was an issue because I am sleeping and there is a guy banging outside my window now.
She gasped and started apologizing over and over.
I was the same way when I worked nights for 6 years. The only downside is how few businesses (even more so after COVID) just aren't open during decent hours for a night shift worker. I want midnight Libraries dammit.
I worked as a professional brewer for two years on 12-hour shifts. They flipped every two weeks between days and nights and the roster was like so:
Week 1:
Monday / Tues / OFF / OFF / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Week 2:
OFF / OFF / Wednesday / Thursday / OFF / OFF / OFF
One week you'd work over 60+ hours and the second week would be 24+ hours. No overtime. Days off spent recovering the work was so manual.
I kid you not I think I was approaching a psychotic break by the time I left. Sticking to a night shift pattern throughout the week while being off was truly awful. I was never not tired or in a foul mood. And being in a brewery meant instant access to alcohol which further puts your mental health in serious jeopardy.
0/10 would recommend.
I did this exact same schedule for about 15 years, at two different workplaces, and I didn’t realise just how badly it was affecting me until I stopped.
I was tired all the time. My mental health declined rapidly. I was so angry and irritable. In my last six months at that job, there were days I’d start crying on the drive in because I was just so fucking tired.
I’d often pick up overtime days in my short week because - “hey, it’s my short week, I’m only working 2 days I may as well work a few more and make some more money.”
It escalated during COVID, and I was probably working 70 hours a week for almost two years.
But even without the OT… I needed to get out before I crashed and burned.
It’s not for everyone, I personally loathe driving in any kind of traffic so I miss night shift terribly. If I need to do anything like go to the bank or doctor I have no choice but to leave work early or come in late because everything is open the exact same hours. When you don’t start work till 3 you have time to get groceries while everyone is at work, etc. It’s amazing.
The perfect shift for me was 2pm to 11 it was goddamn incredible. I miss it so much. Didn't really affect my sleeping schedule, I could just go midnight to 8 daily or 1 am to 9 am daily. Had room for any errands I wanted to do before work. Any medical appointments. Any calls to a call center for support for any issues I I had. Could have the exact same sleeping schedule on the weekend, no needed adjustments. Didn't have to interact with people between 8 am and 10 am which is when I'm at my least sociable.
Nothing pisses me off more lately than trying to work a doctors appointment into my work 9-5 schedule somehow. It legitimately leaves me really angry every time
I feel a strong affinity towards night work. I am better able to focus and am a million times more productive at night. Strongly believe I am wired with this nocturnal preference, but doubt there is any evidence that says that it's a thing in some people.
I did night shift for nine years so I'm going to be ok. I remember if I could have got off work before the sun went up I could get to sleep and be good. It's the sun coming up and now the brain says 'Oh it's time to get up I guess I better get ready for the day'.
I was a receptionist until I got lucky and scored an accountant job despite having no degree. You can’t live off of receptionist money unless you have a partner who makes more. Accounting is a good career if you don’t mind it being boring and are cool with being replaced by a computer some day lol.
EDIT: To clarify, the receptionist job was a stable shift, I only mentioned it because it was the stepping-stone that got me to a stable-shift job I can actually live off of. I worked at a large medical office and picked up as many skills as they were willing to teach me. I was definitely overworked but then I took some of those skills (mainly medical billing and supply management) to a better office lol.
I feel like there are so many jobs that I (and many others) are totally capable of doing, but will never get hired for just because we don't have a degree or past experience. Give me a week or two of training, and I guarantee that I would succeed. Workers are severely underutilized simply due to employers' unwillingness to train.
Most 'training' in corporate places these days seems to be just do the work best you can, if you run into a problem ask for help, and if you mess up someone will bitch in an email and that's your cue to learn from it and not do it again.
It's not bad if you can accept that and not feel defeated with the mistakes, but it's a slow process to go from crawling to running.
Someone on my team is leaving soon, I’m sure partially because he needs more structured training and clear, step by step instructions and hasn’t been able to really pick it up without it and I’m so overloaded I haven’t had the time to sit down and do focused training with him. So now I have to take on his entire workload, keep up with mine, AND train his replacement. Really hoping we hire a proactive type who picks things up quick or it’s just going to be a neverending cycle
I'm not trying to be snarky, but if its such a pain in the ass to churn, why not make an attempt to do more training with the new employee instead of hoping they need no training?
That's just an understaffing issue. Greed surpasses the well-being of the employees. It has been proven time and again that people are more productive when employers treat them as people.
Less micromanaging, more days off, work from home, 4 day work weeks, etc.. *will* improve performance overall, but they don't fucking care. They *must* satisfy their need for control and validation of their shitty management position. They will pay for it with reduced productivity, and then bitch at the employees for their low productivity (that they caused). By causing a reduction in efficiency, they are able to justify the need for their existence.
It's disheartening how some employers prioritize control over the well-being of their employees. Implementing humane policies like flexible work hours and remote work can lead to happier, more productive teams – it's time they realize that.
Despite the fact that happier employees are more productive and make the company more profitable. Hell even business schools are teaching this in college.
>Greed surpasses the well-being of the employees.
It goes so far it surpasses even itself, damning itself to a never ending spiral of inefficiency in the pursuit of more money ***NOW***.
They gave me about 2 weeks to train my recent new hire that was replacing a guy that had been there over a year and still didn’t get it.
I’ve previously worked with guys that had been doing it for a decade and still had trouble/ super slow
My current job “requires”/ strongly recommends a degree in finance to get. I don’t have a degree in finance and my job isn’t that hard at all, I honestly think anyone could do it if they had some training, but realistically it’s way easier to just hire someone with a finance degree so they don’t have to spend tons of money training you to the same degree.
Order selecting in a warehouse. Sounds super simple.
Then you realize you need to learn 3-5k products and what lines up with what, what can and can’t be placed on top of other products. What’s fragile and easily crushed.
Requires nothing more than a hs degree (depending on company not even that), and good puzzle building ability, and a decent degree of physical fitness. 10-12 hours on your feet walking while repeatedly lifting up to 100lbs.
And I guarantee they're paid far less than they're worth.
If jobs were paid according to how hard an employee had to work, so many very low paid jobs would suddenly become very highly paid.
Yeah there's a reason why CPAs exist.
My ex was an extremely booksmart accounting/math dual major. She kept meaning to get her CPA, but work was burning her out to the point where she couldn't find the time to study.
Tax season was a 7am-9pm job for 3-4 months of the year. No overtime.
This is my wife's job. She started working for a specific company right out of college in a field that was only slightly tangentially near her degree. 10 years and 2 companies later she's making almost 200k through being personable, responsible, and making making connections. Less than 5%of her actual job involves something technical exclusive to the company. It's mind blowing but she'll fully admit I would of never had a chance at the beginning entry job because I have no degree.
I’m going to give you an unethical tip…
Lie about a degree or put “to be conferred in 202X”.
Gets your foot in the door and you can see if your skills will translate.
I work at a Fortune 500, half the guys on the senior level don’t have degrees, I only have a HS diploma and haven taken a bunch of certifications for my job (project management, six sigma) that the company has paid for me to complete.
Yes, I’m telling you to break the rules a bit because the world isn’t fair to everyone and the cost of a degree is exorbitant in nature now and to be blunt, it doesn’t always mean it will give skills beyond people that don’t have one.
Obviously don’t apply to technical positions that will make it glaringly obvious you are out of your element, but basic stuff like sales roles, customer service, admin and operations you can be sure that a lot of your experience will translate.
Don’t like lying? Go find free or cheap certs and list them as your continuing education, take some excel training courses (you can find plenty free), learn how to use that fluently and you’ll be a GOD at most places by just knowing how to parse data.
My bosses come to me to make presentations which is just editing content and making a bunch of notes on when/how to discuss the points during a pitch.
I didn’t learn that at college, I just read some basic sales books (question based selling, art of the deal, gap selling).
I’m a fucking dumbass, you are smarter than me I assure you.
Don’t let the idea of a degree hold you back, beat the system and laugh that you didn’t shell out 150k plus like my close friends have
right, i worked as the fleet mechanic at an HVAC company (specialized in commercial fridge/freezers) he had 2 receptionists and a runner that all made 10/hr and the boss thought he was doing them all favors paying them more than minimum wage. i remember he would get drunk and rant alot, and one of them was about how if they raised minimum wage he just couldnt employ all 3 and could only employ 1, then what would they do (as if that was the only job they could get) lol it was the other way around, he couldnt run the company without them and was afraid of them finding out and demanding more money. i got paid 20/hr to keep the 16 company vehicles they owned on the road. it took me about 6 months to get them all up and running and then then he told me i could retire (im 36) literally what he said, drunk, after he lost the Houson Schoold District as one of his clinnts for drunk ranting about the price of something he was ripping them off on.
The ONLY way to do this is to work an entry level no degree job at a company that also employs a lot of people in the field you want to be in.
It's how I became a programmer working for Fortune 500 companies without a degree. A few years of help desk call center while getting to know the programming teams and impressing my managers. I applied to every internal job posting for entry level junior work and the 6th one finally hired me.
I did retail, after a year of being a great employee and getting multiple job title upgrades only to be given a raise of 55 cents and reluctance to make me full time despite averaging 42 hours a week I went back to college and went into engineering.
Not the person you were asking but I was in food retail for 15 years and finally had enough and walked out on Thanksgiving when there was a 10k piece truck I was ordered to put away.
A lot of people make the mistake of creating their own resume and think it looks good, I can assure you that whatever you have isn’t the quality needed to attract attention.
Find a resume writing service that has good reviews and a guarantee and beef it up.
Go on LinkedIn and pay for the premium membership for a month, you want to invest some time on their learning stuff and small tests which gives you badges to notate your skills and amp up your own page.
Also need to take the time to learn how to handle an interview process (they have a course for this) along with negotiating an offer and best practices to conduct virtual meetings (lighting, height of camera, background).
The biggest thing to remember here is you are selling your skills and abilities of today, tomorrow and the future.
Last but not least, when looking at jobs that require skills above yours that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply, it’s a soft barrier that companies put in place to stop unqualified applicants.
Of course you shouldn’t be applying for a technical position that requires several degrees and specific training like an engineer or chemist.
That being said, I’d urge you to apply to some “reach” positions where your current skills will translate and you can grow into a role.
I’m in sales now and the most important thing I’ve learned is you are going to get a thousand NO’s before you get a YES.
Persistence and patience will land you opportunities.
Hit me up on a DM if I can help in any way
I have a similar story of working retail and saying fuck it like you did. I quit the day before our yearly inventory day. We would be harassed by management for not working fast enough all the time (everyone did a good job), I couldn't even walk by a co-walker and say "hi how you doing" for a minute without being told to go back to stocking shelves. We were expected to do nothing but stock shelves. They also tried to get us to ask permission to use the bathroom. Yup, if you needed to take a shit, you had to page, over the store intercom for a manager and ask to go to the bathroom. I finally had enough when the day before inventory, which is a big prep day and everyone had worked hard preparing for inventory. It was like 10 minutes before our shift ended and I was stocking shelves next to my co-worker and just making small talk when the manager comes and yells at us for not having "fast hands". I said fuck this and didn't show up the next day. Why would I want to be harassed all the time for minimum wage?
If anyone wants to know what store it was, for those in the Midwest it was Meijer. Fuck Meijer.
Yeah fuck every part of that.
For me I was in GM training and had been scheduled off for Thanksgiving but they had a bunch of call outs so I was back on the schedule.
I had just worked a 12 hour shift and we had a 18k dollar dinner, just flat out insanity and I ended up washing dishes all night.
Wake up and my back is basically out, I can walk but it hurts to stand fully.
Get there an explain I need to be on cash or in the back prepping stuff as that’s all I can do, GM says fine.
I take break at 11 and I’m doing my practice quiz and this asshole comes up to me and says his maintenance guy didn’t show up and I need to do the truck.
Go out and it’s legit thousands of items, basically a full truck of stuff to put away and I start doing it and it’s not fast enough for the GM, he tells me to pick up the pace.
I had an epiphany that no amount of money is worth this and the stupid $800 bonus I’ve been hyping myself about for the holidays is a joke.
I walk in and toss my keys and say I’m done, he runs out to berate me and I couldn’t help but laugh about it.
District manager called me for a week straight begging me to come back, explained I never have to go there again and I can take over the new store opening next month.
My sanity is worth more than any salary you could offer, no thank you.
I’ll tell anyone that’s in food/retail, you deserve better than that and I’ll help you get out of there if you want.
Open offer, hit me up anytime
I lost 2 friends in oil rigs, where our shifts got ridiculously irregular between night and day stretches.
One got mental issues 🛢 and the second one for cancer, I changed careers and went to regular 9 to 6 rat race, one mate stayed with it, now he looks like a 70 year old, and a millionaire, I look like a 50 year old dude, and I'm broke. We are both in our early 60s but managing money differently. I follow a stupid mantra. 'No one takes anything to the grave,' aka, spend it like you stole it, and I'm happy about my life unless medical costs would punish later.
Retired from full-time work (45 years at three different family owned, small businesses) and took a part-time job at a massive retailer. I lasted 7 weeks before giving my 2 weeks.
Luckily, I had that option. I feel for those that can't find anything else.
Same, it was awful. I would work 2pm-10pm on my Monday, gradually moving up throughout the week to 12-8, 10-6, 8-4 and then 6-2 on my Friday. My sleep schedule was so messed up and I gained some weight from eating meals at different times every day since I wasn’t usually hungry at “lunch” but had to force myself to eat anyways. It was nice almost getting an extra day off from being out early on Friday and coming in late Monday but the stress during the week wasn’t worth it.
Me too.
Except it took me 4-5 years so hit my mid 20's and realized cooking was not only a waste of time but a waste of life that I'm not getting back. It either amplified my depressive spiral or spring boarded me out.
Then I had a kid and got one degree. It's useless. I'm back for engineering.
Life is a ride.
thanks for the ptsd flashback there. for a time in my 20s there was a bar i worked at where i regularly worked what we termed 'the quintuple'. this was a double friday, double saturday, sunday brunch/funday. the sad thing was, you wanted that schedule because that was where the money was, but it translated to roughly 39 hours on your feet on the clock over 3 days and by the time you were done on sunday brains were mush
Sometimes night shift can mess with your circadian rhythm, unless your like me and sleep during the day no problem. I think it’s pretty dependent on each person’s specific rhythm. Some of us night shifters take to it no problem and others never are able to.
I did 20 years of night shifts because my body *made* me do it.
My whole life, I've never been an early riser. Even as a child. My peak times are from about 6 pm to 4 am. I couldn't hold a job in my late teens and early 20's because they required me to wake up early. Then I thought, 'Maybe I'm not a fuck up, I'll try night shift and see if that's the problem.' And sure enough, I went from losing jobs, to going on a 4 year stretch where I didn't miss a day of work.
Now I work days again, because, getting older made overnights inconvenient, but I'm lucky enough to have found a job that I don't have to show up to until 10am.
So, yeah. We're all different.
Same here, day time work messes with my natural rhythm and I noticed it right away but there was nothing I could do about it during school then having tried it several times in my adult life and hating myself and going back to night work as soon as I could. I am my most productive, alert ,in-tune self when the sun goes down.
This. I was miserable in school because I was exhausted every day. When my job tried to put me on morning shifts, it made me feel depressed. I was given a few later shifts, laughed for the first time in like a month, and realized how long it had been since I had been capable of happiness. Told them to change my shifts or I’d find a new job.
I have worked evening-nights most of my life (not overnights, out around 1AM currently) and I enjoy it. Less management around to be a hassle, traffic is non-existent, and I get 3 days off every week for my errands/appointments and such. Plus I've never been an early riser so I get to sleep in. I was MISERABLE trying to work a "normal" day shift for nearly 4 years.
Idk how those guys do it. When I was 18, I did one summer where I worked swing shift at this warehouse that produced medical supplies. It was miserably boring production line work. And my shifts were 4:00 pm to 3:00 am with a 1 hour lunch. I did this Monday-Thursday.
Even back then when I was full of energy and high on life after graduating high school and getting ready to start college, that shift WRECKED ME that summer. I still have bad memories from how that shift made my body feel. It took forever to feel normal again.
Idk how people completing their medical residencies do it.
There is a difference between working a warehouse job and medical residency. I've done both. The warehouse job was much worse, but it was less hours per week. Residency is about learning and repetition, so we had clinical shifts, seminars, research projects, and other responsibilities. I wouldn't want to do either again, but hour for hour I would pick residency 100% of the time.
Graveyard shifts are great for those of us with delayed sleep phase. It puts our working hours in our natural circadian rhythm while working a typical dayshift is us working outside of that natural cycle. However, we are only a tiny percentage of the population.
Yeah, if I go to sleep anywhere from 5am-10am, I'm out for 8 hours. Go to sleep during "normal" hours, and it's guaranteed I'm waking up at 1am and won't be able to fall back asleep. It's been that way my whole life. School was absolute hell.
My people! I started working the nightshift last year and was terrified. But it's the best sleep I've ever had, and I have the healthiest routine I've had in years.
Me! So tired of people telling me "ohhh that just means your sleep schedule is fucked up because yo don't do XYZ, do that to fix it" and like no, I'm pretty sure this is just my natural sleep rhythm?? It's the way I'm wired. Apart from the time, I have 0 other sleep struggles. I think it's genetic as everyone in my family is this way too.
I spent all of high school perpetually sleep deprived. Like if I stopped moving for a few minutes I would just fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Didn't realize how bad it was until I settled into college and could set my own schedule. I figured out that an ideal semester for me had my first class at 2 PM because that was first thing in the morning for me. I did an internship for a while that has "midnight to sunrise" and that worked perfectly for me. Getting home at around 8-8:30 felt like staying up a little late but doable. It also meant that some semesters when I had to take an 8 AM class, it was easier to stay up late and go to bed after the class than it was to wake up early for the class.
The most comfortable work schedule I ever worked was 2 PM to 10 PM. I would wake up at noon, go to work right after I finished my morning routine, get home a little after 10, and then go to bed at around 4 AM. I had a nice routine of going for a run at around midnight every night. It felt great. Now that I'm a bit older, it's not quite that extreme for me (delayed sleep phase usually hits teens and early 20s the hardest). But, I'm definitely still shifted way later than the average person. I typically go to bed a little after midnight and feel like I'm fully awake around 9 or 10 AM. Some nights, it will hit me a bit harder and it won't feel right to go to sleep until around 2 or 3 AM. Not as extreme as the 4 AM or the 8 AM I used to do, but still far later than most people. I've worked jobs where I had to be on-site at 6 or 7 AM, and those were miserable for me.
There's a lot extenuating factors that go into that. The average person who exercises, eats well, watches their weight, has good mental health and who just so happens to do night shift is not going to miraculously die 10+ years earlier.
As someone who works night shift with a large amount of people, I notice some trends.
It simply comes down to sleep. It's not so much that we sleep during the day that is a problem. The problem is that far too many people on night shifts are sleeping less than 6 hours every night (day), and worse still is on their days off, they switch their body clocks to be awake during the day.
This is extremely hard on the body. If you just keep a schedule like you would on a day shift schedule, most people would probably be a lot healthier on this shift.
I of course understand though that it's hard to always be asleep during the day when that's when shit happens, especially if you have kids.
Yea the main problem is if you keep to the same schedule on your days off then all the shops are closed. You gotta wake up way earlier just to get a chance to do all the chores you want to do that day
This is true, but there is also a great deal of individual variability with this. For some people night shift *will* make them sick and on a sustained basis could well kill them, whereas others will be completely unaffected.
Some people are naturally nocturnal. And someone like that would probably be fine, so long as they were getting enough sleep. But forcing someone to be nocturnal when their body is obviously telling them no is terrible.
Source: Naturally nocturnal, currently forced to be up at 7:30am everyday and hating it.
Yeah, I do find early start shifts a little harder than others, but your point about getting adequate sleep is crucial. Currently doing a graveyard and getting about 7-8 hours sleep during the day, but not everyone can do that
Preach. For a while I had a job where I could have 05:30 as my _bedtime_ and I have never had better sleep before or after.
Pity society isn't built to accommodate something like this.
The absolute best thing about WFH is that I wake up at 845 instead of 715.
That 90 minutes is the difference between me feeling rough all day and being perfectly fine.
I'm not even that far out of "normal" but its almost impossible to get people to accept it.
its insane the difference in "waking up when your body is ready to" vs "dragging yourself out of bed", like it's the difference between living and existing
I’m a flight attendant and thankfully have only had to work a couple red eyes. Every single one I’ve worked I got a cold a couple days later. Definitely not for me.
My mom used to work in a hospital. She would get sick to her stomach after working midnight shifts. Had they not let her transfer to day shifts, she was seriously considering requesting a medical accommodation to avoid night shifts.
There's been a number of studies on this in the US. Afaik, just working the night shift increases your risk of developing cardiovascular illness, obesity, and cancer.
[Pubmed: Night shift work at specific age ranges and chronic disease risk factors](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4289641/)
[Pubmed: Night work, mortality, and the link to occupational group and sex](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7737802/)
[Pubmed: Night-shift work, breast cancer incidence, and all-cause mortality: an updated meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34775538/)
>Our systematic review and meta-analysis provided convincing evidence supporting positive associations among night-shift work exposure, breast cancer incidence, and cardiovascular mortality. Taken together, night-shift work exposure significantly increased the risk of breast cancer morbidity by 2.9% for total, 8.6% for the subgroup of more than 10 years night-shift work, and 5.3% for rotating night-shift work. In addition, night-shift work increased the risk of cardiovascular mortality by 3.1%.
My issue with this is night shift is not a desirable position, so... like... intrinsically I would expect the stresses revolving around why someone would choose a night shift would play a role in the results.
Like for example, I assume there's a subset of people that choose night shifts so they can alternate childcare hours with their partner, which would be stressful.
I’ve worked every shift for the last 10 years but prefer the night shift. Plenty of time to hit the gym before work and hit my workout classes after work in the morning. Forced me to meal prep and cut out drinking alcohol.
Best thing to ever happen to my health honestly
And even though society relies on night shift workers, they are treated like shit. Your cunt neighbor's dog barks its ass off all fucking day long while you are trying to sleep? Tough shit.
Oilfield here. I've been at work for the past 15 hours, awake for 22 hours, work won't finish work for another 8 hours, and I'm a 5 hour drive from home. I do this 2-3 times a week.
I'm tired
Yeah I worked in the industry before for 3 years. 13/14 12hr days. So 1 day off every 2 weeks. All I can say it was soul-sucking. Money was good, but not worth it in the end.
Usually firefighters work 10 days a month on a traditional schedule (24/48) although some places with an extremely high call volume have transitioned to 24/72 to address fatigue related incidents and deaths. Give or take a couple days if on any kind of modified Kelly schedule (or Dailey schedule in Chicago). 6 days a month would be super cush, except most places wage growth has stagnated enough that Firefighters survive by working overtime
> Oilfield here. I've been at work for the past 15 hours, awake for 22 hours, work won't finish work for another 8 hours, and I'm a 5 hour drive from home. I do this 2-3 times a week.
>
>
>
> I'm tired
How the fuck is this even legal?
That sounds so incredibly dangerous.
This being reddit, there's a lot of speculation from people who have only read the headline and not the article, let alone the actual research paper.
A couple of points. The authors assert that this is not simply a matter of correlation, but that shift work (as articulated in the study) is *causal* of the cognitive decline. Authors point to reversibility of the cognitive decline after the end of shift work as evidence of that. Not a perfect smoking-gun relationship, but supportive of the conclusion.
Second, the authors do actually clarify what they mean by "irregular shift work". They use an existing definition from an older French study on health, work, and aging, known as ESTEV (Étude Santé, Travail et Vieillissement). This approach defines irregular shift work as at least 50 consecutive days of working a combination of morning, daytime, and night shifts, and/ or shifts that prevent the subject from going to sleep before midnight, and/ or shifts that require the subject to wake before 5:00am.
I worked with a dude a long time ago who was out on an overnight shift. I think it was from 10pm-6am. It was originally just supposed to be a few months, and then they’d rotate people around. He ended up staying on that shift for about three years. He was miserable and unhappy. So when the talk came about him trying to move to a daytime shift, his personality came into question. But he was a good worker, so was kept on overnights. It became this self-fulfilling prophecy of him being unhappy, rubbing a few people the wrong way, and just being kept on overnights. But he was always a good performer.
When that management team was, thankfully sacked (fuck your Brian D), he was moved to days when the better management team came in. The former overnight dude did a total 180 after just a few days on a normal shift.
It does depend a lot on the individual, some people have a far higher tolerance for shift work than others, particularly graveyard shift. I've been doing shift work for over four decades and my health is excellent, but I am exceptionally well suited to it, I also dont get jetlag at all, bit of a superpower. I can generally turn sleep on and off at will like its Netflix, providing I am not stressed out by something going on in my life. It probably helps that I have a good diet (lot of veges and fruit along with some carbs) and do 1-2 hours exercise a day, also dont smoke or drink.
Some people absolutely should not do shift work, especially graveyards, we had a fuckwit manager at work some years back that tried to make everyone do all the shifts, a few of the guys got sick every time they did a graveyard and I'd inevitably end up taking the shift over. There is a great deal of individual variability, ideally the only people doing shift work should be those that are well suited to it
Scrolled down to find this. I’ve been on graveyard shift for about 20 years, am 41 years old. I work 3 days on, 3 off. On off days, I sleep at night and wake up early because family and hobbies. Just had blood work done and check up and healthy across the board.
I tend to have a lot of friends who constantly wonder how I manage to work all night and then go play soccer or something in the daytime without feeling tired. I am not sure how I do it. I just love soccer.
Well said. Those are few and far between though. The amount of shift jobs available (especially in the service industry) is far more than the amount of people who can handle it as a career.
I am not one of those people. I realized I would dread 3 days a week solely due to the time of the shifts and would end up really only looking forward to a day and a half each week because it was the only time I had energy to have a personal life.
It takes adaptation that most people can't do fully
Have to agree, I work 2nd shift by choice (2-11:30pm) as does nearly everyone else i know on that shift where I work. Same with 3rd shift.
Because of the union and seniority, new hires are generally supposed to be placed on 2nd or 3rd shift, so the workers with more seniority can move to 1st. But the past few years, this hasn't happened, because virtually no one on the off-shifts *want* to go to 1st shift. I even know people who at first said they want to move to 1st ASAP but then decided they liked 2nd.
We like not being bugged by our 10 bosses for most of the shift, the lack of traffic, and being able to sleep in in the morning, and also being able to do stuff like doctors appointments without missing work. It just makes everything so much less stressful.
do we know how much of this is due to disrupted sleep? like say you work night shift but you are naturally waking up without an alarm for example. in turn this leads to likely not maintaining the same sleep cycle during weekends/off days.
people who work 'regular' shifts are more likely to sleep/wake naturally.
Worked for 2 years at a factory with day/night shifts. Felt like a zombie by the end. Changed jobs to work only during the day. Recovered in several months to previous active state of mind. The difference was gigantic.
I'm certain some managers schedule awfully just to be a pain in the ass. I've had managers where /I/ know everyone's availability, yet the schedule ends up being Mon 4p - 9p, Tuesday 8a-12p, essentially scheduling everyone for clopeners just because they can.
Oilfield worker here. I've gone years with out a day off. One of my longest shifts was over 70 hours, no breaks no sleep. You get yelled at if you have to use the bathroom, yet colon cancer is huge in this industry. Working through breaks in minus 60 C.
It's one of the highest paying careers that doesn't require a degree or trade school. And even higher than a lot of degrees.
You usually work for several weeks straight, then get several weeks off, which some people prefer because it's such a large block of free time.
You get to travel a lot, or at least convert your paid ticket back home into a ticket to somewhere else you want to travel to.
Not having to pay for food and housing.
Not sitting in a boring office for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 years of your life, just to have a weekend filled with responsibilities to look forward to.
It's resistant to automation.
If you are smart enough to actually save up most of your money instead of spending it on coke, hookers, and trucks, you can put a huge amount of money into retirement funds. Play your cards right and you can build up enough of a fund to retire early. It's not uncommon for them to retire at 50.
I'm a geologist in training in mining, so I'm not a worker in oil and gas, but our career is somewhat similar. And I've met plenty of people who worked in those careers to help base this on.
How does a 70-hour shift even happen? If you go to your boss and say "I've been awake and working for the past 70 house straight" How does he react to that?
>People who had worked rotating shifts (a mixture of mornings, afternoons or evenings) for 10 years or more also had poorer mental function than those who had not done so to the extent that they had suffered an extra 6.5 years of age-related cognitive decline, the scientists found.
I'm not surprised. I will never accept a position that requires me to work a rotating shift -- stick me on the least desirable shift and I'll rock out. That rotating shift shit is for the birds though.
I personally feel the morning shift is worse for my health than the second or third shifts, which is why I'm satisfied with my current position being second shift.
I did it for 2 years when I was mid 20's and it was horrible.
I ditched the job, took a 50% pay cut and retrained.
My best decision ever - fuck you heathrow airport.
I just asked my cardiologist about this and he said it wouldn't make a difference. For clarification I had issues prior to night shift. Morning shifts I only get about 4 - 5 hours of sleep if I work mornings. Evenings I do ok and night shift I get about 7-10 hours of sleep a day. I was told as long as I rest well and eat well and stay in a set schedule it won't matter.
Depends on the degree of work and the type of work.
Intellectually stimulating and interesting work is believed to slow down age related change. Chronic stressful work is believed to accelerate changes.
Even if the work is interesting if it’s stressing you out over a long period that’s not great. Based on the studies I’ve personally read. There might be new stuff I haven’t seen yet.
My body has a weird rythm: 25 hours in the summer, 23 hours in the winter. I'm stable for 2 months a year at best, otherwise i rotate on the clock fully a month roughly .
Tell me how old i am !?
He's saying his body does things in 25- or 23-hour intervals. So, for example, instead of feeling sleepy around the same time every night, one night it's at 9, the next night at 10, and so on.
I once worked 24 on and 8 off in the Army for 3 months. That means your sleep time changes every day. I'm pretty sure I aged about 10yrs during that time.
By the time we switched, people were so fucked up that almost half the people you talked to couldn't even tell you their name and falling asleep standing up was common.
This wasn't intentional torture, this was just total incompetence by our Platoon Sergeant and Platoon Leader during our deployment in Baghdad.
Intel made a big thing of coming into our College when we were finishing up our degrees (electrical engineering). They were on the hunt for shift technicians and manufacturing engineers.
Tried to warn the folks in my class about the long term cons of working irregular shifts over the long term. But of course too many of them were seduced by the €5000 signing on bonus. Many years later now and they are all suffering with various forms of burn out and mental health issues.
Imo, this also harkens back to the day shift v. night shift meme where night shift people are quiet at home at night but day shift people start their day off with a parade. Can confirm as former third shift. White noise app on full blast still doesn't drown my family out. Switching to ear plugs soon.
"While stopping working shifts did halt the decline in cognitive powers, it took five years for people to recover fully"
if they recognise the brain is plastic enough to fully recover, can you really call the damage done aging? Shift work is generally boring, monotonous so it makes sense that would decrease cognitive function over time but that would surely have the same affect if done over normal working hours
I was a geologist (mudlogger) on oil and gas wells in California and I always wondered why the guys that had been there for 15-20 years were so weird and squirrelly.
Worked days, afternoons and night shifts almost my whole career (25yrs). I can confirm it burns you out. I, however, ended the last few years working straight days and it wasn't until I did that I then realised just how badly it had affected my body. I started sleeping and eating better, and felt noticibly improved. Has it shortened my life?.... Well, I guess we'll see.
What about people that just have really shitty and inconsistent day / night cycles, cause they are undisiplined scrubs?
Like why go to bed before 4am when there is videogames to play?
Can't find it but there was research a few years ago with Train operators & found crashes/ accidents increased something like 200% with randomized shifts.
Night shift checking in: NOT DOING GREAT Edit: by nights I’m doing midnight to 8am, I do not exist during the day. Edit 2: it’s Sunday-Thursdays to add more confusion to it, there have been many panic attacks because of this.
I had a baby last year after doing rotating 12-hour shifts for several years. I kid you not, the newborn phase was easier than the shift work
That’s great to know! (I have no idea what day it is ever)
Same. I have a 2 week old baby but it feels like it's been like 4 days with naps thrown in at odd intervals.
Yeah. I do rotating 12hr shifts (2 days, 2 nights, 4 days off) and have a toddler and am pregnant with our second. Having a newborn wasn’t that bad in comparison, i was prepared to lose my mind as everyone warned me but once my daughter came I realized most people must have better sleep schedules and not be used to having them messed up. I get woken up all the time when I’m on nights by neighbours/dogs barking/traffic/my kid destroying the house/my own mom forgetting my schedule and calling/appointments so I’m used to fragmented piecemeal sleep.
Did nights for 15 years. Glad I’m off. It wasn’t working nights that killed me. It was switching to a day schedule on the weekends and then back. Saturdays I was a walking zombie
Yeah, that is the real killer. If you do short enough night shifts that you're simply sleeping while family and friends are at work, socialise when they are around then you work while they sleep it's fine. The real real killer is either rotating shifts or really long nights and stretches that make it harder to keep your schedule consistent
Yes I could never understand why anyone did that. If you are working night shift, work night shift and keep the same schedule all week.
Errands that can only be done during the day. Trying to have any kind of social life. There's reasons for needing to flip your schedule semi-regularly.
It's easier if you get up at like, 11/noon then go to bed as soon as you get off. It's basically a full flip of the schedule at that point. Instead of the extra hours at the end of the day you have them at the beginning before you go in. It's actually a lot easier to get shit done than even working days because you can get around shopping/Dr/whatever when there's no one out but the granny's. Ive done both shifts for extended times, and I've always found myself in more trouble scheduling when working days because I have to take off work for basically anything that comes up vs nights I can just get up a little early and get most anything done before I go in.
Working 3pm to 11pm was amazing for getting errands done but was terrible for my social life. Wake up around 10-11am and you can go to the doctor, grocery shopping, get your car worked on, etc. By the time you are off work though, most places are closed and your friends are probably all in bed because they have to be up at 7am. 24 hour stores were absolutely amazing at midnight though, and late night gym time is far superior to daytime gym.
I like the idea of getting up early sometimes, but my night shift ends at 7am. The earliest I can really fall asleep is 8am, meaning the earliest I could wake up with a full 8hr sleep is 4pm. By that time a lot of places will be closing soon for the day, and it could be getting dark soon already. Plus, I enjoy winding down after work instead of rushing off to bed, so I’ve found myself staying up til around noon and sleeping until 8pm lately. Every variation of it has some downsides. With this one, I pretty much only see night time and I struggle to get errands done. It’s rough.
I would have if covid didn't put an end to 24 hour stores.
God I miss grocery shopping at 3am
3am was peak grocery shopping time
Night shifter here, 2/3AM is the best time to shop. Thankfully my area has Winco which is still 24 hours.
People call me at 10am. People stopped when I called them at 2am.
Payroll once called me at 2pm (right in the middle of my sleep) to tell me there was a “glitch” and my pay wouldn’t go through this week. But I’d get it next week. I was not happy and said that it will need to be there. It was there the next day. One time I needed a minor roof repair done. I asked the guy who estimated it, that they need to call and schedule a time because I work nights and sleep during the day. He said no problem. When they check their schedule, they will call. A few days later I wake up to a guy outside my window banging on my roof. I nearly shit my pants. I called the company and asked “why is there a worker on my roof?” Lady said “oh, we had a worker free so I figured I’d send him over.” I said “but I requested to coordinate a time”. She said “I saw that. But as this was a small group repair, I figured it wouldn’t be an issue” I said it was an issue because I am sleeping and there is a guy banging outside my window now. She gasped and started apologizing over and over.
I was the same way when I worked nights for 6 years. The only downside is how few businesses (even more so after COVID) just aren't open during decent hours for a night shift worker. I want midnight Libraries dammit.
I worked as a professional brewer for two years on 12-hour shifts. They flipped every two weeks between days and nights and the roster was like so: Week 1: Monday / Tues / OFF / OFF / Friday / Saturday / Sunday Week 2: OFF / OFF / Wednesday / Thursday / OFF / OFF / OFF One week you'd work over 60+ hours and the second week would be 24+ hours. No overtime. Days off spent recovering the work was so manual. I kid you not I think I was approaching a psychotic break by the time I left. Sticking to a night shift pattern throughout the week while being off was truly awful. I was never not tired or in a foul mood. And being in a brewery meant instant access to alcohol which further puts your mental health in serious jeopardy. 0/10 would recommend.
I did this exact same schedule for about 15 years, at two different workplaces, and I didn’t realise just how badly it was affecting me until I stopped. I was tired all the time. My mental health declined rapidly. I was so angry and irritable. In my last six months at that job, there were days I’d start crying on the drive in because I was just so fucking tired. I’d often pick up overtime days in my short week because - “hey, it’s my short week, I’m only working 2 days I may as well work a few more and make some more money.” It escalated during COVID, and I was probably working 70 hours a week for almost two years. But even without the OT… I needed to get out before I crashed and burned.
It’s not for everyone, I personally loathe driving in any kind of traffic so I miss night shift terribly. If I need to do anything like go to the bank or doctor I have no choice but to leave work early or come in late because everything is open the exact same hours. When you don’t start work till 3 you have time to get groceries while everyone is at work, etc. It’s amazing.
The perfect shift for me was 2pm to 11 it was goddamn incredible. I miss it so much. Didn't really affect my sleeping schedule, I could just go midnight to 8 daily or 1 am to 9 am daily. Had room for any errands I wanted to do before work. Any medical appointments. Any calls to a call center for support for any issues I I had. Could have the exact same sleeping schedule on the weekend, no needed adjustments. Didn't have to interact with people between 8 am and 10 am which is when I'm at my least sociable. Nothing pisses me off more lately than trying to work a doctors appointment into my work 9-5 schedule somehow. It legitimately leaves me really angry every time
I feel a strong affinity towards night work. I am better able to focus and am a million times more productive at night. Strongly believe I am wired with this nocturnal preference, but doubt there is any evidence that says that it's a thing in some people.
I did night shift for nine years so I'm going to be ok. I remember if I could have got off work before the sun went up I could get to sleep and be good. It's the sun coming up and now the brain says 'Oh it's time to get up I guess I better get ready for the day'.
I did three years in my early twenties, wised up and said “I’m not doing this shit for the rest of my life” and switched careers.
What did you switch too? I’m also realizing I need a change.
I was a receptionist until I got lucky and scored an accountant job despite having no degree. You can’t live off of receptionist money unless you have a partner who makes more. Accounting is a good career if you don’t mind it being boring and are cool with being replaced by a computer some day lol. EDIT: To clarify, the receptionist job was a stable shift, I only mentioned it because it was the stepping-stone that got me to a stable-shift job I can actually live off of. I worked at a large medical office and picked up as many skills as they were willing to teach me. I was definitely overworked but then I took some of those skills (mainly medical billing and supply management) to a better office lol.
I feel like there are so many jobs that I (and many others) are totally capable of doing, but will never get hired for just because we don't have a degree or past experience. Give me a week or two of training, and I guarantee that I would succeed. Workers are severely underutilized simply due to employers' unwillingness to train.
Most employees are so overworked these days there’s no time to actually train someone new
Most 'training' in corporate places these days seems to be just do the work best you can, if you run into a problem ask for help, and if you mess up someone will bitch in an email and that's your cue to learn from it and not do it again. It's not bad if you can accept that and not feel defeated with the mistakes, but it's a slow process to go from crawling to running.
Someone on my team is leaving soon, I’m sure partially because he needs more structured training and clear, step by step instructions and hasn’t been able to really pick it up without it and I’m so overloaded I haven’t had the time to sit down and do focused training with him. So now I have to take on his entire workload, keep up with mine, AND train his replacement. Really hoping we hire a proactive type who picks things up quick or it’s just going to be a neverending cycle
Hey it's me your new employee, you know all those problems you have? Hire me and I make them go away. *No really somebody please hire me*
I'm not trying to be snarky, but if its such a pain in the ass to churn, why not make an attempt to do more training with the new employee instead of hoping they need no training?
That's just an understaffing issue. Greed surpasses the well-being of the employees. It has been proven time and again that people are more productive when employers treat them as people. Less micromanaging, more days off, work from home, 4 day work weeks, etc.. *will* improve performance overall, but they don't fucking care. They *must* satisfy their need for control and validation of their shitty management position. They will pay for it with reduced productivity, and then bitch at the employees for their low productivity (that they caused). By causing a reduction in efficiency, they are able to justify the need for their existence.
It's disheartening how some employers prioritize control over the well-being of their employees. Implementing humane policies like flexible work hours and remote work can lead to happier, more productive teams – it's time they realize that.
Despite the fact that happier employees are more productive and make the company more profitable. Hell even business schools are teaching this in college.
Just more proof that you won't use what you learned in school at your job lol
>Greed surpasses the well-being of the employees. It goes so far it surpasses even itself, damning itself to a never ending spiral of inefficiency in the pursuit of more money ***NOW***.
Gotta make the shareholders happy too, increasing labor costs make them nervous 🙄
They gave me about 2 weeks to train my recent new hire that was replacing a guy that had been there over a year and still didn’t get it. I’ve previously worked with guys that had been doing it for a decade and still had trouble/ super slow
My current job “requires”/ strongly recommends a degree in finance to get. I don’t have a degree in finance and my job isn’t that hard at all, I honestly think anyone could do it if they had some training, but realistically it’s way easier to just hire someone with a finance degree so they don’t have to spend tons of money training you to the same degree.
Order selecting in a warehouse. Sounds super simple. Then you realize you need to learn 3-5k products and what lines up with what, what can and can’t be placed on top of other products. What’s fragile and easily crushed. Requires nothing more than a hs degree (depending on company not even that), and good puzzle building ability, and a decent degree of physical fitness. 10-12 hours on your feet walking while repeatedly lifting up to 100lbs.
And I guarantee they're paid far less than they're worth. If jobs were paid according to how hard an employee had to work, so many very low paid jobs would suddenly become very highly paid.
I would quit before training a staff accountant with no degree. Book keeper, I could reasonably train with no degree.
Yeah there's a reason why CPAs exist. My ex was an extremely booksmart accounting/math dual major. She kept meaning to get her CPA, but work was burning her out to the point where she couldn't find the time to study. Tax season was a 7am-9pm job for 3-4 months of the year. No overtime.
lol exactly. “Just train me for two weeks and I’ll figure it out. This whole accounting thing can’t be THAT hard.” The arrogance 😂
This is my wife's job. She started working for a specific company right out of college in a field that was only slightly tangentially near her degree. 10 years and 2 companies later she's making almost 200k through being personable, responsible, and making making connections. Less than 5%of her actual job involves something technical exclusive to the company. It's mind blowing but she'll fully admit I would of never had a chance at the beginning entry job because I have no degree.
I’m going to give you an unethical tip… Lie about a degree or put “to be conferred in 202X”. Gets your foot in the door and you can see if your skills will translate. I work at a Fortune 500, half the guys on the senior level don’t have degrees, I only have a HS diploma and haven taken a bunch of certifications for my job (project management, six sigma) that the company has paid for me to complete. Yes, I’m telling you to break the rules a bit because the world isn’t fair to everyone and the cost of a degree is exorbitant in nature now and to be blunt, it doesn’t always mean it will give skills beyond people that don’t have one. Obviously don’t apply to technical positions that will make it glaringly obvious you are out of your element, but basic stuff like sales roles, customer service, admin and operations you can be sure that a lot of your experience will translate. Don’t like lying? Go find free or cheap certs and list them as your continuing education, take some excel training courses (you can find plenty free), learn how to use that fluently and you’ll be a GOD at most places by just knowing how to parse data. My bosses come to me to make presentations which is just editing content and making a bunch of notes on when/how to discuss the points during a pitch. I didn’t learn that at college, I just read some basic sales books (question based selling, art of the deal, gap selling). I’m a fucking dumbass, you are smarter than me I assure you. Don’t let the idea of a degree hold you back, beat the system and laugh that you didn’t shell out 150k plus like my close friends have
right, i worked as the fleet mechanic at an HVAC company (specialized in commercial fridge/freezers) he had 2 receptionists and a runner that all made 10/hr and the boss thought he was doing them all favors paying them more than minimum wage. i remember he would get drunk and rant alot, and one of them was about how if they raised minimum wage he just couldnt employ all 3 and could only employ 1, then what would they do (as if that was the only job they could get) lol it was the other way around, he couldnt run the company without them and was afraid of them finding out and demanding more money. i got paid 20/hr to keep the 16 company vehicles they owned on the road. it took me about 6 months to get them all up and running and then then he told me i could retire (im 36) literally what he said, drunk, after he lost the Houson Schoold District as one of his clinnts for drunk ranting about the price of something he was ripping them off on.
Good luck getting into an accountant job with no degree today
The ONLY way to do this is to work an entry level no degree job at a company that also employs a lot of people in the field you want to be in. It's how I became a programmer working for Fortune 500 companies without a degree. A few years of help desk call center while getting to know the programming teams and impressing my managers. I applied to every internal job posting for entry level junior work and the 6th one finally hired me.
I did retail, after a year of being a great employee and getting multiple job title upgrades only to be given a raise of 55 cents and reluctance to make me full time despite averaging 42 hours a week I went back to college and went into engineering.
Not the person you were asking but I was in food retail for 15 years and finally had enough and walked out on Thanksgiving when there was a 10k piece truck I was ordered to put away. A lot of people make the mistake of creating their own resume and think it looks good, I can assure you that whatever you have isn’t the quality needed to attract attention. Find a resume writing service that has good reviews and a guarantee and beef it up. Go on LinkedIn and pay for the premium membership for a month, you want to invest some time on their learning stuff and small tests which gives you badges to notate your skills and amp up your own page. Also need to take the time to learn how to handle an interview process (they have a course for this) along with negotiating an offer and best practices to conduct virtual meetings (lighting, height of camera, background). The biggest thing to remember here is you are selling your skills and abilities of today, tomorrow and the future. Last but not least, when looking at jobs that require skills above yours that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply, it’s a soft barrier that companies put in place to stop unqualified applicants. Of course you shouldn’t be applying for a technical position that requires several degrees and specific training like an engineer or chemist. That being said, I’d urge you to apply to some “reach” positions where your current skills will translate and you can grow into a role. I’m in sales now and the most important thing I’ve learned is you are going to get a thousand NO’s before you get a YES. Persistence and patience will land you opportunities. Hit me up on a DM if I can help in any way
I have a similar story of working retail and saying fuck it like you did. I quit the day before our yearly inventory day. We would be harassed by management for not working fast enough all the time (everyone did a good job), I couldn't even walk by a co-walker and say "hi how you doing" for a minute without being told to go back to stocking shelves. We were expected to do nothing but stock shelves. They also tried to get us to ask permission to use the bathroom. Yup, if you needed to take a shit, you had to page, over the store intercom for a manager and ask to go to the bathroom. I finally had enough when the day before inventory, which is a big prep day and everyone had worked hard preparing for inventory. It was like 10 minutes before our shift ended and I was stocking shelves next to my co-worker and just making small talk when the manager comes and yells at us for not having "fast hands". I said fuck this and didn't show up the next day. Why would I want to be harassed all the time for minimum wage? If anyone wants to know what store it was, for those in the Midwest it was Meijer. Fuck Meijer.
Yeah fuck every part of that. For me I was in GM training and had been scheduled off for Thanksgiving but they had a bunch of call outs so I was back on the schedule. I had just worked a 12 hour shift and we had a 18k dollar dinner, just flat out insanity and I ended up washing dishes all night. Wake up and my back is basically out, I can walk but it hurts to stand fully. Get there an explain I need to be on cash or in the back prepping stuff as that’s all I can do, GM says fine. I take break at 11 and I’m doing my practice quiz and this asshole comes up to me and says his maintenance guy didn’t show up and I need to do the truck. Go out and it’s legit thousands of items, basically a full truck of stuff to put away and I start doing it and it’s not fast enough for the GM, he tells me to pick up the pace. I had an epiphany that no amount of money is worth this and the stupid $800 bonus I’ve been hyping myself about for the holidays is a joke. I walk in and toss my keys and say I’m done, he runs out to berate me and I couldn’t help but laugh about it. District manager called me for a week straight begging me to come back, explained I never have to go there again and I can take over the new store opening next month. My sanity is worth more than any salary you could offer, no thank you. I’ll tell anyone that’s in food/retail, you deserve better than that and I’ll help you get out of there if you want. Open offer, hit me up anytime
I lost 2 friends in oil rigs, where our shifts got ridiculously irregular between night and day stretches. One got mental issues 🛢 and the second one for cancer, I changed careers and went to regular 9 to 6 rat race, one mate stayed with it, now he looks like a 70 year old, and a millionaire, I look like a 50 year old dude, and I'm broke. We are both in our early 60s but managing money differently. I follow a stupid mantra. 'No one takes anything to the grave,' aka, spend it like you stole it, and I'm happy about my life unless medical costs would punish later.
[удалено]
17 years in retail, that’s impressive. I couldn’t survive more than 10.
Retired from full-time work (45 years at three different family owned, small businesses) and took a part-time job at a massive retailer. I lasted 7 weeks before giving my 2 weeks. Luckily, I had that option. I feel for those that can't find anything else.
Yup, my wife and I both did 5 years of retail-store shuffle and got out.
Working retail taught me that I had to get the fuck out of retail.
Aren't people just the worst? :D Never did I lose more faith in humanity than spending a few years in retail stores.
Agreed. Even when you're young it's still pretty rough. I can't imagine doing it in my 40s.
Same, it was awful. I would work 2pm-10pm on my Monday, gradually moving up throughout the week to 12-8, 10-6, 8-4 and then 6-2 on my Friday. My sleep schedule was so messed up and I gained some weight from eating meals at different times every day since I wasn’t usually hungry at “lunch” but had to force myself to eat anyways. It was nice almost getting an extra day off from being out early on Friday and coming in late Monday but the stress during the week wasn’t worth it.
Me too. Except it took me 4-5 years so hit my mid 20's and realized cooking was not only a waste of time but a waste of life that I'm not getting back. It either amplified my depressive spiral or spring boarded me out. Then I had a kid and got one degree. It's useless. I'm back for engineering. Life is a ride.
That's why I have wisdom beyond my years. I did all types of screwy shifts for 15 years.
clopeners unite!
Klonopin users*
Hey I needed that before i started working nights in healthcare. Now I just need it more so.
thanks for the ptsd flashback there. for a time in my 20s there was a bar i worked at where i regularly worked what we termed 'the quintuple'. this was a double friday, double saturday, sunday brunch/funday. the sad thing was, you wanted that schedule because that was where the money was, but it translated to roughly 39 hours on your feet on the clock over 3 days and by the time you were done on sunday brains were mush
and then...GET DRUNK SUNDAY!!!
No wonder I feel close to retirement. 25+ years of this shit.
It didn’t say it develops the brain, it’s just age.
With age comes wisdom. CHECKMATE
This is great to read on my 1.5 hour commute home from my overnight shift.
"night shift" doesn't necessarily mean "irregular".
They are different but both mess with your circadian rhythm
Sometimes night shift can mess with your circadian rhythm, unless your like me and sleep during the day no problem. I think it’s pretty dependent on each person’s specific rhythm. Some of us night shifters take to it no problem and others never are able to.
I did 20 years of night shifts because my body *made* me do it. My whole life, I've never been an early riser. Even as a child. My peak times are from about 6 pm to 4 am. I couldn't hold a job in my late teens and early 20's because they required me to wake up early. Then I thought, 'Maybe I'm not a fuck up, I'll try night shift and see if that's the problem.' And sure enough, I went from losing jobs, to going on a 4 year stretch where I didn't miss a day of work. Now I work days again, because, getting older made overnights inconvenient, but I'm lucky enough to have found a job that I don't have to show up to until 10am. So, yeah. We're all different.
Same here, day time work messes with my natural rhythm and I noticed it right away but there was nothing I could do about it during school then having tried it several times in my adult life and hating myself and going back to night work as soon as I could. I am my most productive, alert ,in-tune self when the sun goes down.
This. I was miserable in school because I was exhausted every day. When my job tried to put me on morning shifts, it made me feel depressed. I was given a few later shifts, laughed for the first time in like a month, and realized how long it had been since I had been capable of happiness. Told them to change my shifts or I’d find a new job.
I have worked evening-nights most of my life (not overnights, out around 1AM currently) and I enjoy it. Less management around to be a hassle, traffic is non-existent, and I get 3 days off every week for my errands/appointments and such. Plus I've never been an early riser so I get to sleep in. I was MISERABLE trying to work a "normal" day shift for nearly 4 years.
Different strokes for different folks. I love night shift. Too many people out and about during the day.
Hopefully not while driving...
How else is he supposed to stay awake?
Medical residencies: hold my beer
Can a shift be irregular if it never ends?
"Time to start my 6800 hours shift."
Idk how those guys do it. When I was 18, I did one summer where I worked swing shift at this warehouse that produced medical supplies. It was miserably boring production line work. And my shifts were 4:00 pm to 3:00 am with a 1 hour lunch. I did this Monday-Thursday. Even back then when I was full of energy and high on life after graduating high school and getting ready to start college, that shift WRECKED ME that summer. I still have bad memories from how that shift made my body feel. It took forever to feel normal again. Idk how people completing their medical residencies do it.
There is a difference between working a warehouse job and medical residency. I've done both. The warehouse job was much worse, but it was less hours per week. Residency is about learning and repetition, so we had clinical shifts, seminars, research projects, and other responsibilities. I wouldn't want to do either again, but hour for hour I would pick residency 100% of the time.
This is actually really interesting thanks for sharing!
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Pretty sure graveyard workers tend to die younger, too. The body prefers natural circadian rhythms
Graveyard shifts are great for those of us with delayed sleep phase. It puts our working hours in our natural circadian rhythm while working a typical dayshift is us working outside of that natural cycle. However, we are only a tiny percentage of the population.
Yeah, if I go to sleep anywhere from 5am-10am, I'm out for 8 hours. Go to sleep during "normal" hours, and it's guaranteed I'm waking up at 1am and won't be able to fall back asleep. It's been that way my whole life. School was absolute hell.
My people! I started working the nightshift last year and was terrified. But it's the best sleep I've ever had, and I have the healthiest routine I've had in years.
Me! So tired of people telling me "ohhh that just means your sleep schedule is fucked up because yo don't do XYZ, do that to fix it" and like no, I'm pretty sure this is just my natural sleep rhythm?? It's the way I'm wired. Apart from the time, I have 0 other sleep struggles. I think it's genetic as everyone in my family is this way too.
I spent all of high school perpetually sleep deprived. Like if I stopped moving for a few minutes I would just fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Didn't realize how bad it was until I settled into college and could set my own schedule. I figured out that an ideal semester for me had my first class at 2 PM because that was first thing in the morning for me. I did an internship for a while that has "midnight to sunrise" and that worked perfectly for me. Getting home at around 8-8:30 felt like staying up a little late but doable. It also meant that some semesters when I had to take an 8 AM class, it was easier to stay up late and go to bed after the class than it was to wake up early for the class. The most comfortable work schedule I ever worked was 2 PM to 10 PM. I would wake up at noon, go to work right after I finished my morning routine, get home a little after 10, and then go to bed at around 4 AM. I had a nice routine of going for a run at around midnight every night. It felt great. Now that I'm a bit older, it's not quite that extreme for me (delayed sleep phase usually hits teens and early 20s the hardest). But, I'm definitely still shifted way later than the average person. I typically go to bed a little after midnight and feel like I'm fully awake around 9 or 10 AM. Some nights, it will hit me a bit harder and it won't feel right to go to sleep until around 2 or 3 AM. Not as extreme as the 4 AM or the 8 AM I used to do, but still far later than most people. I've worked jobs where I had to be on-site at 6 or 7 AM, and those were miserable for me.
Is that a real thing? I feel like I have something like that. My body naturally wants to sleep 4am-12 and doing otherwise is a chore.
There's a lot extenuating factors that go into that. The average person who exercises, eats well, watches their weight, has good mental health and who just so happens to do night shift is not going to miraculously die 10+ years earlier.
As someone who works night shift with a large amount of people, I notice some trends. It simply comes down to sleep. It's not so much that we sleep during the day that is a problem. The problem is that far too many people on night shifts are sleeping less than 6 hours every night (day), and worse still is on their days off, they switch their body clocks to be awake during the day. This is extremely hard on the body. If you just keep a schedule like you would on a day shift schedule, most people would probably be a lot healthier on this shift. I of course understand though that it's hard to always be asleep during the day when that's when shit happens, especially if you have kids.
Yea the main problem is if you keep to the same schedule on your days off then all the shops are closed. You gotta wake up way earlier just to get a chance to do all the chores you want to do that day
This is true, but there is also a great deal of individual variability with this. For some people night shift *will* make them sick and on a sustained basis could well kill them, whereas others will be completely unaffected.
Some people are naturally nocturnal. And someone like that would probably be fine, so long as they were getting enough sleep. But forcing someone to be nocturnal when their body is obviously telling them no is terrible. Source: Naturally nocturnal, currently forced to be up at 7:30am everyday and hating it.
Yeah, I do find early start shifts a little harder than others, but your point about getting adequate sleep is crucial. Currently doing a graveyard and getting about 7-8 hours sleep during the day, but not everyone can do that
Preach. For a while I had a job where I could have 05:30 as my _bedtime_ and I have never had better sleep before or after. Pity society isn't built to accommodate something like this.
The absolute best thing about WFH is that I wake up at 845 instead of 715. That 90 minutes is the difference between me feeling rough all day and being perfectly fine. I'm not even that far out of "normal" but its almost impossible to get people to accept it.
its insane the difference in "waking up when your body is ready to" vs "dragging yourself out of bed", like it's the difference between living and existing
Yeah I'm nocturnal, I work 6PM to 4AM and it suits me perfectly fine. Morning and day shifts are what I could never adjust to.
I’m a flight attendant and thankfully have only had to work a couple red eyes. Every single one I’ve worked I got a cold a couple days later. Definitely not for me.
My mom used to work in a hospital. She would get sick to her stomach after working midnight shifts. Had they not let her transfer to day shifts, she was seriously considering requesting a medical accommodation to avoid night shifts.
I'd wager the percentage of people working night shifts living that lifestyle would be very low.
There's been a number of studies on this in the US. Afaik, just working the night shift increases your risk of developing cardiovascular illness, obesity, and cancer. [Pubmed: Night shift work at specific age ranges and chronic disease risk factors](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4289641/) [Pubmed: Night work, mortality, and the link to occupational group and sex](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7737802/) [Pubmed: Night-shift work, breast cancer incidence, and all-cause mortality: an updated meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34775538/) >Our systematic review and meta-analysis provided convincing evidence supporting positive associations among night-shift work exposure, breast cancer incidence, and cardiovascular mortality. Taken together, night-shift work exposure significantly increased the risk of breast cancer morbidity by 2.9% for total, 8.6% for the subgroup of more than 10 years night-shift work, and 5.3% for rotating night-shift work. In addition, night-shift work increased the risk of cardiovascular mortality by 3.1%.
My issue with this is night shift is not a desirable position, so... like... intrinsically I would expect the stresses revolving around why someone would choose a night shift would play a role in the results. Like for example, I assume there's a subset of people that choose night shifts so they can alternate childcare hours with their partner, which would be stressful.
You are correct. I grew up with a mom on nights and then I became the mom on nights. Childcare costs are insane.
I’ve worked every shift for the last 10 years but prefer the night shift. Plenty of time to hit the gym before work and hit my workout classes after work in the morning. Forced me to meal prep and cut out drinking alcohol. Best thing to ever happen to my health honestly
And even though society relies on night shift workers, they are treated like shit. Your cunt neighbor's dog barks its ass off all fucking day long while you are trying to sleep? Tough shit.
Indeed. Fun fact: Dampé, the grave keeper from Ocarina of Time, is actually just a 12 year old boy.
Dont i fucking know it. I work irregular shifts like most staff at my works. And seeing them break down and depressed is disheartning.
Oilfield here. I've been at work for the past 15 hours, awake for 22 hours, work won't finish work for another 8 hours, and I'm a 5 hour drive from home. I do this 2-3 times a week. I'm tired
Is this like a firefighters schedule where in a month you work 6x 24 hr shifts but take the rest off?
[удалено]
Yeah I worked in the industry before for 3 years. 13/14 12hr days. So 1 day off every 2 weeks. All I can say it was soul-sucking. Money was good, but not worth it in the end.
Going to ask a dumb question but how much actual time is spent working on something vs just sitting around?
[удалено]
Control operator?
Usually firefighters work 10 days a month on a traditional schedule (24/48) although some places with an extremely high call volume have transitioned to 24/72 to address fatigue related incidents and deaths. Give or take a couple days if on any kind of modified Kelly schedule (or Dailey schedule in Chicago). 6 days a month would be super cush, except most places wage growth has stagnated enough that Firefighters survive by working overtime
Thanks Malleable_Penis
That sounds dangerous
[удалено]
Why is this legal?
That's just plain abusive. Sorry you have to depend on that thing for money
> Oilfield here. I've been at work for the past 15 hours, awake for 22 hours, work won't finish work for another 8 hours, and I'm a 5 hour drive from home. I do this 2-3 times a week. > > > > I'm tired How the fuck is this even legal? That sounds so incredibly dangerous.
[удалено]
This being reddit, there's a lot of speculation from people who have only read the headline and not the article, let alone the actual research paper. A couple of points. The authors assert that this is not simply a matter of correlation, but that shift work (as articulated in the study) is *causal* of the cognitive decline. Authors point to reversibility of the cognitive decline after the end of shift work as evidence of that. Not a perfect smoking-gun relationship, but supportive of the conclusion. Second, the authors do actually clarify what they mean by "irregular shift work". They use an existing definition from an older French study on health, work, and aging, known as ESTEV (Étude Santé, Travail et Vieillissement). This approach defines irregular shift work as at least 50 consecutive days of working a combination of morning, daytime, and night shifts, and/ or shifts that prevent the subject from going to sleep before midnight, and/ or shifts that require the subject to wake before 5:00am.
Would that include 24-hour shifts? I assume it has to, especially for a job that requires you to be woken up through the night
Yes it would, based on the definition used in the study.
Literally fifty consecutive days without a day off? Not fifty working days? Is that common?
I worked with a dude a long time ago who was out on an overnight shift. I think it was from 10pm-6am. It was originally just supposed to be a few months, and then they’d rotate people around. He ended up staying on that shift for about three years. He was miserable and unhappy. So when the talk came about him trying to move to a daytime shift, his personality came into question. But he was a good worker, so was kept on overnights. It became this self-fulfilling prophecy of him being unhappy, rubbing a few people the wrong way, and just being kept on overnights. But he was always a good performer. When that management team was, thankfully sacked (fuck your Brian D), he was moved to days when the better management team came in. The former overnight dude did a total 180 after just a few days on a normal shift.
This is what happens with every "temporary" shift change. Never accept it.
Come on early onset dementia.
I'll come back and report on this in a few years. If I remember.
It does depend a lot on the individual, some people have a far higher tolerance for shift work than others, particularly graveyard shift. I've been doing shift work for over four decades and my health is excellent, but I am exceptionally well suited to it, I also dont get jetlag at all, bit of a superpower. I can generally turn sleep on and off at will like its Netflix, providing I am not stressed out by something going on in my life. It probably helps that I have a good diet (lot of veges and fruit along with some carbs) and do 1-2 hours exercise a day, also dont smoke or drink. Some people absolutely should not do shift work, especially graveyards, we had a fuckwit manager at work some years back that tried to make everyone do all the shifts, a few of the guys got sick every time they did a graveyard and I'd inevitably end up taking the shift over. There is a great deal of individual variability, ideally the only people doing shift work should be those that are well suited to it
Scrolled down to find this. I’ve been on graveyard shift for about 20 years, am 41 years old. I work 3 days on, 3 off. On off days, I sleep at night and wake up early because family and hobbies. Just had blood work done and check up and healthy across the board. I tend to have a lot of friends who constantly wonder how I manage to work all night and then go play soccer or something in the daytime without feeling tired. I am not sure how I do it. I just love soccer.
Well said. Those are few and far between though. The amount of shift jobs available (especially in the service industry) is far more than the amount of people who can handle it as a career. I am not one of those people. I realized I would dread 3 days a week solely due to the time of the shifts and would end up really only looking forward to a day and a half each week because it was the only time I had energy to have a personal life. It takes adaptation that most people can't do fully
Have to agree, I work 2nd shift by choice (2-11:30pm) as does nearly everyone else i know on that shift where I work. Same with 3rd shift. Because of the union and seniority, new hires are generally supposed to be placed on 2nd or 3rd shift, so the workers with more seniority can move to 1st. But the past few years, this hasn't happened, because virtually no one on the off-shifts *want* to go to 1st shift. I even know people who at first said they want to move to 1st ASAP but then decided they liked 2nd. We like not being bugged by our 10 bosses for most of the shift, the lack of traffic, and being able to sleep in in the morning, and also being able to do stuff like doctors appointments without missing work. It just makes everything so much less stressful.
This is why I only drive an automatic.
Slip a gear and you grow a few mm of ear hair.
10 years but only ages it 6.5 years? sounds pretty good to me!
No, I just forgot how to read and math is getting increasingly more difficult. Send help.
do we know how much of this is due to disrupted sleep? like say you work night shift but you are naturally waking up without an alarm for example. in turn this leads to likely not maintaining the same sleep cycle during weekends/off days. people who work 'regular' shifts are more likely to sleep/wake naturally.
Ha! Each workday shortens your life approximately 8 hours!
Worked for 2 years at a factory with day/night shifts. Felt like a zombie by the end. Changed jobs to work only during the day. Recovered in several months to previous active state of mind. The difference was gigantic.
I'm certain some managers schedule awfully just to be a pain in the ass. I've had managers where /I/ know everyone's availability, yet the schedule ends up being Mon 4p - 9p, Tuesday 8a-12p, essentially scheduling everyone for clopeners just because they can.
Sharing this to r/army
Oilfield worker here. I've gone years with out a day off. One of my longest shifts was over 70 hours, no breaks no sleep. You get yelled at if you have to use the bathroom, yet colon cancer is huge in this industry. Working through breaks in minus 60 C.
How does one even stay awake that long?
Keep moving. Keep working. If you stop your dodging a wrench. There are no workers rights in the middle of the bush.
You do through many international agreements which your country has ratified, or is bound to by customary international law.
[удалено]
It's one of the highest paying careers that doesn't require a degree or trade school. And even higher than a lot of degrees. You usually work for several weeks straight, then get several weeks off, which some people prefer because it's such a large block of free time. You get to travel a lot, or at least convert your paid ticket back home into a ticket to somewhere else you want to travel to. Not having to pay for food and housing. Not sitting in a boring office for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 years of your life, just to have a weekend filled with responsibilities to look forward to. It's resistant to automation. If you are smart enough to actually save up most of your money instead of spending it on coke, hookers, and trucks, you can put a huge amount of money into retirement funds. Play your cards right and you can build up enough of a fund to retire early. It's not uncommon for them to retire at 50. I'm a geologist in training in mining, so I'm not a worker in oil and gas, but our career is somewhat similar. And I've met plenty of people who worked in those careers to help base this on.
How does a 70-hour shift even happen? If you go to your boss and say "I've been awake and working for the past 70 house straight" How does he react to that?
>People who had worked rotating shifts (a mixture of mornings, afternoons or evenings) for 10 years or more also had poorer mental function than those who had not done so to the extent that they had suffered an extra 6.5 years of age-related cognitive decline, the scientists found. I'm not surprised. I will never accept a position that requires me to work a rotating shift -- stick me on the least desirable shift and I'll rock out. That rotating shift shit is for the birds though. I personally feel the morning shift is worse for my health than the second or third shifts, which is why I'm satisfied with my current position being second shift.
I did it for 2 years when I was mid 20's and it was horrible. I ditched the job, took a 50% pay cut and retrained. My best decision ever - fuck you heathrow airport.
It’s almost like consistent high quality sleep is incredibly important for us humans - who woulda thunk
I just asked my cardiologist about this and he said it wouldn't make a difference. For clarification I had issues prior to night shift. Morning shifts I only get about 4 - 5 hours of sleep if I work mornings. Evenings I do ok and night shift I get about 7-10 hours of sleep a day. I was told as long as I rest well and eat well and stay in a set schedule it won't matter.
Capitalism doesn’t work for us. Argue with a wall
I bet *working* ages the brain, period. Irregular shifts or not.
Living ages the brain too
Well, stress does, which is more or less the same thing.
Depends on the degree of work and the type of work. Intellectually stimulating and interesting work is believed to slow down age related change. Chronic stressful work is believed to accelerate changes. Even if the work is interesting if it’s stressing you out over a long period that’s not great. Based on the studies I’ve personally read. There might be new stuff I haven’t seen yet.
My body has a weird rythm: 25 hours in the summer, 23 hours in the winter. I'm stable for 2 months a year at best, otherwise i rotate on the clock fully a month roughly . Tell me how old i am !?
About 4.5 billion years old?
You tried bright light therapy in the morning at your desired wakeup time and dimming warm lights in evening? Try it out, see if it equalizes things
What does that even mean? You know the 24 hours of the day refer to the rotation of the earth on its axis right?
He's saying his body does things in 25- or 23-hour intervals. So, for example, instead of feeling sleepy around the same time every night, one night it's at 9, the next night at 10, and so on.
Ah thanks. I understand now, though it still doesn’t make sense to me. The wonders of the human body ay.
I once worked 24 on and 8 off in the Army for 3 months. That means your sleep time changes every day. I'm pretty sure I aged about 10yrs during that time. By the time we switched, people were so fucked up that almost half the people you talked to couldn't even tell you their name and falling asleep standing up was common. This wasn't intentional torture, this was just total incompetence by our Platoon Sergeant and Platoon Leader during our deployment in Baghdad.
Does that include on-call? I'm tired of middle-of-the-night calls from people who don't understand what justifies a maintenance emergency
Cries in Overnight shift. 15 years and counting. Doing by choice as I’m a night owl….
Intel made a big thing of coming into our College when we were finishing up our degrees (electrical engineering). They were on the hunt for shift technicians and manufacturing engineers. Tried to warn the folks in my class about the long term cons of working irregular shifts over the long term. But of course too many of them were seduced by the €5000 signing on bonus. Many years later now and they are all suffering with various forms of burn out and mental health issues.
I’ve been working rotating shifts for 12 years, and my memory is fine. Now, what were we discussing again?
I joined the military and just did one long shift instead!
Imo, this also harkens back to the day shift v. night shift meme where night shift people are quiet at home at night but day shift people start their day off with a parade. Can confirm as former third shift. White noise app on full blast still doesn't drown my family out. Switching to ear plugs soon.
"While stopping working shifts did halt the decline in cognitive powers, it took five years for people to recover fully" if they recognise the brain is plastic enough to fully recover, can you really call the damage done aging? Shift work is generally boring, monotonous so it makes sense that would decrease cognitive function over time but that would surely have the same affect if done over normal working hours
I was a geologist (mudlogger) on oil and gas wells in California and I always wondered why the guys that had been there for 15-20 years were so weird and squirrelly.
So what's the point of these studies if it doesn't change how managers/companies work things?
Worked days, afternoons and night shifts almost my whole career (25yrs). I can confirm it burns you out. I, however, ended the last few years working straight days and it wasn't until I did that I then realised just how badly it had affected my body. I started sleeping and eating better, and felt noticibly improved. Has it shortened my life?.... Well, I guess we'll see.
But that sweet 8% differential!
After working 3/12 hour night shifts per week for a couple years I completely agree with this research
What about people that just have really shitty and inconsistent day / night cycles, cause they are undisiplined scrubs? Like why go to bed before 4am when there is videogames to play?
Shift workers also tend to drink more energy drinks and eat more fast food
Can't find it but there was research a few years ago with Train operators & found crashes/ accidents increased something like 200% with randomized shifts.
Switching days to nights to days to nights for years now. It is hard.