Hard week

[Taily]

The hardest thing is trying to sleep through the day when one of the neighbours decides to fire up a lawn mower, leaf blower etc. My work is constantly rolling shifts from early to night shifts where we knock off around 6am if I'm lucky. The best part of night shift is that most of the morning traffic is going the other way to the airport so I get a reasonable run home.

Because I don't do nights every time I work I've found the easiest way to deal with them is try and keep (almost) normal hours and catch a few hours zzzz's in the early afternoon, but that works for us as we only have two night shifts that run for about 10 hours each. We then get a "grey" day then two days off to play body clock catch up.

[HZ EVIE]

Yeah I don't think I envy you doing night shift. Sounds like bloody hard work you doing at the moment. I do 7 days a week, but we do try and get one, or two days off a month, but that's the joy of your own business I guess. It's easier to do it yourself sometimes and wages can kill you over weekends etc. At work right now in fact.

[wbute]

Yep I have done the day night rollover in the past. I knocked off on my last night shift and then drove 250 km home. Usually had about 20 minutes sleep on the side of the road. On a few occasions I did a full days work on my farm when I got home. That made it about 30 hours awake. I am now doing 6 days on and 6 days off. Much easier.

[Robbo]

That's the best shift James, stick with that. The rotating shift is what knocked me around. One week of nights, then one week of day's, six day's a week.

[wbute]

Good while it lasts Robbo!

[Taily]

Yep I have done the day night rollover in the past. I knocked off on my last night shift and then drove 250 km home. Usually had about 20 minutes sleep on the side of the road. On a few occasions I did a full days work on my farm when I got home. That made it about 30 hours awake. I am now doing 6 days on and 6 days off. Much easier.

That is the issue I've found since joining an EMS - what to do with the 'grey' day - either stay awake or crash for a couple of hours first. My roster starts the two weeks with a couple of 6am starts, then rolling through various start times to 1600 by the second last shift, finishing with either a 2000 start (till 0600) or a 2200 which finishes at 0800. Then two days off. We get sometimes one RDO in the middle or a single RDO at the end so that the roster can be rotated to allow a weekend off every couple of months. It works OK, with no minimum rest turn arounds (8 hours from finish time to start time) which are now prevalent in the industry I work in nowadays.

One previous employer of mine thought nothing of flouting rostering rules when it suited them to do so (4x16 hour shifts with 8 hours in between them, usually one or two of them at some cruddy motel in another state), but hey - prang one of their mega expensive toys because you were dead tired and it wasn't their fault because their FRMS said it was OK! Glad I'm well away from that part of the industry now, don't miss it one bit....

[jason.ruff]

We used to do 2 weeks days and 2 weeks nights until the guys jacked up and we went with a full swing of days and a full swing of nights. Ive been doing swing shifts for 20 years and it all sucks. but now with equal time i can live with it. You want the coin you do the time.

[jason.ruff]

Ps I HAD TO COVER FOR ANOTHER GUY SO AM IN MY 5TH WEEK OF NIGHTS, ONE WEEK TO GO.

[Vombil]

am I the only bloke on this forum that has never worked at night before?

[SLR_dave]

"Nobody knows the way it feels, caught between heaven and the highway,...."

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