any night shift workers here? when do you sleep & how much sleep do you get?

[nickleinonen]

i've been on nights at work for 3 weeks now, and i am ok with working through the night. [i still don't like having the tuesday-wednesday days off; today is friday for me ]



i find i am having trouble with the sleep though... i either am not sleeping enough [like 2-3 hours] and end up being tired afterwards, or i end up sleeping from 9:30 in the morning till like 7:00 in the evening and i am tired from too much sleep... i can't find a happy medium. . [it's no fun being up for 3-4 days on like 12-14 hours of sleep - you start making lots of stuipd mistakes]



just looking to see what sleeping habits any other night shift folks have...

 

[MFalkinham]

I'm not on nights anymore, but I once spent 4 years working the graveyard shift with rotating days off. Plus, I was going to tech school during the day, so my sleep schedule was short and very inconsistant. The biggest problem I had (and still have) is I need it dark and quiet to sleep. Wearing a sleep mask solved the light problem, and shutting off the phone and running an electric fan would cover up most of the noise from traffic and kids playing. Still, I could never sleep as well or as long back then (4-6 hours) as I do now at night (8 hours).



Best of luck to you!



- Mike

 

[gitchesum]

I'm able to get a good 6-7 hour sleep after working a graveyard shift. We shift change at 4:00am so I'm usually in bed around 5:00am.



It helps that I go to bed when it is still dark. If you can't do that, room darkening shades or curtains really do help. Or if you live in a trailer park, aluminum foil over the windows. Just kiddin folks.



Here is a site with some real informative articles that should give you some more pointers to get more sleep.



Don't forget, it takes your body time to adjust to shift work. Having worked it for over 14 years, I know you eventually get used to it.





I'm now having to adjust to working regular hours now as my job has changed. It taking some getting used to as well.

 

[Turbo Tim 1]

I used to do a lot better at it than I seem to now, maybe that's because my schedule has changes so much over the last 3 years, rotating back and forth front operation shift work to straight days maintenance work. I work 12 hour shifts and drive an hour each way to work, our shifts start and end at 6:30 so I am usually home by 7:30, if it's morning time I find myself wanting to go right to sleep but usually spend and hour with my son before he is off to daycare. At night I find myself needing to relax and settle down and usually don't get to bed until 11pm. When I'm on nights I usually am in bed by 9 am and if I sleep to 3 I feel really lucky, usually I get 4-5 hours of sleep. If I could sleep right to dinner time that would be better. My shift rotation is called the Dupont schedule and I love it, I work 14 out of 28 days, it's a 4 week rotation that goes like this, I work M, T, W, T (days) then have 7 days off, then I work F, S, S, M (nights) and then have 3 days off, then I work F, S, S (days) and have one day off then work T, W, T (nights) and then have 3 days off and then it starts all over again. Right now I am off and go back in tomorrow night. The seven day off stretch is sweet, you get out at 7pm on Thursday and don't go back until 7 pm Friday of the next week.

 

[jtisdale]

Don't forget, it takes your body time to adjust to shift work.

Yeah, tell me about it. We rotate every month. 7am-3pm, then 3pm-11pm, then 11pm-7am. To make it worse, once a year we change and rotate backwards. Usually about the time you get used to a shift, you rotate.

The only good things about this mess is the fact sometimes I have the opportunity to trade with someone else, and that we have weekends off.

The last job I worked at had a swing shift, which I avoided like the plague. This was a 24-7 operation and in order to cover the other workers, the swing shift would work all 3 shifts in the same week-like Tim is talking about above. (Of course, they got a 25 cent/hour premium for this. ) :-laf

As far as the graveyard shift goes, I have tried about every sleep combination there is. I have found, at least for me, when I get home after working 3rd, I stay up as long as I can and then crash sometime in the early to mid afternoon. It also helps to drink about a case of beer just before you go to sleep and take a can of black spray paint and paint the windows black and jerk the telephone wires out of the wall so the mother-in-law and sisters-in-law cant call 50 times a night when your trying to sleep!

 

[apkole]

Welll, 27 years of plowing snow between 11pm and 7 am. I would try to crash by 8 am, get up by 11 am to pick up messages, grab some grub and head for the shop to do repairs. Back home by 6 pm to listen to the weatherman lie, then to bed from 7 pm to 10pm before heading back in to start plowing for another 8 hours.



I DO NOT recommend splitting your sleep up like I did. Try real hard to crash for a solid 8 hours if you can. I did the night-stocking thing at a grocery store for a few months. I felt like I never could get enough sleep. Always tired and always in a "fog".



Don't think us farm kids cope well with third shift. Sun up to sun down is too much a part of our genes.

 

[gitchesum]

I used to do a lot better at it than I seem to now, maybe that's because my schedule has changes so much over the last 3 years, rotating back and forth front operation shift work to straight days maintenance work. I work 12 hour shifts and drive an hour each way to work, our shifts start and end at 6:30 so I am usually home by 7:30, if it's morning time I find myself wanting to go right to sleep but usually spend and hour with my son before he is off to daycare. At night I find myself needing to relax and settle down and usually don't get to bed until 11pm. When I'm on nights I usually am in bed by 9 am and if I sleep to 3 I feel really lucky, usually I get 4-5 hours of sleep. If I could sleep right to dinner time that would be better. My shift rotation is called the Dupont schedule and I love it, I work 14 out of 28 days, it's a 4 week rotation that goes like this, I work M, T, W, T (days) then have 7 days off, then I work F, S, S, M (nights) and then have 3 days off, then I work F, S, S (days) and have one day off then work T, W, T (nights) and then have 3 days off and then it starts all over again. Right now I am off and go back in tomorrow night. The seven day off stretch is sweet, you get out at 7pm on Thursday and don't go back until 7 pm Friday of the next week.

That's the shift we are on right now. Circadian Technologies is in the process of developing a new set of shifts to decide on right now. Should be interesting to see how this goes.

 

[nickleinonen]

before going to nights [and before i went to school for 8 weeks on dayshift ] i was on afternoon shift for over a year 1500-2300 or 1600-0000, and that is where i want to go back to, but i am at the bottom [3-4 from dead last] of the senority list so i don't really have that option yet. when i was working afternoons, i would stay up till like 0300 - 0500 and sleep till 1000 - 1200 or so... it was great. i was never tired... although my social life was crap [i still had weekends off though]



and once i can bid an afternoon shift job, that's where i want to go... although it will end up being with like tues-weds or weds-thurs days off... gotta love the railway

 

[jandtjil]

I am usually outta work by 8Am, then home, take time to walk dog, exercise or something physical that helps me get to sleep by noon so I can make the alrm clock around 6:30PM.

Good luck ! I hate it!



JJ

 

[Bloomy]

Spent the last 5 +/- years on third. Depending on the sleep I either sleep right after work, or from the afternoon until just before I go back in. Darkness helps, along with the lack of noise. On a good day 5 hours is max. It is rarely ever that deep sleep that you get at night but sometimes it isn't bad. Phone has to be shut off if you want any chance. I go through streaks where I am up every hour and constantly tired and also when I sleep well. You never really get used to the shift, but I like it better than daylight since I have more time during the day to get stuff gone. I think I am the only one that voluntarily rotated off a 3pm-11pm to third. Everybody thought I was crazy. As of today I am on 8-4pm Mon-Fri for the next 7-8 months. Today was rough.



Experiment

Thomas

 

[QRTRHRS]

Don't forget, it takes your body time to adjust to shift work. Having worked it for over 14 years, I know you eventually get used to it.

Or learn to tolerate it!



My first night shift job was washing dishes friday and saturday night at a diner back when the bars were jumping places. Real eye opener for a twelve year old but that's another story. Since then though, I have had a lot of stints at it.



For an eight hour night that starts about 11 or 12, after the second night on, I stay up until noon or so and sleep until it's time to get up to get ready for work again. I would try to catch an hour or so of sleep for the first night then tough it out and go home and grab maybe five or six hours. Other than that first day though, I slept better during the afternoon/evening.



For single nights off like when your doing overtime or working an irregular schedule, adhearing to the work pattern will leave you feeling better than trying to sleep.



I agree with the dark windows and background noise. I used to sleep real good with a window air conditioner running. A "white noise" generator may work too.



Honestly though, for some reason, I can't work it like I used to. I did night shift linehaul trucking for about six months until I bagged it back in October. After an 11-12 hour day plus an hour commute each way, I would get home around 9-10am, eat a light meal, shower and sleep about six hours. The problem was on the weekend which I never worked. No matter how I tried to sleep, I had a splitting headache all weekend.



As far as swing shift, forget it. A few rare birds can handle it but most people suffer. Studies have been done that show the human body can handle going 3-2-1(days) better than 1-2-3 too by the way.



I worked six years on nights and eight on second while coworkers swung due to contract constraints. Some of those people swung that entire fourteen years and you could see the toll it took. My hats off to you folks that do that shift.

 

[TKingsbury]

I worked 11pm to 7am Sun night through Fri morning for 5 years. I would go to bed as soon as I got home, usually in bed by 7:45 or so, then get up when ever I woke up. My sleep would go in cycles, a month or so with crappy sleep, then one with perfect sleep, then one with too much sleep. I was off for the weekend on Fri morning, so I would take a nap and then stay up until the wife was ready for bed, like 10 or 11pm. Then on Saturday I'd stay up as late as possible and sleep as late as I could on Sunday. I would go to work Sunday night without a nap so I would be tired enough to sleep Monday when I got home. I liked working at night, but I never felt good, always in a haze. My only advise is what ever you do, stick to a schedule. Don't vary the time you go to bed everyday, pick a time and go to bed. Even if you're working against your natural clock, your body still needs some kind of schedule to follow.

Travis. .

 

[bmoeller]

Don't think us farm kids cope well with third shift. Sun up to sun down is too much a part of our genes.

I hear that. I didn't get home from hauling cattle 'til 2AM Sat. Would've been done at 5PM, Friday, but somebody else had a better idea. Still tired from it.

 

[michigandon]

Been working midnight to 8AM for the last 5+ years now. I usually try and get home and walk the dog and straighten up the house a tad, grab a snack and then watch the news or surf the internet for a few minutes then hit the rack ASAP. If I'm not in bed by 11:30AM, I might just as well stay up all day long. :{ I work ten days on and four days off, a four day weekend every other week. I go through the entire ten day cycle and either sleep excellent, poorly, or not at all. Room temperature, outside noise, and bladder can really make or break a good days sleep. I have black cardboard duct taped to the windows and usually keep a fan running all the time (window shaker A/C in the summertime), and the ringer on the telephone is turned OFF. While on duty at work, one rule of thumb that I religiously adhere to is NO MORE COFFEE AFTER 4AM. PERIOD, END OF PARAGRAPH. Sometimes, I might come home and enjoy a little uh, "morning cap"? Especially if I'm feeling a little upset, ****** off, or stressed out about something. When I've reached the endo of my ten day cycle and my days off begine, I either try to stay up all day, or take a nap for 2-4 hours and then get back up, then go to bed in the evening with the mrs. Coming back to work when my days off are over is a real *****, no matter what I try to do. :{



Ideally my perfect rest period would be home in bed by 10:30AM, awake by 6:30-7:00PM, give or take a couple hours on each end of that. In the evening I like having time to grab a bite and watch some prime time TV before heading off at 11:00PM to do it all over again.



Don

 

[nickleinonen]

"morning cap"

:-laf:-laf:-laf:-laf yeah, i have started to enjoy that too... it does help me stay a sleep once i manage to sleep. . i got about ±5 hours today so it's not so bad... having days off mid week kinds sucks as i have nothing to do and everyone i know is in bed sleeping now . . nothing good is on tv right now. . might watch a movie or 2 before going to bed, maybe at like 5-6 this morning to wake up early to do something during the day... [buy some more "morning cap" joy juice :-laf]

 

[rmrc]

I've worked nights many times through my life and I'm back at it again since last March.



I never really get a good sleep!!!! Usually,, I'll try and sleep shortly after I get home in the morning. Maybe 4 hours. I'll lay down again around 5 PM and get up at 9 PM. Some days it's just cat naps through out the day. It all depends on what's going on. I always have one of those sound machines on (White noise) so I don't hear the telephone ringing in the other rooms or any other sounds from outside. Getting older with prostrate trouble doesn't help either!!!!



I've come to the realization that at this point in life, nights are not in my best interest!!! I love the low key atmosphere at work but the lack of proper sleep is taking it's toll!!!!



Good Luck!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[DarrellB]

I work a 12 hour 3rd shift 5:45PM to 6:00AM work 2 off 2 work 3 off 2 and then rotate from there on out. I like the days off in the middle of the week but as for sleep I usually get 6 hours max. I go to bed ASAP once I'm off work. If I don't I'm done, I'm up the rest of the day and through the night. One thing that helped me was to black out the room. I have dark shades and almost sound proofed the room from the outside noise. It's something your body has to adjust to more than anything. Give it some time and the old internal clock will start telling you to go to bed. The Little morning cap is nice too, really settles you down after a stressful night.



DB

 

[EMD Diesel Power]

Welcome to hell Nick!



I did pretty much the exact same workweek schedule as you are on now when I was with WC. 2300 to 0730 with either Tues/Weds or Weds/Thurs. off. Railroading is always fun.



It will take awhile to get used to it, get a dark bedroom, bury the phones, and just experiment with sleep. lol It is usually best to get it all at once, although sometimes you'll find it impossible on some days. At first it was real bad, like you said 12-14 hours and start making mistakes from fatigue.

Another thing I did is cut off the caffeine after the 3rd break (usually around 4-5am or 2 to 3 hours before end of shift). that helped on the sleep. Along with the morning cap stuff on bad days. Oo. Oo.



Winter and summer made a difference for me too. Summer, I would crash right away and sleep, (house was cooler in the AM and had lots of sunlight to do stuff in the evening). Winter I would usually stay up til mid afternoon and then crash and sleep til it was time to go in for work. I found this seemed to work pretty well. but thats just me.



Keep kicking it and get the senority so you can bid the afternoon shifts! :-laf :-laf :-laf



Any ?s or whatever, just shoot me a PM or email!



Jeff

 

[Jim Fulmer]

Yea that day, night, night, day, night, day stuff is for the birds but I have to deal with it on the road, you loose all track of time and days.



Jim

 

[Wayne M.]

Yep, I was a roustabout junior man in my shop for about 5 years and had to cover 3 shifts sometimes all in one week depending on fill in demand- with no regards to my well being. I did a couple of months long night tours (10P- 6:30A) which I think is better than a 12A start. One thing I learned was that if I blocked sun from my eyes as I left work (sunglasses) or if it's a gloomy day, Id sleep real good. I read once that sunlight hitting the eyes has the same effect as caffeine on the body- and I believe it. I always took a shower and hit the rack ASAP, unless I had a quick errand to do first. I would get shut eye until about 2PM (no limit), and then I was good for the day, with maybe a booster charge around 8PM if I had a lot of activity that day. One way I found to deal with weekends was to stay up after your last shift (in a m-f week, fri morn) or at the very most have a quick nap. This will set you up to sleep that night and have a normal weekend.

As time went on I saw that my job wasn't hiring and the chance for gaining seniority was real slim, add that with the kiddies coming along and a house renovation boom going on in my neighborhood and you have a hopeless situation. Luckily my job has different seniority lists for different areas, so last year I took a blind chance and transferred to Manhattan where I would gain some seniority and experience different policy to get away from shift work. I gained a 50 mile round trip commute, but lost the aggravation that situation gave me and I have no regrets- haven't seen a night in over a year.

I hope you learn how to trick your body into the routine, because it is NOT natural, we are not nocturnal beings. I hope your seniority situation improves real soon. I really feel for you guys who have to do it.