You found another home, I know you're not alone on the nightshift
Nightshift - The Commodores
So this week a new employee started her hours on the night shift and seeing her, slowly, yet ever so progressively, disintegrate into a pile of limp flesh in rumpled clothing reminded me yet again how difficult living the night shift lifestyle is for most people. For me, I feel pretty acclimated by now but living the life comes at a great price of course.
People don't realize what it takes to do it. Most people wouldn't even consider it. They logically know that it means flipping from a normal diurnal sleep cycle and they immediately realize this would cut into their accustomed patterns of eating at "normal" times, working and socializing, and generally living amongst the majority of their friends, family and community. They may not fully realize that it means allocating time during the day, every day, to sleep in order to handle staying up all night. And not just a cat nap...that'll get you by for a few days at most...you'll eventually need to sleep a full eight. Or suffer. They might remember all-nighters they may have done studying for exams in their school days or for other occasions and recall the fatigue and stress of sleep deprivation. They probably think all night shift people have this deprived state of being all the time. A perpetual jet-lag, without the perks of actually going anywhere. And some (like Eric) do, in fact, operate that way. For how long? Not long for most. Somethings gotta give.
But some people like Kimmesha, the 22-year-old girl who just started her overnight hours this week, are smart enough to know that you've got to shift around things in your previous life, many things that were taken for granted in fact, and impose an "unnatural" pattern to your daily regimen. Yet knowing that a new timetable is needed and implementing it are two different things. She, like many others who have tried, and, other than Eric so far, have failed, has a child. Being what I'd classify as a child herself, this must mean it's a baby. Lord help her.
She told me at the beginning of the week, when she was still plucky and fresh, how she'd planned her sleeptime to coincide with her baby's day-care. Of course by week's end, she was apologetic to me, though I'm not put out by her falling asleep in her chair. She'll need to save that apology for her neck and back in a few years when the limberness of youth fades away.
Fades, like the long, dark and quiet night into the dawning sunlight stabbing into your bleary, bloodshot eyes.