Working the night shift

Badly Drunk Boy

I worked 3 shifts for a couple of years in the 90s, midnight to 8am, 4-midnight, and 8-4 (in that order). My main problem with it was that as soon as you got used to the shift, it was the end of the week, and then it's a different pattern to get used for the following week...

_Brian

I did nights for 13 years, 12 hour shifts either three or four nights a week.

It's ok for a year or two but it does take it's toll on your health. I found as time went on I slept less and less and suffered through more and more.

Towards the end I was a wreck, maybe 2 hours sleep, repeated chest infections, mouth ulscers, bad humour all the time, increased blood pressure.

I got a chance to get out and took it, I went from having maybe three of four chest infections a year to only having one in the last few years and that was within 2 months of finishing night work.

I still get bouts of insomnia which my doc attributes to the time spent ****ing around with my sleep pattern.

Do it OP, but for as short a time as possible.

I think it really depends on if you are a night or a morning person. One side of my family are very much night people and I have a few relations who work nights all the time by choice, often having to fight to stay on nights when things are being shuffled around. I'd have no problem working night or certainly evenings either as it would suit my natural sleep pattern much better to be sleeping till the afternoon and being up in the early hours. Unfortunately nights aren't an option in my area of work and I struggle out of bed every morning luckily rarely before 8am as any earlier would be torture.

I'd bite your hand off for nights over having to be up at 6am every morning for example.

The big difficulty is changing between nights and days, I think that's were a lot of the hatred of nights comes from. If you work nights all the time you just keep the same pattern on weekends and days off too. In fact its perfect for going out at weekends etc as its your day time.

jamesbere

I've done shift work for over 5 years now, I started off with one night shift that went up to 5 in a row at one stage. Only do 2 night shifts at the moment.

My best advice is try and get a routine going, I usually go to bed when I get home and get up around 5 or 6. Oh and black out curtains are a must.

diomed

You need eight and a half hours sleep a day (ignore people who say they don't).
You don't need that amount of sleep every day, you need that average.