Tag Archives: graveyard

No more graveyard

I started a new shift this month. I’m finally off graveyard and back to swing. But that’s not the best part–I’m working 4 ten-hour shifts per week.

I’ve been trying to get to a place where I can work a 4×10 schedule for a good six years now. Finally! Needless to say, I love my new shift.

I have Thursday, Friday, and Sunday off. It kinda sucks to have split days, but it’s still a helluva lot better than working 5 days a week.

It doesn’t bother me that my day is longer and I have less free time when I get home. To me, it’s a very small sacrifice to make in order to get that extra DAY free.

My typical day starts at 9am when the alarm goes off. I like to try to wake up as early as I can. This gives me four hours to get ready for work, as I have to be at my desk at 1pm. I hate to be rushed, and I hate to be late, so I like having plenty of time to do my business.

Getting up earlier than I need to also makes it easier to wake up early on my days off. If I’m used to waking up at 9 every morning, it’s not impossible for me to get up at 7 if I want to get an even earlier start on my day.

Swing is the perfect shift to avoid traffic, which I despise. I lived in the Los Angeles area for 10 years. Stop and go traffic daily, seemingly round-the-clock. That was absolute misery. So now I’m on swing shift and I have no traffic at all going to work or coming home.

I work my ten hours, with a 30 minute lunch, and I’m off at 11:30pm. It takes me about 50 minutes to drive the 50 miles back to Manteca (in no traffic!). Everything is closed after midnight, so I don’t go anywhere else–I just go home.

I make and eat dinner, then I have 45 minutes to play a game or read, then I go to bed at around 2am. Seven hours later the alarm goes off and I do it all over again.

I don’t ever want to go back to working a 5×8 shift, regardless of the working hours or the days off.

more thoughts about graveyard shift

So I have this new job in Pittsburg. I live in Manteca. My commute is 100 miles per day round trip. I’m not unhappy about this, for several reasons:

    My car gets 36-ish miles per gallon and is fun to drive
    I get extra money for working graveyard and it’s more than enough to cover my gasoline expenses
    I’m traveling at times of day when there is no traffic, so my commute is about an hour each way
    My weekend begins on Tuesday morning at 7:30am and I don’t have to go back to work until Thursday night at 11:00pm, so the way I’m looking at it I get three days off
    Most of my commute is through the countryside, in the shadow of Mt Diablo, and is quite nice
    In the morning when I’m driving home I’m heading East, with the sun in my face, and it’s glorious

So I’m really liking my new shift. I’m a night owl by nature, so it didn’t take long for me to get used to staying up all night.

Feels good, man.

Graveyard shift

So I started my new job last Sunday. Same company, different department. And, a much different shift–graveyard.

Last time I worked graveyard was 20 years ago, when I was on temporary duty due to injury, in the Navy. So this shift isn’t completely new to me.

I start work at 11pm and end my shift at 7:30am. If you’ve never worked these hours then you won’t know how badly it can mess with your head.

Here are some examples:

    I go to work one day and go home the next
    When entering dates on the computer, the day changes in the middle of your shift
    When entering times on your computer, particularly if you’re used to working days, the PM to AM shift can get confusing
    Instead of going to sleep and waking up when it’s dark, you’re doing it during daylight
    Concepts like “tomorrow morning” and “last night” occur during your 8 hour shift
    I’ll go to sleep, and when I wake up it’s still the same day

So you can imagine I’m pretty messed up right now. It’s been about a week, so I’m still getting used to the hours. I got my first solid 8 hours of sleep yesterday afternoon.

I still don’t know what day it is.