Abby 2-7

DEAR ABBY: I just read the letter from a fellow frustrated night shifter, "Working a 40-Hour Week at Age 73" (Dec. 20). I have worked 12-hour shifts for many years to accommodate our family life. It is easier for me to be home in the morning to get the kids to school and be home when they get off the bus in the afternoon. I have the early evening free to get them to their activities, then go to work later.

I thoroughly agree that the rest of the world does not understand! I've had the strangest requests from people because I'm home during the day. My solution has been to turn off our home phone and sleep with my cellphone on (in case one of the kids gets sick at school or some other dire emergency). This year I made a laminated sign for my front door, asking for peace and quiet. It says, "Please do not ring my doorbell. Night-shift worker sleeping at this time." -- SLEEPLESS IN WISCONSIN

DEAR SLEEPLESS: Thanks for your letter. Your fellow night shifters were in complete agreement with you. My newspaper readers comment:

DEAR ABBY: There's nothing unusual about "Working's" problem. I worked the graveyard shift for years at different jobs in different states, and it was exactly the same. In my case it was usually my mother, not my husband, who kept waking me up. Even worse, it wasn't unusual for bosses to call and wake me.

What surprised me was the number of people who think that sleep is optional rather than necessary. They seemed to think that they sleep at night because there's nothing else to do.-- LAURA IN POLLOK, TEXAS

DEAR ABBY: Many people don't understand night workers' schedules. Relatives would announce that they were coming to visit during my working weekends despite the fact that I'd specifically explained my schedule. My husband would snipe at me in underhanded ways. When I finally confronted him, he admitted that he "subconsciously" felt that someone sleeping during the day was lazy.

Working nights is tough. The Harvard Nurses' Health Study has discovered that night workers get less rest even if they get a good day's sleep, that we make less melatonin and we die younger.-- R.N. IN CONNECTICUT

DEAR ABBY: I sympathize with "Working." I also work a graveyard shift so I can be home with our newborn and not have to put him in day care eight hours a day. It's hard for people to understand that even though it's daytime for them, it's my night! I found myself running errands, marketing, etc., because I felt guilty being at home all day and "doing nothing." It took its toll on me until I got to the point where I could barely function.

I finally had to get over my issues about being home during the day and realize that I was putting in a 40-hour week just like anyone else. Since I didn't expect to do my chores at 3 a.m., I would no longer let anyone expect it of me. I still sleep in shifts to keep my son's time at day care to a minimum, but when I sleep, I don't let anyone interrupt. The world is going to have to wait until I get up.

Please tell "Working" not to let anyone make her feel guilty. Everyone needs sleep, and she shouldn't have to justify it to anyone.-- FELLOW 3RD SHIFTER IN INDIANAPOLIS

DEAR ABBY: I worked nights for years. My husband's friends thought they were being funny when they'd call me at 7 a.m. asking, "How's the 'bat' doing?" One night at 3 a.m. I called each one of them to ask how they were doing. After that, I never received an early call again.

My husband didn't respect me either. He wanted me to get up at 7 a.m. to watch our son so he could play golf. I finally divorced him.-- FULLY RESTED IN NEW MEXICO

These people need to get over themselves. I've worked the midnight shift and I've never had any of these problems. These nuts need to realize they're not that important.

This column on "sleep deprivation" brought up some interesting points....

Yeah. That's a suckass shift to work.
A lot of places will pay a shift diffferential of an extra buck or two an hour, but that is a pitance and of small consolation to me.
My biggest problem of working overnight, aside from being completely exhausted, was that I would fall asleep at the wheel on my way home.
So, needless to say, I no longer ever work the midnight shift. It's way too dangerous.

I worked the midnight to 8 shift for six months. It was awful.

I think this column...Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zz.

What a bunch of suck a$$ letters today.

loose cannon wrote:

My biggest problem of working overnight, aside from being completely exhausted, was that I would fall asleep at the wheel on my way home.
So, needless to say, I no longer ever work the midnight shift. It's way too dangerous.

How is it dangerous? Why were you any more exhausted than if you worked 9-5? You just need to adjust your sleep schedule. If you don't do that, then of course you'll be tired. But that's on the worker.

I worked it for 22 months. Was damn near suicidal at the end. And I lived alone--my co-workers with families had to deal with constant interruption. I think it took me a good 9 months to establish regular sleep patterns again. I gained weight when I went off, since I'd wake up in the middle of the night just STARVING (my old lunch time) and then I'd eat regular meals, too.

On the flipside, since then, I've never slept better. My whole life, I could just lie there for an hour or more after going to bed. Now, I take my glasses off and it is lights out.

Mister Tonka wrote:

<quoted text>How is it dangerous? Why were you any more exhausted than if you worked 9-5? You just need to adjust your sleep schedule. If you don't do that, then of course you'll be tired. But that's on the worker.

Even if you adjust your sleep schedule, there's been studies that show that sleeping during the "wrong" hours does not result in the same quality of sleep. For truly restful sleep, you have to cycle through the various levels of sleep (theta, delta, REM) in a particular way, and for particular amounts of time.

The bodies of people who have adjusted their sleep schedules to sleep during the day may not be able to adjust to sleeping the right type of sleep cycle during the day (a nap sleep cycle is different from a night sleep cycle, and some people who work the graveyard shift end up basically sleeping in a series of naps instead). Some people's bodies can, some people bodies can't. You can try to take melanin supplements to force your body into an adjustment, and it works for some people as well.

1. I have a friend who is a trader in the foreign markets, so his day starts at 5 p.m. He is 27 and he said the biggest drawback is the effect on his social life. It's killing his dating.

Sleeping mask...check. Ear plugs...check. Doorbell disconnected...check. Bedroom door locked...check.

Whatstheproblem?

Turn off everything that rings, fan for white noise, and most of all, stern warnings not to wake me during the day....that should do it.

Some people actually *prefer* the night shift. They can see their kids off to school in the morning, be able to pick them up or be home when they get home, they can run errands during the day, so forth. The hardest part is sleeping during the day but yeah, Mimi, facemask, ear plugs, tape a garbage bag over the window, you're good to go.

Night owl that I am, I hated working the graveyard shift precisely for these reasons. People, including my fiance, just didn't seem to grasp that I needed sleep and it had to be during the day, since I actually worked (and worked hard) at night. It's as if they thought night workers just sat around and did nothing all night, so they didn't need any sleep. My fiance would leave lists of tasks and errands he needed done during the day and expect them to be completed by the time he came home. Anytime I complained or tried to explain, my fiance would "lecture" me on being "accommodating". I finally was "accommodating" enough to give the azz his ring back.

edogxxx wrote:

Some people actually *prefer* the night shift. They can see their kids off to school in the morning, be able to pick them up or be home when they get home, they can run errands during the day, so forth. The hardest part is sleeping during the day but yeah, Mimi, facemask, ear plugs, tape a garbage bag over the window, you're good to go.

Oh, there's benefits that I do miss. It is *so* easy to make doctor/dentist appointments, you can shop and work out at the best times. At the time, I had to go to a laundromat to do my wash, so I'd get there first thing in the morning on my day off and I'd be done by the time the hoards of people would get there. I'd get McDonald's breakfast on my way home from work. I was in grad school for part of it, so I could have a.m. classes.

When I was in the service, used to work swings and mids (3-12 or 12-8) and it was 3 days swings, then 3 mids. You learned to sleep whenever, and drink whenever you were not working or sleeping (like 8:30 in the morning)

RACE wrote:

When I was in the service, used to work swings and mids (3-12 or 12-8) and it was 3 days swings, then 3 mids. You learned to sleep whenever, and drink whenever you were not working or sleeping (like 8:30 in the morning)

My coworkers on the 3rd shift would start drinking at 8 a.m. as well. When you work the night shift, 8 a.m. is like 5 p.m. And NONE of us went to sleep when we got home from work-- do you get home from work at 6 p.m., go to sleep,t hen get up around 1-2 a.m. to start your day, then go to work at 8? Night shift people don't do that, either.

RedheadwGlasses wrote:

<quoted text>
My coworkers on the 3rd shift would start drinking at 8 a.m. as well. When you work the night shift, 8 a.m. is like 5 p.m. And NONE of us went to sleep when we got home from work-- do you get home from work at 6 p.m., go to sleep,t hen get up around 1-2 a.m. to start your day, then go to work at 8? Night shift people don't do that, either.

That's the way I see it. Phisiologically, there is no difference in a night shift worker sleeping during the day than a 9-5 ham & egger sleeping at night. Its just that we are socially engineered to view the daylight hours as awake time. I don't see any reason why someone who regularly slept during the day for the same number of hours as a night time sleeper would have any problems (other than social).

RedheadwGlasses wrote:

<quoted text>
My coworkers on the 3rd shift would start drinking at 8 a.m. as well. When you work the night shift, 8 a.m. is like 5 p.m. And NONE of us went to sleep when we got home from work-- do you get home from work at 6 p.m., go to sleep,t hen get up around 1-2 a.m. to start your day, then go to work at 8? Night shift people don't do that, either.

My ex-boyfriend did not understand that. I'd get off work for the weekend at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning and he'd want to do something at like 5 or 6 on Saturday night. Then he'd get mad when I dozed off during a movie or wanted to go home to get more sleep. Yeah, it's kind of the equivalent of me waking him up to watch a movie at 4 am.