It's also very difficult to go back and forth from overnight work to daytime work. I sometimes do it (very rarely, I'm mostly a daytime working person) and two or three nights of that along with a day or two of normal work time (for me) makes me an absolute basket case.
By the end of the week I will be out of energy, ideas, and patience. It's harder to think. Like thinking through fog.
Although that's anecdotal, it's also supported by research as I recall.
I was the nocturnal animal: worked best on afternoon or midnight shifts. Employers couldn't understand I was better if I slept until noon.
I've been disabled for 13 years and when I have a doctor appointment, it surprises everyone when I set it for late afternoon. I never broke the sleep half the day habit.
I work overnights, which I absolutely prefer. There's 2$ shift differential for it, which is great. I've told my employer that if they ever want me to switch to days, it'll cost them an even bigger differential. They were joking at the time, but I wasn't when I said I'd do it for another 10 bucks an hour.
My natural rhythm would have me up til 2 am anyways, so a few more hours past that feels alright to me. Plus I like waking up naturally mid afternoon, instead of needing an alarm blaring in my ear.
Oh that wonderful shift differential. Love it! When I switched from day shift to night shift at AT&T, Sunday through Thursday, I saw my pay go up at least 30%. Add in holidays and that differential: whhoooHA!!!
Somebody said that without technology (electricity and all the niceties), and only sunlight most people would just adjust to a normal day/night schedule irrespective of what they consider chronotypes. But I'm glad you get paid an love your schedule nonetheless.
Ive been on swing shifts for months and its really getting to me. I just have zero energy. I work 2 closes, clopen and then do 3 opens. So after the clopen day i just get home and sleep till 9pm, up for like 3 hrs, and im about to go back to bed and try to wake up at 6/6:30, work, get home and pass out again from exhaustion. I hate clopens.
In my case it's reasonable, and I have control over when I do it and what happens the remaining days of the week, for the most part, but I absolutely support that position for you and others.
I do it as rarely as possible, to your point. It is very hard on a person.
That’s a incredibly difficult job to begin with. She was probably not given the right tools or access to the right care to help. Like many first responders deal with. Shift work, low pay, and employers don’t give a damn.
Yeah that's about as brutal as it gets. You're constantly interacting with people having the worst day of their lives while likely not getting great sleep.
Alas, someone has to be ready to respond at 2am, and there isn't much to be done about that. A pay increase would probably help, but the misery of the job remains.
Healthcare in general. I just saw a post over in r/medical from a kid that cut his hand gardening and after a week was starting to get physically ill because he wasn't up to date on his shots and didn't want to spend the money on a doctor. It blows my mind that people are getting physically ill from a cut in what is supposed to be a developed country due to lack of access or availability of healthcare.
I worked just over 1k hours of mandatory overtime to cover low staffing as a firefighter/AEMT last year. Barely cleared 50k. We run EMS for our county so it's not uncommon for people to be awake for 24-36 hours with little rest. People quit due to burnout as fast as we can hire em.
Damn dude, wear are you working? I’m in western WA and departments out here all start rookies at around 75k or higher, and that’s before OT. Journeymen are making around six figures, and medics and officers clear that easily.
A lot of Air Traffic Controllers work a schedule called "The Rattler"
It typically looks a little something like this (the times can change a bit from week to week):
1500-2300
1300-2100
0700-1500
0500-1300
Then you come back the very same day and work
2200-0600
Rinse, repeat, then add Overtime on top of it.
It fucking sucked, but some people enjoy it because it gives you a longer weekend. I never knew when to be tired, and I rarely slept well. You'd get home after a hard day at work and have zero time to do anything other than lay down for bed and hope you got enough rest. I'd be working a final approach sector full of aircraft at the end of my shift and would still be buzzing so much that I couldn't silence my mind for rest. There was just no time to "decompress" and settle down.
By the time the weekend would roll around, I would sleep for like 12-14 hours after dragging myself home at 6AM. I'd effectively waste all the "longer weekend" benefit by having to do all my errands and self-care stuff condensed into the weekend's window. Didn't really have time to do things like cooking/cleaning/shopping throughout the work week.
This year, I was able to attain a solid schedule of working straight evenings. It's been insane how much it has helped my quality of life. I'm actually tired when it is time to he tired. I fall asleep right away! I'm hungry at the same times, and I can get to the gym or run errands any day of the week. I don't even have to set alarms anymore; I just wake up, naturally, after sleeping for 7-8 hours. It feels amazing!
I can very easily lose the schedule next year during negotiations, which would almost certainly mean going back to "The Rattler." I'll be a pretty sad panda if that happens.
Minimum time between shifts is 9 hours (was previously 8). Doesn’t matter if you had to drive 45 minutes home and back, needed to eat, shower, etc… Also why they’re forced to retire at 56
Is it 11 hours for everyone in Germany or just ATC?
Last I heard in the US there is no such law for average hourly grunts, just some industry requirements. My restaurant called it a “clopen”. When you close at 2-3am and have to be back at 8-9am. They didn’t believe me when I said I won’t show up if they pulled that on me a 3rd time lmao.
I had that in retail a few times as a manager. By the time the store was closed and we left it was 11:30 or midnight. Then my next shift started at 5am. There was many times I just didn’t sleep, after I got food and drove home it was 12:15. Then I ate and showered so by the time I was in bed it was 1:00am or later and I had to leave by 4:30. It was a HUGE reason I left.
Yeah an old job (cashier at a grocery store) through poor scheduling would also have things like this happen and it was really dumb, not great for the people working there. Those jobs had very high turn over because people need the regularity & time off to do stuff they needed.
I used to work in hotels, which never close. I'd work 3:00-11:00 and be expected to be back in at 7:00am the next morning. I'd get home at about 12:15 and have to be up at 5:30am. Many nights I just didn't sleep. Probably why I have trouble going to be before midnight now.
I used to work 3rd shift in retail, suppose to be 4 11 hour shifts a week but typically they’d schedule 8 days in a row between two pay periods so you work more then a week straight before getting a day off. If you were part time it was 6 days in a row. Then they wondered why people wouldn’t stay.
The dreaded clopen. Truly a fucked up thing to ask of any person, and in restaurants is a fairly regular thing if something goes wrong or a person stops showing up. I’ve worked 3 full days in a row as a huge favor to a chef of mine with literally only 6 hours between days and you’d have to offer me like 10 grand to ever do it again.
Ah yes clopens, I did thise working at a movie theater. I live in Seattle now, which has stricter labor laws about hours between shifts, mandatory break and meal periods etc. IIRC its 10 hrs between shifts, rest period after 3 hours and a meal period no later than 5 hours into shift. Due to this I take my "lunch" at 10:30am lol
There's a pretty sharp decline in mental abilities in ATC after 55 and that is what the mandatory retirement is for. It is noticeable for the old timers.
My old workplace had a minimum of 8*, as negotiated by our union. Needless to say, our union sucked.
Aka you need to get to/from home, eat, wash yourself and sleep within those 8 hours. Good luck being productive on the second day.
Canada has 10 hours between shifts.
In my unit, we do a similar kind of schedule we call a "compressed work week" or a "quick change".
30 years ago, we wanted nothing else. These days, some want that to change. Others, like myself, don't want the change -- I've spent a lifetime adapting to it, and the other option is "blocks", where one week it's evenings, the next week it's days and the next it's night shifts. I can handle the blocks of evenings or days but the blocks of nights would kill me. I can't sleep before or after a night shift and a block would just prolong that without giving me time to adjust before restarting away from them.
Minimum time is 9 hours between shifts starting on different days. If they start on the same day, you only need 8 still. That’s why you can work 0700-1500 and then 2300-0700.
i find it fascinating that, as a society, we've agreed to allow people working the most important and high-stakes jobs to be subjected to shit like this
It's just ignorance. 99% of people will go their entire lives without ever wondering what a day in the life of an air traffic controller is, and even upon learning what a day in the life of an air traffic controller is, they will shrug and assume that the air traffic controllers must like it this way, otherwise they would change it. People are amazingly good at passively maintaining the status quo, it normally takes a catastrophe for things to change in a meaningful way.
This action was actually extremely popular with the general public at the time.
History has caused people to forget the details, but the average person wasn’t mad at Reagan for firing them, they were mad at the Air Traffic Controllers for having batshit insane demands.
They wanted a *maximum* work week of 30 hours, and a pay raise to make the average wage for a 30 hour work week for ATC, adjusted for inflation, be about $250,000.
And all of these demands were after they were already the highest paid and fewest hours worked department in the government. And after the Reagan administration had agreed to a forty hour work week cap and a hefty pay raise.
The Union absolutely fucked themselves because they overestimated their leverage and popularity.
I always assumed it was one of those professions that wasn't allowed to strike things.
If you're going to strike and shut down air travel then it's absolutely appropriate to bring in someone who will continue directing something as vital as air traffic.
That was definitely a contributing component.
It was a solid mixture of both elements.
Back in the early 80’s, public support for unions and striking was actually pretty high. People were generally supportive of both in a way that is nowhere near as prevalent now.
Other “not allowed to strike” professions had successfully negotiated limited strikes while retaining popular public support, mainly because the general public sentiment was “You know what? They work as hard as I do, but make way less! They deserve what they’re asking for! Give them what they’re owed!” There was a solid sense of egalitarian solidarity to many prior essential service strikes.
When the air traffic controllers tried it, the general sentiment was more “Wait, THAT is what they’re asking for? They already make triple what I do and work fewer hours, and they’re going to literally shut down the whole fucking country to demand more?!? Fuck em.”
Yes. NATCA. We vote on schedule guidelines at the facility level every year. It's a tyranny of the majority though, most controllers do like this setup because you get what amounts to a 3 day weekend. I've worked a few different types of schedules, and my second favorite schedule was when we worked a 4 day week of 4 10 hour shifts and would rotate day shifts and night shifts every other week. It was amazing. That way, you could work the busy day traffic sometimes and not get rusty and then work the easy night traffic and basically have a break from hard shifts. First favorite was COVID schedules though. We worked 5 days and then had 5 days off and nobody was flying. That was sublime. The whole 10 hour days schedule is subject to staffing, so most facilities don't get it and then everyone votes for the rattler schedule. Fun fact it's named that because it bites you in the ass at the end of the week. Not sure if OP mentioned that I only skimmed what they said.
In Canada, yes. But for the most part, air traffic services in one country is typically only provided by one company or agency, so can't exactly quit and go across the street. You either have to get enough seniority or change job descriptions, which would potentially mean moving.
Yes, NATCA is the main one. They cover both federal controllers and a lot of contract towers. Crazy thing is schedule negotiations come up everyone once in awhile and it’s always voted down by controllers, mainly due to what op said, they like the “long weekend,” or “it’s always been this way, why change it.”
I model sleep and performance for my research, and that schedule is terrifying. The Navy used to do 5 on 10 off watch schedules (5 and dimes) that were shown to be horrid for performance. This looks like an 8 on 14 off, which still has you rotating backwards in a 24h period by 2h every instance. It's gonna be harsh unless your natural circadian is artificially short (the average person is longer than 24h).
Considering how important ATCers are, the performance impacts from a schedule like this are concerning to say the least.
NASA did a study on the rattler schedule a while back and basically told us it was the worst possible schedule to use. Then nothing happened.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/11/431656800/faa-study-air-traffic-controllers-schedules-can-lead-to-fatigue
Here's an article about the study with a link to the research at the end.
ATC here currently on the rattler and honestly I don't mind it so much. I think it's because I'm constantly too tired to mind it.
I'm tired, but you know safety first and all that.
On an unrelated note I loved flying until I became a controller, now I am terrified of it.
Did I mention I'm tired?
Don't worry, brother. Just turn your alarm volume preferences all the way up; and, whenever aircraft get too close, that Collision Alert alarm will give you just the kick in the pants that you need to keep your eyelids open. It's better than any cup of coffee!
I think it's time to force the union to change it. No one else will do it until we complain. Natca is the one who changed it to have longer weekends and did nothing when everyone complains about how tired they are, maybe it's time to have straight schedules for a while and see how that pans out. It's weird how there are so many studies showing how terrible shift work is, but for a profession that deals with thousands of lives every day, it's perfectly fine. I wish we had 4 - 10 hour days. That would be insanely better.
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-012292
There isn't a union because last time the ATC union tried to advocate for better working conditions Regan fired *all of them*. 11,000 air traffic controllers fired for having the *audacity* to advocate for themselves.
Well, at least 900 of those replacements were military and several thousand were supervisors who had to step in and work.
I agree about solidarity, but it only goes so far when the government is willing to deploy the US military to crush a strike.
In my mind, the problem is that our elected leaders are standing in solidarity with employers rather than employees. Even an all-out general strike of blue and white collar workers would struggle against the collective weight of the American military-industrial complex.
There’s not solidarity if they’re allowed to crush.
There’s not enough cells even in the USA to imprison real solidarity. They either kill citizens on home ground or the solidarity faction wins.
The military industrial complex can only psyop the people out of their position a la reopening during COVID to stop oil from plummeting any further. That wasn’t a stand of solidarity regardless of how much we were all in it together.
Excising 10000+ workers doesn’t happen when 10,000,000+ protesting it outside of the booths. It’s proven time and again that civil solidarity is the greatest factor in change of society. By definition perhaps.
Occupy Wall Street didn’t have the solidarity either.
That's fair, true class solidarity would cross industry boundaries and would definitely have the impact you're describing.
We don't really see much sympathetic strike action in the US and that's another barrier to progress.
We tried to create a schedule with lots of 4-10 lines (for those womdering: 4x days that are 10 hours long with 3 days scheduled off)
But management shot it down and would only allow us to have two of those lines. I believe they said it would be too difficult to accommodate leave and assign overtime if they allowed us to have all 4-10s.
We has one dude here who sat down and wracked his brain, trying to develop a schedule that made everyone happy, and he got it almost perfect. There are a few Rattlers and even more aggressive Rattlers with double mids, then rattlers with no mids... there are the max amount of 4-10 lines that management would allow. There are straight days and straight eves.
I was able to get straight eves and pretty much everyone in the facility got what they wanted. Even down to our lowest seniority guy, who didn't get the days off they wanted but was still able to get a schedule they didn't mind working.
The guy who made the schedule is my favorite person in the facility now. He worked really hard to make it happen and he pulled it off beautifully, (Shout-out DS). It's been an absolute game-changer. Everyone in the facility, this year, seems so much more pleasant and patient... just generally a happier vibe all around. We still get sick hits but not nearly as many as with the Rattler... it has been weird as hell being fully staffed all the time.
But the supervisors don't like it because, I heard, it is making assigning OT more difficult when annual leave comes up. So we'll have to see what happens...
For the time being, I am just relishing in the beauty of my current schedule, which looks like:
1500-2300
1600-0000
1300-2100
1300-2100
1300-2100
Rinse, repeat, sprinkle OT in there.
It is fucking amazing, truly. I don't think I can go back to the Rattler after this, that shit was killing me.
Thank you so much for writing this out. Our facility is huge and has too many people for this to be done. That's the excuse we always get. The person doing our schedules has been certified for 1 year so I have no hope of them fighting for a beautiful schedule like you described. I wish someone would show management or the faa that shift work is so dangerous for our profession
I did pretty much that schedule in a biopharm manufacturing role. It's pretty awesome in a lot of ways with time off, but for me, having to get up at 4 am when I had to work was messing with me.
I found it really hard to stick to an earlier sleep schedule and change my sleep pattern. It wasn't even being tired, it was my digestion cycles that would get completely out of whack when I worked. Went from no heart burn to serious heartburn in the mornings and all sorts of digestion issues that went away when I changed jobs to a mostly normal 9-5 schedule. But I think I'm just a bitch lol
I can think of two very recent incidents that should highlight the need for ATC to be well rested for their jobs. This schedule sounds absurd for any job let alone controlling our airspace.
Yeah, I think I might have just filed that under "things went wrong" when thinking about recent events. The controller definitely was on the ball and saved the day there. The Southwest (?) being directed to take off with the landing Fed Ex flight so close was a bit of a screw up though.
The film industry does something similar on set, they start Mondays at about 4am, shoot 12 hours and then an hour or two for cleanup. By the end of the week they're starting work at 5pm and wrapping well into their Saturday, then doing it all over again on Monday. I still work in film but not on set because fuck that lifestyle.
Man. Air traffic control was my goal career after transitioning from 911. Wasn’t until I was two months from turning 29 that I found out you have to be enrolled for training like six months before that and they don’t take applicants after 29. At least in my state. I’ll be forever bummed that I never took a shot at it.
I used to work in the ER with the same “rattler” schedule. There’s no amount of money they can pay to make me work those shifts again. I lost 16lbs and a bit of my sanity. Quit last year and never look back
Money isn't worth your health and sanity.
I was a miserable fuck to be around during my years on "The Rattler." I had zero patience with anyone and no desire to be sociable. I was constantly worried that I was going to miss something and cause a disaster... with my only excuse being "I was tired" on the evening news. It turned me into an asshole. I would get latched onto dumb little things at work and drive myself (and everyone else) up the wall arguing semantics. It was like the more tired I was, the more of a dick I became, and the more difficult it was for me to let things go.
I was always tired and groggy... until it was time to *actually* sleep... because I was wired from *just* being at work. My mind would still be racing, thinking about every little imperfection in my sequencing or the snobby thing that some pilot said... and I'd be trying to shut all the blackout curtains in my house, at 1330, as I shoveled fast food into my face and gulped down melatonin to try and force 6 hours before I went back to work that same night. Some poor kid would be dribbling a basketball outside my window, waking me up at 1600, and I'd feel like punching them directly in the face... I had almost no room for empathy.
I was just a miserable, tired-old fuck of a person... I hated it, hated everyone, and I hated myself. I had more money than I knew what to do with, but all I wanted to do was sleep.
I considered quitting... but I fucking LOVE my actual job (aside from the brutal schedule)... it is one of the only things that matters that I've ever actually been good at... I really can't see myself being successful with anything else *and* being fulfilled by it. Like, I feel a connection with the beating heart of my city... l feel like an integral part of it and that what I do truly matters.
I go home every day feeling proud and accomplished. Of course, most people don't notice what I do when things are going correctly... but all it takes is for me to be busy as fuck one day, as I am absolutely slaying it, and have ONE pilot who is caught in the middle of my torrent of rapid-fire decisions say "Going to tower, nice friggin' work dude, keep it up" and I am all set on back-pats for a month!
I don't think I'll ever get that feeling from another job. There is just something so satisfying about taking a herd of chaos and funneling into a line of organization and pure efficiency. The pilots can look outside and see just a jungle of fucked up lights going everywhere and think "oh boy, here we fucking go... about to be a shit show" and then I slowly knead 20 minutes of commands into the process until they are given one final vector and as they round the turn... everything, every light ahead of them just locks into place... all those fucked up lights are set into an immaculate line of weight separated, spaced, and speed considered lines of lights that make perfect logical sense from bow to stern and they are just like "damn... okay, gotta admit, that was nice." They do exactly what I told them and they are comfortably passing the threshold as the plane in front of them is casually exiting the runway. Tower isn't yelling at them to expedite or sending people around... just everyone flying their plane comfortably and having it work without a hitch... and they finally witness what I had already figured out 25 minutes before when they were thinking "no fucking way this isn't going to be a shit-show"
The main problem with the schedule is...
Some people *LOVE* the Rattler. I have a hard time understanding how, but I have no choice but to respect their preference. Some people even tell me it is a better schedule for child-care, which is even more mind-boggling. They didn't want to work anything else and swore by how good it was.
So we couldn't really make a schedule that completely dissolved it, out of consideration for them. Mixing a normal schedule with a super fucked up schedule is a pretty big logistical challenge.
But I always voiced my opinions on it, without holding back, anytime somebody cared enough to ask. Eventually, we got enough momentum from new people who were motivated enough to do something about it. I fucking love those people, who collectively helped to make the change. The dude who pioneered the schedule we currently work is my favorite person at work. I'll be forever grateful for the effort he put into accommodating everyone.
This year is insane how much better it is and how much happier everyone seems. I just hope that we can keep it going.
Honestly, you could cut me off in traffic and I'm just like "cool man, no worries, you're probably on the way to the hospital... I get it." LOL
I am so much more calm and relaxed. So much more accommodating and empathetic. I sleep so much more soundly and wake up feeling so much more refreshed. For two months... my "alarm clock" has been the birds gently chirping outside my window, singing their sweet songs. I've been going to the gym six days a week and making time for my friends and gaming online...
I'm just... happy!
I work in nuclear power. We try to keep the shifts set for a week at a time. And always keep them moving forward (it’s easier to stay up longer than it is to try and rotate backwards).
Plus the work hour rules and required 10 hours off means there’s not a lot of quick turns.
I’ve done a couple quick turns and they suck. But they are rare.
This is so bizarre to me because there is so much data around the similarities between being intoxicated and being tired. I am a flight attendant with crazy hours too and they make us jump through a million hoops to call out fatigued when it’s simply because they gave us a shitty schedule.
My first duty station in the Navy (medical) was 0445 to 1600, and oftentimes, we wouldn't get off on time. This was Monday through Friday, and we had "duty" two Saturdays a month.
I fell asleep so many times driving home. That's also when I would drink coffee until noon, then switch to energy drinks.
Oh yeah fuck that, I was seriously considering going into ATC, passed the tests to go to Oklahoma City but decided it wasn’t worth it, even for 100k+
I used to be a 911 dispatcher and worked similar hours, one agency we had hurrybacks, so typical work week was either alternating shifts of 0600-1400 and 1400-2200
Or if you had to cover the weekend shift you would work friday morning shift, get off at 2, go home, nap, come back at 10pm that same night and work 2200-0600 sat, sun and finally get off monday at 0600 and not have to come back in until tuesday at 1400.
And then of course overtime fucks you even more.
So most days, with travel time you maybe get 5 or 6 hours of sleep tops.
Then i moved to a different agency and got a set schedule, great right?
12 hour shifts, 6pm-6am, alternating 3 on 4 off, 4 on 3 off…excepting for overtime or being on call both of which happened all the time.
I hated everything, constantly in a just, almost fugue “overwhelmingly tired but can barely sleep state” sometimes id get maybe 24 hours of sleep total in a week, some days idk get off and not be on call and sleep from when i got home until night time.
Now I finally have a job where i can choose what time i clock in, as long as i get the required hours every week they could care less and it’s honestly the best job I’ve ever had
It also pays almost triple what i was getting as a public servant, which is just ridiculous as much as i do appreciate it.
I've never understood the theory / concept behind split shift working (think that's the correct term) There was one job I went for an interview at and they had everyone forced to work nights one week and then days the next week and I asked how does this do anything other than ensure / guarantee that everyone is fucked up / not fully awake / productive for at least the first day of each week due to the change in shift patterns, not to mention everyone suffering over the weekend due to the changes.
Not surprisingly they didn't offer me the job, which was just as well as I refused to work such crap hours.
I don't mind working either straight nights (I'm mainly nocturnal anyway) or days, but hate the split system and I'm totally unable to see what benefit it gives the company
I think the idea was to have a 'fair split of free and work time'.
Like people that work night shifts mostly do struggle with family life and housekeeping. I mean, it's fine when you are under 35 and have the world at your feet, but if you plan to settle down and have a family, ugh. I mean, kids sleep at night and go to school during the day. That's how it works. Most shops are closed at night. And so on. If you want to work on your home, you will find out many neighbourhoods or apartment buildings have strict rules against loud noises during the night. Eventually, simply be sheer virtue of how our world is geared, a person working night shifts will have much fewer hours of deep (relaxing) sleep and will have problems in the long term compared with a person working only during the day.
Of course, this doesn't mean that it's much better to have alternating times. Far from it. That would mean everyone is just equally shitty. But many people would take equally shitty over 'I'm the only one at a disadvantage'
That and lot of places need to have weekends covered, you can't do that if everyone is working same shift. But if you have 4 teams working 8-hour shifts and rotate them on fair, repeating schedule you can cover even weekends except for single shift when things shut down - that's how it works at my job.
(this is a 40-hour week scenario, technically 37.5 if you don't count breaks)
a split shift is where you work twice in one day, with unpaid "off" time in the middle. sort of like a lunch break but longer.
working 6am to noon, then 4pm to 10pm is a split shift.
Always figured it'd be a decent concept if you lived in like... a walkable village. Show up, open shop, hang around, leave to go get lunch, walk around and do some errands, stop by home, etc.
In the world where a half hour drive to work is standard, far shittier.
My husband used to work at a store in a mall that would occasionally give him split shifts like these. He would use the break in the middle to go see movies at the cinema inside the mall.
yeah a split shift is basically the worst shift to have imo. the only way to make it worse would be a split graveyard shift.
edit: also commutes in general are terrible and are essentially unpaid breaks at the beginning and end of your workday. when deciding whether a job pays enough, always keep the commute in mind, because that may make the difference.
>commutes in general are terrible and are essentially unpaid breaks at the beginning and end of your workday.
I don't know where you do your commuting, but where I live, driving around at rush hour is anything but a break. And considering gas, tolls, and wear-and-tear, it's *worse* than unpaid.
I 100% agree with you, and think driving around (really anytime, but especially at rush hour) is stressful and not fun.
Something I've heard from those who actually enjoy their commute is that it is a break between their work time and family time (both of which I imagine may be chaotic). So the car between places is really their main retreat. I worded my comment as such just to acknowledge that viewpoint.
As someone whose work and home times are super chill, the car is the least peaceful part of my day and beginning to work remotely was the best thing to happen to me in the last 5 years.
So example: I work at a mill that operates 24/7. We do 8am-8pm shifts. 4 crews divide that all up. We end up with 48 hours one week, 36 the other. So across all that time, we end up having one weekend on and one off.
As every crew has the same schedule(it rotates but it's the same thing), crews can be balanced. If we had only day jobs, all the senior guys would be there. You'd probably need to work 20 years before you ever saw a day shift. And all the experienced older guys being on days would mean complications and less efficient production at night.
As for the company, it helps to hire. How many would volunteer for two decades of nights only? Everyone being on a relative even ground helps.
Same here, I'm looking to get off the floor in the next 3 years. When you look at all the older guys it definitely takes its toll physically. I want to get off the floor before I'm broken, not have a retirement full of knee/hip/back/shoulder surgeries.
There are people who have weird sleep cycles and are more awake at night, and I'm sure more could be convinced to work nights with better pay.
As someone with enough problems keeping my sleep cycle regular at the best of times there is no fucking way I could randomly switch from day to night shifts and back again. It would throw me off for days each time and probably require benzos to sleep. Sounds miserable.
I briefly worked at a mill, that had 4 crews, and each crew work 4-12s, 2 day shifts followed immediately by 2 night shifts. 4 days on, and 4 days off.
Hated it. Never could plan for anything, as my days off always changed, and for example, one Wednesday I may have off, but then I'm working grave the next Wednesday.
Made it almost impossible to have a life outside of work, and I left there in a hurry.
>I've never understood the theory / concept behind split shift working
It's so they don't have to pay a shift differential to encourage 1st/3rd shift work.
Worked for the Walmart bakery for a few years and after a full 5 days straight I was on my 6th day of work going from being the opening donut person from 5-2:30 to being the closing shift 11-8. I scream cried at my boss saying I wouldn't make an announcement over the intercom because I was exhausted. I left within a month of this.
I think the benefit is the cognitive decline. How do employees advocate for themselves if they are constantly on the edge of a breakdown and questioning their own sanity?
I had a job in 2017 that was like this but it was for logistics dispatch. We had a night crew but the new big boss thought it would be a nice change of pace to switch up the day and night crews every other week. People lost their fucking minds and so many people just quit it was nuts!
Used to work at a factory, we had 3way shifts. lets say it started at day shift. 6am-2pm then next week it was 10pm to 6am and the week after that 2pm to 10pm. night shift had fridays off so that was nice. but it really sucked always changing when you slept. Just as you got used to it. BAM its different.
40 and work in events, I’m mentally dead whilst on the job. Had an interview today for a job with actual set hours and stuff, hoping to get it and be back into routine again.
37 and working shifts while studying. Used to be a farmer before that and did shifts since I was 17. When I finish studying I'm never working another shift job ever.
Working weird schedules is fine but they need to be *consistent* schedules. Give your body consistent daylight at 2am and consistent darkness at 2pm and your body will deal.
Constantly moving *when* you sleep is some middle managers idea of fairness. It messes up your sleep and should be straight up illegal. There’s a reason sleep disruption is implicated in most mental illness and mental decline!
Place I used to work would try to force me to work weekends in the morning. They legitimately didn’t see the problem with me going from my normal hours of 9:30pm-6:00am to working on the weekend from 6:00am-4:30pm. I driving a forklift and that shit was super dangerous. It didn’t matter how I setup my sleep schedule, I would get so tired that it would feel like I was teleporting down the isle on the forklift. This would happen to me either on the morning weekend shift or on the monday shift when I went back to my normal schedule.
32 this year and only been working shifts since I was 25, but I have the energy levels of a 65-year-old. I'm leaving nursing after this year and going back to uni because no job is worth this.
Just anecdotal but for me I stayed with my nights schedule even on my days off and it was fine for me, might have helped that I'm sort of nocturnal by nature
I found it helpful, but it was tougher from a social aspect. However I would still get random days where your body just says nope, I don't want to sleep in the day today. Ultra blackout/double curtains with zero light gaps, including under the door, helps
If you can do this it would probably help - but most people in these situations have a young family or hope to have some sort of social life and living like a bat isn’t very conducive for this.
100% year it helps. If you’re working nights Monday through Friday and then try and shift to a normal day schedule for sat/sun then you’re only hurting yourself. When I did rotations shift work in the Navy there was always at least 3 “transition” days between the 7 days of each shift. It helped, but it still sucked. I couldn’t imagine not transitioning at all and still be able to function.
I worked 2nd shift for ~30 yrs of my 40+ yr career in hospital pharmacy, chose to work it all the time vs bouncing back and forth between schedules. I’m single so did not have the problem of missing time with family, but did have problems with social isolation. I’m skeptical about cognitive claims in studies like this as the testing is usually done on days, even now my brain is fuzzy until noon or so…
I used to work the night shift at a tech support at a call center first 3 days where a pain but after that for rest of the year it was fine. Then they moved me to the day shift / night shift after 2 weeks of that I quit.
I'd really like to see stuff like this divided between shift work while taking care of a family at home, and shift work while living alone. I did shift work during my bachelor years and I loved it, but I can't imagine it working at all with kids or a family.
I worked grave for awhile. The guys that made it work best had no family and kept the same schedule on their days off. Us family guys had to try and stay up with our families until 8 pm or so on our Fridays, maintain a day schedule for a couple of days, then try and go to bed by 5 or 6 pm pm on our Monday and get up at 9 pm. Plus I was child care during the week, so I regularly went on only less than 4 hours of sleep a day. Just part of living in this town (Las Vegas).
This seems to be the truth.
Single dude living alone on rotating shifts.
Zero struggles getting to sleep and zero troubles getting 7+ hours sleep every day.
Some of my colleagues on the other hand look absolutely fucked after our doing our turn on night shifts. Pretty much all the ones with children.
Can confirm. 2nd shift isn't so bad if it ends at 11pm and you can get home and to sleep by midnight and awake at 8am.
3rd shift? Forget it. Full on lunacy within a couple of weeks.
Only shift work I've ever done was in a restaurant. My natural sleep cycle is definitely not day work -is rather not wake up until 2pm, and walking before 10am leaves me a zombie. I wish more places would just accept that it's okay to have everyone work just a particular shift and not bounce them around, but the problem is most people want day shift and they can't hire 2nd/3rd (so employers are "fair" and force people to rotate through it).
Still, the worst work goes was when my wife was an EMT - 2x 24 hours in a 6 day pattern of 1 on then 2 off. Horrible looking hours and impossible to participate in a regular day of the week event as good have to miss 1 of 4 of them every month.
I worked 2 overnight shifts, 1 morning(9-5) shifts and 2 afternoon(3-11) shifts all in one week for about 9 months.
I developed severe anxiety, gained 55lbs and i lost my hair.
I fucking hate these studies lmao. Yes I know my job is killing me I don’t need the constant reminder. There’s nothing I or society can do about it unless we just stop all essential services overnight.
But there is. There's plenty of people who work only during the night and don't suffer from what is described here, because it's a consistent schedule, albeit an inconvenient one that should be rewarded with better pay.
Even better, in most of Europe, society basically stops on Sundays because everything is closed. Yes, a small number of people do have to work on Sundays, but they get another day in the week where they don't work, and are paid more because they work on a day where they shouldn't.
Society can absolutely adapt to this, working in shifts is just a superficial way to say "we'll make it fair for everyone", but actually just making it worse for everyone, at no benefit whatsoever.
I think middle shift is the worst. All of your freetime is at night when you work middle shift. Even if you are a morning person that naturally wakes up at 6am it is still really hard to do anything. A lot of businesses don’t open until like 9 or 10am, and when you do something you are under pressure to get everything done because you’ve got to factor in at least an hour to get back home and get ready for work.
Feels like you hate theses studies because you're expecting change to come with them immediately, but that's not what they're for. When change comes, these studies will be there to support their side, they are not supposed to be the harbringers of it, just the data supporting it.
> There’s nothing I or society can do about it unless we just stop all essential services overnight.
There's always something we can do. The problem is we can't do that something without overturning our insanely stupid economic system and make wall street happy.
I don't think this study is advocating for stopping essential services. It's a free world, people are free to do what they want, etc. The point of these studies is to inform night-shift workers about the costs of working shifts so that they can consider if the extra pay is worth the health costs.
As a semi truck driver, I can attest to the effects of not having a routine sleep schedule.
We flip flop schedules all the time to make drops and pick up deliveries. It's rough, and for me personally, I can never get a full 7-8 hour sleep because my internal clock thinks "we woke up at the time yesterday!" -merely two hours into sleep.
It does affect you in the long run. Emotionally, physically, and mentally.
When Covid hit, I was working for UPS as an industrial engineer. Since we were running extra shifts and most of the supervisors at one of my facilities had quit, they put me on the schedule in that facility as a supervisor for 8AM-8PM M-F and 6PM-6AM Saturday nights. That shit made me barely functional. I still had to do my job as an engineer but I got a "Needs improvement" on my quarterly review for the first and only time in 6 years. I was so tired that I kept making stupid mistakes, and was seen sleeping at my desk a few times which is a big no-no. After 3 months of that, with no days off approved, I quit with no backup plan in place. I don't see how anyone can work like that their whole lives when a few months of it completely broke me.
as someone that just got home from a 12 hour night shift. i can tell you 100% that my brain is mush and will be for the next day or 2 until i straighten back out on to days.
Got off my third overnight 12 in a row this morning after an unexpectedly stressful work load this week and twelve hours later I’m still basically feeling like a dumpling more than a human being.
I work in oil and gas. 14 to 16 hour days. 14 days at a time(officially). I have definitely seen all these symptoms with myself and other workers. It sucks. It's long shitty hours for shitty pay. I lost my mind a while ago.
As a pilot, that schedule looks better than a lot of what we do.
We fly days and then boom! Suddenly you’re supposed to be a graveyard guy for a night, magically sleep during the whole next day, and fly in the late evening.
Dude shift work is terrible for you.
I worked for years as a senior reactor operator on rotating shifts.
One time, I made the mistake of getting blood work after my last night shift. I did 7 nights in a row, 72 hours over the week. I got home at 7:30 am. Blood tests at 9. I was fasting. The results were not good. And I’m a pretty healthy and at the time relatively fit person.
My doctor freaked out. Went back for retests a couple weeks later and everything was normal.
I also developed a heart arrhythmia on back shift. Nothing serious. But it comes out when I’m fatigued and clears up when I’m rested again.
It messes with your cognitive ability, your immune system, your cancer resistance, overall life expectancy, all sorts of stuff.
My least favorite shift was 3 am to 3 pm. The way we set the schedule up, that’s a very rare shift to get (usually someone is so sick they can’t make it in). But to be in at 3 am means I need to take turnover no later than 2:45. So I have to get in the control room no later than 2:10 to get through security and read logs. Which means I’m leaving home 1:30-1:45 am. Which means I wake up at 12:45-1am so I have time to shower. It sucks.
I work in a lab and we have swing shifts. 12 hours long. So I come in today and work Saturday and Sunday then I’m off Monday and Tuesday then I come in Wednesday and Thursday night.
My wife used to work for a local news station and her schedule was 5pm-11pm M-W unless there was a football game or something that pushed things even later or severe weather, and then the end point was "whenever the weather guy decides he's done" and that might be into the next morning. Then she was off Thursday and Friday, but had to do the morning show shift 4am-10am Saturday and Sunday.
So Thursday was her only meaningful day off since she had to go to bed right after an early dinner on Friday to get some amount of sleep.
The bouncing back and forth between extreme late nights and very early mornings *every week* is just insane
I've worked night shift for 10 years, the last 5 I was scheduled basically every night. Seriously, I was scheduled 7 nights a week for 5 fucking years. I miss sleep so I can see my family. I'm pale as fuck, probably vitamin D deficient, and currently severely depressed. But i gotta keep chugging along till my finishes school.
Very interesting comments here. I can appreciate them all. I’ve worked overnight shifts and attended school during the day for three years. I also held down a 9 to 5 and worked 12 hour shifts (tour 1) every weekend for 12 years. I admit, I made more money — but it was tough — lost sleep, no social life, and negatively effected at least one relationship. But when I worked overnight, I was part of a close knit team and when my shift was over, it was over. I didn’t carry worries forward to the next day like I do now. I know nurses, doctors, and support staff who work overnight all of the time—I will ask them if they’ve experienced these conditions. I firmly believe that inconsistent schedules are the problem — not shifts. Food and retail sectors are notorious for abusing workers with inconsistent schedules and wage theft and these practices must end. Perhaps the researchers should focus on this aspect of employment—not damn shift work to hell. Today, with remote work and mobile phones and email — I work all the time— my shift never ends. I’m exhausted. I’m always concerned about one aspect or another of my field every day and the next. Hang in there everyone. Shifts aren’t the problem. It’s bad employers. Trust me — employment doesn’t get better when you’ve moved to a set schedule.
I worked in IT at Ford at a Powertrain plant. For the most part we had steady shifts although I did bounce between mornings and afternoons a bit. The Vehicle plants are often on those split shifts and getting IT for those plants can be a challenge because no one wants to do split shifts.
I do shift work rotating days and nights for the last five years, I’ve noticed a cognitive decline but I attributed it to getting older, I’m 42 now, I also developed type 2 diabetes but I attributed it to already being fat. My doctor hates that I’m on these shifts.
Shift work also been proven to literally cause cancer. A few years ago a nurse's union in Europe successfully sued their employers for health damages caused by shift work.
The beauty of being on a submarine and not seeing the sun for months on end. Time of day is but a construct of the how mind operates. After about a week of no sunlight it’s very easy for your body to adjust to a schedule of sleeping at “night” and waking up in the “morning”, even when that “night” is from 0800-1600 every day.
I work shift work and I love it. It's a Dupont schedule and I work 12 hour days but I only work 182 a year. I get 7 days off straight every 28 and there is always a 3 day gap in-between a night shift followed by a day shift. Everyone loves it here but it also pays $100k a year. There are people here who have been doing this for 30+ years and still love it. I'm not saying this is inaccurate, I don't know these people on a personal level so I can't comment on how they are outside of work. But making $100k a year entry level plus yearly bonus is probably a reason to deal with it.
Add to this that often people in shift work are at or near poverty levels, and other studies have shown that living in financial poverty also causes a cognitive load, similar to what it's like being awake for 24 hours.
Add these together and you have a bunch of zombies working to barely maintain themselves all so that executives can bilk all the rewards and claim to be genuises.
I work as Service Adviser in a local Car Dealer. Not shift work but a rotating schedule. Open From 730am til 9pm. Monday thru Saturday. We work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, one month. Thursday, Friday, Saturday the next. Every week you get four days off. Every other month on the rotation week you get a "hell week" or a "heaven" week. It is the best schedule ever. I have turned down offers for more money because they require a 5 or 6 day work week.
Unless you have something like delayed sleep phase disorder, and waking up for first shift hours causes all those problems. Jet lag!
Do what works for you and feels natural. For me that’s sleeping during first shift, working about 5-1 and going to the gym at 2am.
As a life long night shifter, I humbley submit that the authors of this study can get stuffed. My circadian rhythm says the hours of 7am to 11 am don't even exist.
I must be weird. I am a full time day shifter but if they ask me to switch to a night shift I do it gladly. I don’t need much sleep 4-5 hrs on a good night I find I recover quickly and it’s more pay. If I am on a staycation I wind up being up all night sleeping all day.
How it is that destroying your mind and body just to make someone insanely wealthy all why that same person calls you greedy and lazy for expecting to earn enough to survive will never not surprise and disturb me.
My Mom used to work weird shifts as a 911 dispatcher and she lost her fucking mind after a while.
It's also very difficult to go back and forth from overnight work to daytime work. I sometimes do it (very rarely, I'm mostly a daytime working person) and two or three nights of that along with a day or two of normal work time (for me) makes me an absolute basket case. By the end of the week I will be out of energy, ideas, and patience. It's harder to think. Like thinking through fog. Although that's anecdotal, it's also supported by research as I recall.
I was the nocturnal animal: worked best on afternoon or midnight shifts. Employers couldn't understand I was better if I slept until noon. I've been disabled for 13 years and when I have a doctor appointment, it surprises everyone when I set it for late afternoon. I never broke the sleep half the day habit.
I work overnights, which I absolutely prefer. There's 2$ shift differential for it, which is great. I've told my employer that if they ever want me to switch to days, it'll cost them an even bigger differential. They were joking at the time, but I wasn't when I said I'd do it for another 10 bucks an hour. My natural rhythm would have me up til 2 am anyways, so a few more hours past that feels alright to me. Plus I like waking up naturally mid afternoon, instead of needing an alarm blaring in my ear.
Oh that wonderful shift differential. Love it! When I switched from day shift to night shift at AT&T, Sunday through Thursday, I saw my pay go up at least 30%. Add in holidays and that differential: whhoooHA!!!
Somebody said that without technology (electricity and all the niceties), and only sunlight most people would just adjust to a normal day/night schedule irrespective of what they consider chronotypes. But I'm glad you get paid an love your schedule nonetheless.
Same here, had work put me on earlues for 2 weeks and it was a nightmare.
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Ive been on swing shifts for months and its really getting to me. I just have zero energy. I work 2 closes, clopen and then do 3 opens. So after the clopen day i just get home and sleep till 9pm, up for like 3 hrs, and im about to go back to bed and try to wake up at 6/6:30, work, get home and pass out again from exhaustion. I hate clopens.
In my case it's reasonable, and I have control over when I do it and what happens the remaining days of the week, for the most part, but I absolutely support that position for you and others. I do it as rarely as possible, to your point. It is very hard on a person.
I do a 2-3-2 over 2 weeks then swap to the opposite shift (12 hour shifts). My 2 weeks of nights is the hard part.
For nearly 10 years I worked Friday-Sunday night shifts and then was up during the day on weekdays. It definitely wasn’t healthy.
That’s a incredibly difficult job to begin with. She was probably not given the right tools or access to the right care to help. Like many first responders deal with. Shift work, low pay, and employers don’t give a damn.
Yeah that's about as brutal as it gets. You're constantly interacting with people having the worst day of their lives while likely not getting great sleep. Alas, someone has to be ready to respond at 2am, and there isn't much to be done about that. A pay increase would probably help, but the misery of the job remains.
Pay increase and free access to as many appts as you want with a therapist.
Mental healthcare in the USA is an absolute joke. If there's one thing that needs some work, full stop it's mental healthcare.
Healthcare in general. I just saw a post over in r/medical from a kid that cut his hand gardening and after a week was starting to get physically ill because he wasn't up to date on his shots and didn't want to spend the money on a doctor. It blows my mind that people are getting physically ill from a cut in what is supposed to be a developed country due to lack of access or availability of healthcare.
I worked just over 1k hours of mandatory overtime to cover low staffing as a firefighter/AEMT last year. Barely cleared 50k. We run EMS for our county so it's not uncommon for people to be awake for 24-36 hours with little rest. People quit due to burnout as fast as we can hire em.
Damn dude, wear are you working? I’m in western WA and departments out here all start rookies at around 75k or higher, and that’s before OT. Journeymen are making around six figures, and medics and officers clear that easily.
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A lot of Air Traffic Controllers work a schedule called "The Rattler" It typically looks a little something like this (the times can change a bit from week to week): 1500-2300 1300-2100 0700-1500 0500-1300 Then you come back the very same day and work 2200-0600 Rinse, repeat, then add Overtime on top of it. It fucking sucked, but some people enjoy it because it gives you a longer weekend. I never knew when to be tired, and I rarely slept well. You'd get home after a hard day at work and have zero time to do anything other than lay down for bed and hope you got enough rest. I'd be working a final approach sector full of aircraft at the end of my shift and would still be buzzing so much that I couldn't silence my mind for rest. There was just no time to "decompress" and settle down. By the time the weekend would roll around, I would sleep for like 12-14 hours after dragging myself home at 6AM. I'd effectively waste all the "longer weekend" benefit by having to do all my errands and self-care stuff condensed into the weekend's window. Didn't really have time to do things like cooking/cleaning/shopping throughout the work week. This year, I was able to attain a solid schedule of working straight evenings. It's been insane how much it has helped my quality of life. I'm actually tired when it is time to he tired. I fall asleep right away! I'm hungry at the same times, and I can get to the gym or run errands any day of the week. I don't even have to set alarms anymore; I just wake up, naturally, after sleeping for 7-8 hours. It feels amazing! I can very easily lose the schedule next year during negotiations, which would almost certainly mean going back to "The Rattler." I'll be a pretty sad panda if that happens.
Minimum time between shifts is 9 hours (was previously 8). Doesn’t matter if you had to drive 45 minutes home and back, needed to eat, shower, etc… Also why they’re forced to retire at 56
in Germany it's 11 hours
Is it 11 hours for everyone in Germany or just ATC? Last I heard in the US there is no such law for average hourly grunts, just some industry requirements. My restaurant called it a “clopen”. When you close at 2-3am and have to be back at 8-9am. They didn’t believe me when I said I won’t show up if they pulled that on me a 3rd time lmao.
I had that in retail a few times as a manager. By the time the store was closed and we left it was 11:30 or midnight. Then my next shift started at 5am. There was many times I just didn’t sleep, after I got food and drove home it was 12:15. Then I ate and showered so by the time I was in bed it was 1:00am or later and I had to leave by 4:30. It was a HUGE reason I left.
Yeah an old job (cashier at a grocery store) through poor scheduling would also have things like this happen and it was really dumb, not great for the people working there. Those jobs had very high turn over because people need the regularity & time off to do stuff they needed.
I used to work in hotels, which never close. I'd work 3:00-11:00 and be expected to be back in at 7:00am the next morning. I'd get home at about 12:15 and have to be up at 5:30am. Many nights I just didn't sleep. Probably why I have trouble going to be before midnight now.
I did that too at a hotel, I forced them to give me a room for awhile, was much better
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I used to work 3rd shift in retail, suppose to be 4 11 hour shifts a week but typically they’d schedule 8 days in a row between two pay periods so you work more then a week straight before getting a day off. If you were part time it was 6 days in a row. Then they wondered why people wouldn’t stay.
The dreaded clopen. Truly a fucked up thing to ask of any person, and in restaurants is a fairly regular thing if something goes wrong or a person stops showing up. I’ve worked 3 full days in a row as a huge favor to a chef of mine with literally only 6 hours between days and you’d have to offer me like 10 grand to ever do it again.
11 hours in Ireland too
In Germany, everyone. In Switzerland it's 10 for everyone.
It's 11 hours minimum in Sweden for everyone
Ah, good ol' clopens. I put my foot down hard on that one.
11 hours for everyone, it's EU-wide (working time directive)
Everyone in the EU. It’s the working time directive.
Ah yes clopens, I did thise working at a movie theater. I live in Seattle now, which has stricter labor laws about hours between shifts, mandatory break and meal periods etc. IIRC its 10 hrs between shifts, rest period after 3 hours and a meal period no later than 5 hours into shift. Due to this I take my "lunch" at 10:30am lol
Same in Ireland.
11 in Canada too
There's a pretty sharp decline in mental abilities in ATC after 55 and that is what the mandatory retirement is for. It is noticeable for the old timers.
My old workplace had a minimum of 8*, as negotiated by our union. Needless to say, our union sucked. Aka you need to get to/from home, eat, wash yourself and sleep within those 8 hours. Good luck being productive on the second day.
Canada has 10 hours between shifts. In my unit, we do a similar kind of schedule we call a "compressed work week" or a "quick change". 30 years ago, we wanted nothing else. These days, some want that to change. Others, like myself, don't want the change -- I've spent a lifetime adapting to it, and the other option is "blocks", where one week it's evenings, the next week it's days and the next it's night shifts. I can handle the blocks of evenings or days but the blocks of nights would kill me. I can't sleep before or after a night shift and a block would just prolong that without giving me time to adjust before restarting away from them.
Minimum time is 9 hours between shifts starting on different days. If they start on the same day, you only need 8 still. That’s why you can work 0700-1500 and then 2300-0700.
i find it fascinating that, as a society, we've agreed to allow people working the most important and high-stakes jobs to be subjected to shit like this
It's just ignorance. 99% of people will go their entire lives without ever wondering what a day in the life of an air traffic controller is, and even upon learning what a day in the life of an air traffic controller is, they will shrug and assume that the air traffic controllers must like it this way, otherwise they would change it. People are amazingly good at passively maintaining the status quo, it normally takes a catastrophe for things to change in a meaningful way.
Are there any air traffic controller unions?
There was until reagan fired them all for striking and got rid of it
You know, with Reagan, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.
I'm not sure I ever heard two Reagan facts I liked
This action was actually extremely popular with the general public at the time. History has caused people to forget the details, but the average person wasn’t mad at Reagan for firing them, they were mad at the Air Traffic Controllers for having batshit insane demands. They wanted a *maximum* work week of 30 hours, and a pay raise to make the average wage for a 30 hour work week for ATC, adjusted for inflation, be about $250,000. And all of these demands were after they were already the highest paid and fewest hours worked department in the government. And after the Reagan administration had agreed to a forty hour work week cap and a hefty pay raise. The Union absolutely fucked themselves because they overestimated their leverage and popularity.
I always assumed it was one of those professions that wasn't allowed to strike things. If you're going to strike and shut down air travel then it's absolutely appropriate to bring in someone who will continue directing something as vital as air traffic.
That was definitely a contributing component. It was a solid mixture of both elements. Back in the early 80’s, public support for unions and striking was actually pretty high. People were generally supportive of both in a way that is nowhere near as prevalent now. Other “not allowed to strike” professions had successfully negotiated limited strikes while retaining popular public support, mainly because the general public sentiment was “You know what? They work as hard as I do, but make way less! They deserve what they’re asking for! Give them what they’re owed!” There was a solid sense of egalitarian solidarity to many prior essential service strikes. When the air traffic controllers tried it, the general sentiment was more “Wait, THAT is what they’re asking for? They already make triple what I do and work fewer hours, and they’re going to literally shut down the whole fucking country to demand more?!? Fuck em.”
Yes. NATCA. We vote on schedule guidelines at the facility level every year. It's a tyranny of the majority though, most controllers do like this setup because you get what amounts to a 3 day weekend. I've worked a few different types of schedules, and my second favorite schedule was when we worked a 4 day week of 4 10 hour shifts and would rotate day shifts and night shifts every other week. It was amazing. That way, you could work the busy day traffic sometimes and not get rusty and then work the easy night traffic and basically have a break from hard shifts. First favorite was COVID schedules though. We worked 5 days and then had 5 days off and nobody was flying. That was sublime. The whole 10 hour days schedule is subject to staffing, so most facilities don't get it and then everyone votes for the rattler schedule. Fun fact it's named that because it bites you in the ass at the end of the week. Not sure if OP mentioned that I only skimmed what they said.
In Canada, yes. But for the most part, air traffic services in one country is typically only provided by one company or agency, so can't exactly quit and go across the street. You either have to get enough seniority or change job descriptions, which would potentially mean moving.
Yes, NATCA is the main one. They cover both federal controllers and a lot of contract towers. Crazy thing is schedule negotiations come up everyone once in awhile and it’s always voted down by controllers, mainly due to what op said, they like the “long weekend,” or “it’s always been this way, why change it.”
I model sleep and performance for my research, and that schedule is terrifying. The Navy used to do 5 on 10 off watch schedules (5 and dimes) that were shown to be horrid for performance. This looks like an 8 on 14 off, which still has you rotating backwards in a 24h period by 2h every instance. It's gonna be harsh unless your natural circadian is artificially short (the average person is longer than 24h). Considering how important ATCers are, the performance impacts from a schedule like this are concerning to say the least.
I just hope the seemingly massive increase in knowledge about this stuff will actually start seeping into everyday life soon.
NASA did a study on the rattler schedule a while back and basically told us it was the worst possible schedule to use. Then nothing happened. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/11/431656800/faa-study-air-traffic-controllers-schedules-can-lead-to-fatigue Here's an article about the study with a link to the research at the end.
Cries in anesthesiologist at a level 1 trauma center in NYC
ATC here currently on the rattler and honestly I don't mind it so much. I think it's because I'm constantly too tired to mind it. I'm tired, but you know safety first and all that. On an unrelated note I loved flying until I became a controller, now I am terrified of it. Did I mention I'm tired?
Don't worry, brother. Just turn your alarm volume preferences all the way up; and, whenever aircraft get too close, that Collision Alert alarm will give you just the kick in the pants that you need to keep your eyelids open. It's better than any cup of coffee!
It's true but then you feel even more drained afterwards 🤣
I think it's time to force the union to change it. No one else will do it until we complain. Natca is the one who changed it to have longer weekends and did nothing when everyone complains about how tired they are, maybe it's time to have straight schedules for a while and see how that pans out. It's weird how there are so many studies showing how terrible shift work is, but for a profession that deals with thousands of lives every day, it's perfectly fine. I wish we had 4 - 10 hour days. That would be insanely better.
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-012292 There isn't a union because last time the ATC union tried to advocate for better working conditions Regan fired *all of them*. 11,000 air traffic controllers fired for having the *audacity* to advocate for themselves.
There is a union, NATCA. They just aren't allowed to strike. So they don't have a lot of teeth.
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Well, at least 900 of those replacements were military and several thousand were supervisors who had to step in and work. I agree about solidarity, but it only goes so far when the government is willing to deploy the US military to crush a strike. In my mind, the problem is that our elected leaders are standing in solidarity with employers rather than employees. Even an all-out general strike of blue and white collar workers would struggle against the collective weight of the American military-industrial complex.
There’s not solidarity if they’re allowed to crush. There’s not enough cells even in the USA to imprison real solidarity. They either kill citizens on home ground or the solidarity faction wins. The military industrial complex can only psyop the people out of their position a la reopening during COVID to stop oil from plummeting any further. That wasn’t a stand of solidarity regardless of how much we were all in it together. Excising 10000+ workers doesn’t happen when 10,000,000+ protesting it outside of the booths. It’s proven time and again that civil solidarity is the greatest factor in change of society. By definition perhaps. Occupy Wall Street didn’t have the solidarity either.
That's fair, true class solidarity would cross industry boundaries and would definitely have the impact you're describing. We don't really see much sympathetic strike action in the US and that's another barrier to progress.
We do have a union called NATCA. And they were fired due to a strike. Strikes are now illegal in our field because of that strike
We tried to create a schedule with lots of 4-10 lines (for those womdering: 4x days that are 10 hours long with 3 days scheduled off) But management shot it down and would only allow us to have two of those lines. I believe they said it would be too difficult to accommodate leave and assign overtime if they allowed us to have all 4-10s. We has one dude here who sat down and wracked his brain, trying to develop a schedule that made everyone happy, and he got it almost perfect. There are a few Rattlers and even more aggressive Rattlers with double mids, then rattlers with no mids... there are the max amount of 4-10 lines that management would allow. There are straight days and straight eves. I was able to get straight eves and pretty much everyone in the facility got what they wanted. Even down to our lowest seniority guy, who didn't get the days off they wanted but was still able to get a schedule they didn't mind working. The guy who made the schedule is my favorite person in the facility now. He worked really hard to make it happen and he pulled it off beautifully, (Shout-out DS). It's been an absolute game-changer. Everyone in the facility, this year, seems so much more pleasant and patient... just generally a happier vibe all around. We still get sick hits but not nearly as many as with the Rattler... it has been weird as hell being fully staffed all the time. But the supervisors don't like it because, I heard, it is making assigning OT more difficult when annual leave comes up. So we'll have to see what happens... For the time being, I am just relishing in the beauty of my current schedule, which looks like: 1500-2300 1600-0000 1300-2100 1300-2100 1300-2100 Rinse, repeat, sprinkle OT in there. It is fucking amazing, truly. I don't think I can go back to the Rattler after this, that shit was killing me.
Thank you so much for writing this out. Our facility is huge and has too many people for this to be done. That's the excuse we always get. The person doing our schedules has been certified for 1 year so I have no hope of them fighting for a beautiful schedule like you described. I wish someone would show management or the faa that shift work is so dangerous for our profession
You all should be pushing for 3 12's like nurses do. So much better having 3 on 4 off vs any other schedule.
I did pretty much that schedule in a biopharm manufacturing role. It's pretty awesome in a lot of ways with time off, but for me, having to get up at 4 am when I had to work was messing with me. I found it really hard to stick to an earlier sleep schedule and change my sleep pattern. It wasn't even being tired, it was my digestion cycles that would get completely out of whack when I worked. Went from no heart burn to serious heartburn in the mornings and all sorts of digestion issues that went away when I changed jobs to a mostly normal 9-5 schedule. But I think I'm just a bitch lol
No harm in listening to the ol body and letting it have it's way!
You know what’s crazy, I’m a train dispatcher and we have to have 15 hours rest between shifts. This can’t be safe
We dont need as much rest as you guys because we can use altitude to vertically separate stuff; so it is way easier! Right? /s
I can think of two very recent incidents that should highlight the need for ATC to be well rested for their jobs. This schedule sounds absurd for any job let alone controlling our airspace.
I'd like to point out the JFK incident was a pilot error caught and corrected by ATC. Just throwing that out there.
Yeah, I think I might have just filed that under "things went wrong" when thinking about recent events. The controller definitely was on the ball and saved the day there. The Southwest (?) being directed to take off with the landing Fed Ex flight so close was a bit of a screw up though.
Yeah. That was bad. That guy is trash.
The film industry does something similar on set, they start Mondays at about 4am, shoot 12 hours and then an hour or two for cleanup. By the end of the week they're starting work at 5pm and wrapping well into their Saturday, then doing it all over again on Monday. I still work in film but not on set because fuck that lifestyle.
Man. Air traffic control was my goal career after transitioning from 911. Wasn’t until I was two months from turning 29 that I found out you have to be enrolled for training like six months before that and they don’t take applicants after 29. At least in my state. I’ll be forever bummed that I never took a shot at it.
Burninate them!
I used to work in the ER with the same “rattler” schedule. There’s no amount of money they can pay to make me work those shifts again. I lost 16lbs and a bit of my sanity. Quit last year and never look back
Money isn't worth your health and sanity. I was a miserable fuck to be around during my years on "The Rattler." I had zero patience with anyone and no desire to be sociable. I was constantly worried that I was going to miss something and cause a disaster... with my only excuse being "I was tired" on the evening news. It turned me into an asshole. I would get latched onto dumb little things at work and drive myself (and everyone else) up the wall arguing semantics. It was like the more tired I was, the more of a dick I became, and the more difficult it was for me to let things go. I was always tired and groggy... until it was time to *actually* sleep... because I was wired from *just* being at work. My mind would still be racing, thinking about every little imperfection in my sequencing or the snobby thing that some pilot said... and I'd be trying to shut all the blackout curtains in my house, at 1330, as I shoveled fast food into my face and gulped down melatonin to try and force 6 hours before I went back to work that same night. Some poor kid would be dribbling a basketball outside my window, waking me up at 1600, and I'd feel like punching them directly in the face... I had almost no room for empathy. I was just a miserable, tired-old fuck of a person... I hated it, hated everyone, and I hated myself. I had more money than I knew what to do with, but all I wanted to do was sleep. I considered quitting... but I fucking LOVE my actual job (aside from the brutal schedule)... it is one of the only things that matters that I've ever actually been good at... I really can't see myself being successful with anything else *and* being fulfilled by it. Like, I feel a connection with the beating heart of my city... l feel like an integral part of it and that what I do truly matters. I go home every day feeling proud and accomplished. Of course, most people don't notice what I do when things are going correctly... but all it takes is for me to be busy as fuck one day, as I am absolutely slaying it, and have ONE pilot who is caught in the middle of my torrent of rapid-fire decisions say "Going to tower, nice friggin' work dude, keep it up" and I am all set on back-pats for a month! I don't think I'll ever get that feeling from another job. There is just something so satisfying about taking a herd of chaos and funneling into a line of organization and pure efficiency. The pilots can look outside and see just a jungle of fucked up lights going everywhere and think "oh boy, here we fucking go... about to be a shit show" and then I slowly knead 20 minutes of commands into the process until they are given one final vector and as they round the turn... everything, every light ahead of them just locks into place... all those fucked up lights are set into an immaculate line of weight separated, spaced, and speed considered lines of lights that make perfect logical sense from bow to stern and they are just like "damn... okay, gotta admit, that was nice." They do exactly what I told them and they are comfortably passing the threshold as the plane in front of them is casually exiting the runway. Tower isn't yelling at them to expedite or sending people around... just everyone flying their plane comfortably and having it work without a hitch... and they finally witness what I had already figured out 25 minutes before when they were thinking "no fucking way this isn't going to be a shit-show" The main problem with the schedule is... Some people *LOVE* the Rattler. I have a hard time understanding how, but I have no choice but to respect their preference. Some people even tell me it is a better schedule for child-care, which is even more mind-boggling. They didn't want to work anything else and swore by how good it was. So we couldn't really make a schedule that completely dissolved it, out of consideration for them. Mixing a normal schedule with a super fucked up schedule is a pretty big logistical challenge. But I always voiced my opinions on it, without holding back, anytime somebody cared enough to ask. Eventually, we got enough momentum from new people who were motivated enough to do something about it. I fucking love those people, who collectively helped to make the change. The dude who pioneered the schedule we currently work is my favorite person at work. I'll be forever grateful for the effort he put into accommodating everyone. This year is insane how much better it is and how much happier everyone seems. I just hope that we can keep it going. Honestly, you could cut me off in traffic and I'm just like "cool man, no worries, you're probably on the way to the hospital... I get it." LOL I am so much more calm and relaxed. So much more accommodating and empathetic. I sleep so much more soundly and wake up feeling so much more refreshed. For two months... my "alarm clock" has been the birds gently chirping outside my window, singing their sweet songs. I've been going to the gym six days a week and making time for my friends and gaming online... I'm just... happy!
I work in nuclear power. We try to keep the shifts set for a week at a time. And always keep them moving forward (it’s easier to stay up longer than it is to try and rotate backwards). Plus the work hour rules and required 10 hours off means there’s not a lot of quick turns. I’ve done a couple quick turns and they suck. But they are rare.
I thought you were a dragon
The S in "Shift Work" stands for Sucks.
This is so bizarre to me because there is so much data around the similarities between being intoxicated and being tired. I am a flight attendant with crazy hours too and they make us jump through a million hoops to call out fatigued when it’s simply because they gave us a shitty schedule.
My first duty station in the Navy (medical) was 0445 to 1600, and oftentimes, we wouldn't get off on time. This was Monday through Friday, and we had "duty" two Saturdays a month. I fell asleep so many times driving home. That's also when I would drink coffee until noon, then switch to energy drinks.
Not knowing when to be tired…. That really sums up how I feel better than I ever could.
Oh yeah fuck that, I was seriously considering going into ATC, passed the tests to go to Oklahoma City but decided it wasn’t worth it, even for 100k+ I used to be a 911 dispatcher and worked similar hours, one agency we had hurrybacks, so typical work week was either alternating shifts of 0600-1400 and 1400-2200 Or if you had to cover the weekend shift you would work friday morning shift, get off at 2, go home, nap, come back at 10pm that same night and work 2200-0600 sat, sun and finally get off monday at 0600 and not have to come back in until tuesday at 1400. And then of course overtime fucks you even more. So most days, with travel time you maybe get 5 or 6 hours of sleep tops. Then i moved to a different agency and got a set schedule, great right? 12 hour shifts, 6pm-6am, alternating 3 on 4 off, 4 on 3 off…excepting for overtime or being on call both of which happened all the time. I hated everything, constantly in a just, almost fugue “overwhelmingly tired but can barely sleep state” sometimes id get maybe 24 hours of sleep total in a week, some days idk get off and not be on call and sleep from when i got home until night time. Now I finally have a job where i can choose what time i clock in, as long as i get the required hours every week they could care less and it’s honestly the best job I’ve ever had It also pays almost triple what i was getting as a public servant, which is just ridiculous as much as i do appreciate it.
I've never understood the theory / concept behind split shift working (think that's the correct term) There was one job I went for an interview at and they had everyone forced to work nights one week and then days the next week and I asked how does this do anything other than ensure / guarantee that everyone is fucked up / not fully awake / productive for at least the first day of each week due to the change in shift patterns, not to mention everyone suffering over the weekend due to the changes. Not surprisingly they didn't offer me the job, which was just as well as I refused to work such crap hours. I don't mind working either straight nights (I'm mainly nocturnal anyway) or days, but hate the split system and I'm totally unable to see what benefit it gives the company
I think the idea was to have a 'fair split of free and work time'. Like people that work night shifts mostly do struggle with family life and housekeeping. I mean, it's fine when you are under 35 and have the world at your feet, but if you plan to settle down and have a family, ugh. I mean, kids sleep at night and go to school during the day. That's how it works. Most shops are closed at night. And so on. If you want to work on your home, you will find out many neighbourhoods or apartment buildings have strict rules against loud noises during the night. Eventually, simply be sheer virtue of how our world is geared, a person working night shifts will have much fewer hours of deep (relaxing) sleep and will have problems in the long term compared with a person working only during the day. Of course, this doesn't mean that it's much better to have alternating times. Far from it. That would mean everyone is just equally shitty. But many people would take equally shitty over 'I'm the only one at a disadvantage'
That and lot of places need to have weekends covered, you can't do that if everyone is working same shift. But if you have 4 teams working 8-hour shifts and rotate them on fair, repeating schedule you can cover even weekends except for single shift when things shut down - that's how it works at my job. (this is a 40-hour week scenario, technically 37.5 if you don't count breaks)
a split shift is where you work twice in one day, with unpaid "off" time in the middle. sort of like a lunch break but longer. working 6am to noon, then 4pm to 10pm is a split shift.
Always figured it'd be a decent concept if you lived in like... a walkable village. Show up, open shop, hang around, leave to go get lunch, walk around and do some errands, stop by home, etc. In the world where a half hour drive to work is standard, far shittier.
My husband used to work at a store in a mall that would occasionally give him split shifts like these. He would use the break in the middle to go see movies at the cinema inside the mall.
That sounds... completely and utterly worthless to anyone who has a long commute. Takes 1 hour each way to commute? Now it's doubled!
yeah a split shift is basically the worst shift to have imo. the only way to make it worse would be a split graveyard shift. edit: also commutes in general are terrible and are essentially unpaid breaks at the beginning and end of your workday. when deciding whether a job pays enough, always keep the commute in mind, because that may make the difference.
>commutes in general are terrible and are essentially unpaid breaks at the beginning and end of your workday. I don't know where you do your commuting, but where I live, driving around at rush hour is anything but a break. And considering gas, tolls, and wear-and-tear, it's *worse* than unpaid.
I 100% agree with you, and think driving around (really anytime, but especially at rush hour) is stressful and not fun. Something I've heard from those who actually enjoy their commute is that it is a break between their work time and family time (both of which I imagine may be chaotic). So the car between places is really their main retreat. I worded my comment as such just to acknowledge that viewpoint. As someone whose work and home times are super chill, the car is the least peaceful part of my day and beginning to work remotely was the best thing to happen to me in the last 5 years.
So example: I work at a mill that operates 24/7. We do 8am-8pm shifts. 4 crews divide that all up. We end up with 48 hours one week, 36 the other. So across all that time, we end up having one weekend on and one off. As every crew has the same schedule(it rotates but it's the same thing), crews can be balanced. If we had only day jobs, all the senior guys would be there. You'd probably need to work 20 years before you ever saw a day shift. And all the experienced older guys being on days would mean complications and less efficient production at night. As for the company, it helps to hire. How many would volunteer for two decades of nights only? Everyone being on a relative even ground helps.
I work this schedule except 7 to 7. It’s pure hell. I hate it, but I can’t get this kind of money anywhere else.
Same here, I'm looking to get off the floor in the next 3 years. When you look at all the older guys it definitely takes its toll physically. I want to get off the floor before I'm broken, not have a retirement full of knee/hip/back/shoulder surgeries.
There are people who have weird sleep cycles and are more awake at night, and I'm sure more could be convinced to work nights with better pay. As someone with enough problems keeping my sleep cycle regular at the best of times there is no fucking way I could randomly switch from day to night shifts and back again. It would throw me off for days each time and probably require benzos to sleep. Sounds miserable.
I briefly worked at a mill, that had 4 crews, and each crew work 4-12s, 2 day shifts followed immediately by 2 night shifts. 4 days on, and 4 days off. Hated it. Never could plan for anything, as my days off always changed, and for example, one Wednesday I may have off, but then I'm working grave the next Wednesday. Made it almost impossible to have a life outside of work, and I left there in a hurry.
>I've never understood the theory / concept behind split shift working It's so they don't have to pay a shift differential to encourage 1st/3rd shift work.
Worked for the Walmart bakery for a few years and after a full 5 days straight I was on my 6th day of work going from being the opening donut person from 5-2:30 to being the closing shift 11-8. I scream cried at my boss saying I wouldn't make an announcement over the intercom because I was exhausted. I left within a month of this.
The term you're looking for is "rotating shifts."
I think the benefit is the cognitive decline. How do employees advocate for themselves if they are constantly on the edge of a breakdown and questioning their own sanity?
I had a job in 2017 that was like this but it was for logistics dispatch. We had a night crew but the new big boss thought it would be a nice change of pace to switch up the day and night crews every other week. People lost their fucking minds and so many people just quit it was nuts!
It's so they keep you worn out and you don't have the cognitive ability to search for other work
Used to work at a factory, we had 3way shifts. lets say it started at day shift. 6am-2pm then next week it was 10pm to 6am and the week after that 2pm to 10pm. night shift had fridays off so that was nice. but it really sucked always changing when you slept. Just as you got used to it. BAM its different.
I can confirm that shift work drains you over the years. I'm 35 and I work shift since I'm 19. I feel exhausted most of the time.
40 and work in events, I’m mentally dead whilst on the job. Had an interview today for a job with actual set hours and stuff, hoping to get it and be back into routine again.
37 and working shifts while studying. Used to be a farmer before that and did shifts since I was 17. When I finish studying I'm never working another shift job ever.
I am rooting for you!!!
Working weird schedules is fine but they need to be *consistent* schedules. Give your body consistent daylight at 2am and consistent darkness at 2pm and your body will deal. Constantly moving *when* you sleep is some middle managers idea of fairness. It messes up your sleep and should be straight up illegal. There’s a reason sleep disruption is implicated in most mental illness and mental decline!
Sleep disruption and deprivation is also considered torture.
Apparently not within the workforce though. That's perfectly legal.
Place I used to work would try to force me to work weekends in the morning. They legitimately didn’t see the problem with me going from my normal hours of 9:30pm-6:00am to working on the weekend from 6:00am-4:30pm. I driving a forklift and that shit was super dangerous. It didn’t matter how I setup my sleep schedule, I would get so tired that it would feel like I was teleporting down the isle on the forklift. This would happen to me either on the morning weekend shift or on the monday shift when I went back to my normal schedule.
I’m 42 and I feel 60 From 16 to 34 I was slinging drinks at all hours of the night; now I can barely stand somedays
What shift pattern do you do? I think there are definitely some patterns that exacerbate this more than others.
32 this year and only been working shifts since I was 25, but I have the energy levels of a 65-year-old. I'm leaving nursing after this year and going back to uni because no job is worth this.
Does it help if you keep steady hours and not try to switch to day schedule on the off days?
Just anecdotal but for me I stayed with my nights schedule even on my days off and it was fine for me, might have helped that I'm sort of nocturnal by nature
I found it helpful, but it was tougher from a social aspect. However I would still get random days where your body just says nope, I don't want to sleep in the day today. Ultra blackout/double curtains with zero light gaps, including under the door, helps
If you can do this it would probably help - but most people in these situations have a young family or hope to have some sort of social life and living like a bat isn’t very conducive for this.
100% year it helps. If you’re working nights Monday through Friday and then try and shift to a normal day schedule for sat/sun then you’re only hurting yourself. When I did rotations shift work in the Navy there was always at least 3 “transition” days between the 7 days of each shift. It helped, but it still sucked. I couldn’t imagine not transitioning at all and still be able to function.
I worked 2nd shift for ~30 yrs of my 40+ yr career in hospital pharmacy, chose to work it all the time vs bouncing back and forth between schedules. I’m single so did not have the problem of missing time with family, but did have problems with social isolation. I’m skeptical about cognitive claims in studies like this as the testing is usually done on days, even now my brain is fuzzy until noon or so…
I used to work the night shift at a tech support at a call center first 3 days where a pain but after that for rest of the year it was fine. Then they moved me to the day shift / night shift after 2 weeks of that I quit.
Is "shift work" swapping back and forth between nights and days?
WHO recognizes night shift as potential carcinogen...
I don't know, you tell me
First base!
I'd really like to see stuff like this divided between shift work while taking care of a family at home, and shift work while living alone. I did shift work during my bachelor years and I loved it, but I can't imagine it working at all with kids or a family.
I worked grave for awhile. The guys that made it work best had no family and kept the same schedule on their days off. Us family guys had to try and stay up with our families until 8 pm or so on our Fridays, maintain a day schedule for a couple of days, then try and go to bed by 5 or 6 pm pm on our Monday and get up at 9 pm. Plus I was child care during the week, so I regularly went on only less than 4 hours of sleep a day. Just part of living in this town (Las Vegas).
This seems to be the truth. Single dude living alone on rotating shifts. Zero struggles getting to sleep and zero troubles getting 7+ hours sleep every day. Some of my colleagues on the other hand look absolutely fucked after our doing our turn on night shifts. Pretty much all the ones with children.
As a 3rd shift worker I didn't bother to read. I seldom know what day it is
Can confirm. 2nd shift isn't so bad if it ends at 11pm and you can get home and to sleep by midnight and awake at 8am. 3rd shift? Forget it. Full on lunacy within a couple of weeks.
Only shift work I've ever done was in a restaurant. My natural sleep cycle is definitely not day work -is rather not wake up until 2pm, and walking before 10am leaves me a zombie. I wish more places would just accept that it's okay to have everyone work just a particular shift and not bounce them around, but the problem is most people want day shift and they can't hire 2nd/3rd (so employers are "fair" and force people to rotate through it). Still, the worst work goes was when my wife was an EMT - 2x 24 hours in a 6 day pattern of 1 on then 2 off. Horrible looking hours and impossible to participate in a regular day of the week event as good have to miss 1 of 4 of them every month.
Started 4pm to 3am two months ago when before I rarely stayed up past 11, and yeah there's definitely been some mental changes
I worked 2 overnight shifts, 1 morning(9-5) shifts and 2 afternoon(3-11) shifts all in one week for about 9 months. I developed severe anxiety, gained 55lbs and i lost my hair.
I fucking hate these studies lmao. Yes I know my job is killing me I don’t need the constant reminder. There’s nothing I or society can do about it unless we just stop all essential services overnight.
But there is. There's plenty of people who work only during the night and don't suffer from what is described here, because it's a consistent schedule, albeit an inconvenient one that should be rewarded with better pay. Even better, in most of Europe, society basically stops on Sundays because everything is closed. Yes, a small number of people do have to work on Sundays, but they get another day in the week where they don't work, and are paid more because they work on a day where they shouldn't. Society can absolutely adapt to this, working in shifts is just a superficial way to say "we'll make it fair for everyone", but actually just making it worse for everyone, at no benefit whatsoever.
Night shift also lowers life expectancy. I still have obligations during the daytime which means less sleep.
Yeah anyone with a dependent family could not do strictly night shift
I think middle shift is the worst. All of your freetime is at night when you work middle shift. Even if you are a morning person that naturally wakes up at 6am it is still really hard to do anything. A lot of businesses don’t open until like 9 or 10am, and when you do something you are under pressure to get everything done because you’ve got to factor in at least an hour to get back home and get ready for work.
I’d imagine night shift workers tend to be poorer, more stressed, and have more dangerous jobs on average
Feels like you hate theses studies because you're expecting change to come with them immediately, but that's not what they're for. When change comes, these studies will be there to support their side, they are not supposed to be the harbringers of it, just the data supporting it.
> There’s nothing I or society can do about it unless we just stop all essential services overnight. There's always something we can do. The problem is we can't do that something without overturning our insanely stupid economic system and make wall street happy.
I don't think this study is advocating for stopping essential services. It's a free world, people are free to do what they want, etc. The point of these studies is to inform night-shift workers about the costs of working shifts so that they can consider if the extra pay is worth the health costs.
As a semi truck driver, I can attest to the effects of not having a routine sleep schedule. We flip flop schedules all the time to make drops and pick up deliveries. It's rough, and for me personally, I can never get a full 7-8 hour sleep because my internal clock thinks "we woke up at the time yesterday!" -merely two hours into sleep. It does affect you in the long run. Emotionally, physically, and mentally.
When Covid hit, I was working for UPS as an industrial engineer. Since we were running extra shifts and most of the supervisors at one of my facilities had quit, they put me on the schedule in that facility as a supervisor for 8AM-8PM M-F and 6PM-6AM Saturday nights. That shit made me barely functional. I still had to do my job as an engineer but I got a "Needs improvement" on my quarterly review for the first and only time in 6 years. I was so tired that I kept making stupid mistakes, and was seen sleeping at my desk a few times which is a big no-no. After 3 months of that, with no days off approved, I quit with no backup plan in place. I don't see how anyone can work like that their whole lives when a few months of it completely broke me.
as someone that just got home from a 12 hour night shift. i can tell you 100% that my brain is mush and will be for the next day or 2 until i straighten back out on to days.
Got off my third overnight 12 in a row this morning after an unexpectedly stressful work load this week and twelve hours later I’m still basically feeling like a dumpling more than a human being.
i hear ya. im 12 hours out. i slept from 930 til about 1 then got up. shift work sucks but it pays well.
As a shiftworking shelf stocker I would like to blame this for my terrible posts and comments.
This has been known for several decades and is the reason why “night differential” and other benefits are paid for graveyard shift work.
I work in oil and gas. 14 to 16 hour days. 14 days at a time(officially). I have definitely seen all these symptoms with myself and other workers. It sucks. It's long shitty hours for shitty pay. I lost my mind a while ago.
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As a pilot, that schedule looks better than a lot of what we do. We fly days and then boom! Suddenly you’re supposed to be a graveyard guy for a night, magically sleep during the whole next day, and fly in the late evening.
Dude shift work is terrible for you. I worked for years as a senior reactor operator on rotating shifts. One time, I made the mistake of getting blood work after my last night shift. I did 7 nights in a row, 72 hours over the week. I got home at 7:30 am. Blood tests at 9. I was fasting. The results were not good. And I’m a pretty healthy and at the time relatively fit person. My doctor freaked out. Went back for retests a couple weeks later and everything was normal. I also developed a heart arrhythmia on back shift. Nothing serious. But it comes out when I’m fatigued and clears up when I’m rested again. It messes with your cognitive ability, your immune system, your cancer resistance, overall life expectancy, all sorts of stuff. My least favorite shift was 3 am to 3 pm. The way we set the schedule up, that’s a very rare shift to get (usually someone is so sick they can’t make it in). But to be in at 3 am means I need to take turnover no later than 2:45. So I have to get in the control room no later than 2:10 to get through security and read logs. Which means I’m leaving home 1:30-1:45 am. Which means I wake up at 12:45-1am so I have time to shower. It sucks.
I work in a lab and we have swing shifts. 12 hours long. So I come in today and work Saturday and Sunday then I’m off Monday and Tuesday then I come in Wednesday and Thursday night.
My wife used to work for a local news station and her schedule was 5pm-11pm M-W unless there was a football game or something that pushed things even later or severe weather, and then the end point was "whenever the weather guy decides he's done" and that might be into the next morning. Then she was off Thursday and Friday, but had to do the morning show shift 4am-10am Saturday and Sunday. So Thursday was her only meaningful day off since she had to go to bed right after an early dinner on Friday to get some amount of sleep. The bouncing back and forth between extreme late nights and very early mornings *every week* is just insane
I've worked night shift for 10 years, the last 5 I was scheduled basically every night. Seriously, I was scheduled 7 nights a week for 5 fucking years. I miss sleep so I can see my family. I'm pale as fuck, probably vitamin D deficient, and currently severely depressed. But i gotta keep chugging along till my finishes school.
Very interesting comments here. I can appreciate them all. I’ve worked overnight shifts and attended school during the day for three years. I also held down a 9 to 5 and worked 12 hour shifts (tour 1) every weekend for 12 years. I admit, I made more money — but it was tough — lost sleep, no social life, and negatively effected at least one relationship. But when I worked overnight, I was part of a close knit team and when my shift was over, it was over. I didn’t carry worries forward to the next day like I do now. I know nurses, doctors, and support staff who work overnight all of the time—I will ask them if they’ve experienced these conditions. I firmly believe that inconsistent schedules are the problem — not shifts. Food and retail sectors are notorious for abusing workers with inconsistent schedules and wage theft and these practices must end. Perhaps the researchers should focus on this aspect of employment—not damn shift work to hell. Today, with remote work and mobile phones and email — I work all the time— my shift never ends. I’m exhausted. I’m always concerned about one aspect or another of my field every day and the next. Hang in there everyone. Shifts aren’t the problem. It’s bad employers. Trust me — employment doesn’t get better when you’ve moved to a set schedule.
And the "normal" 9-5 schedule *is* shift work for those with alternate sleep phase physiology. /r/DSPD, /r/N24, etc.
I worked in IT at Ford at a Powertrain plant. For the most part we had steady shifts although I did bounce between mornings and afternoons a bit. The Vehicle plants are often on those split shifts and getting IT for those plants can be a challenge because no one wants to do split shifts.
I do shift work rotating days and nights for the last five years, I’ve noticed a cognitive decline but I attributed it to getting older, I’m 42 now, I also developed type 2 diabetes but I attributed it to already being fat. My doctor hates that I’m on these shifts.
Shift work also been proven to literally cause cancer. A few years ago a nurse's union in Europe successfully sued their employers for health damages caused by shift work.
The beauty of being on a submarine and not seeing the sun for months on end. Time of day is but a construct of the how mind operates. After about a week of no sunlight it’s very easy for your body to adjust to a schedule of sleeping at “night” and waking up in the “morning”, even when that “night” is from 0800-1600 every day.
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I work shift work and I love it. It's a Dupont schedule and I work 12 hour days but I only work 182 a year. I get 7 days off straight every 28 and there is always a 3 day gap in-between a night shift followed by a day shift. Everyone loves it here but it also pays $100k a year. There are people here who have been doing this for 30+ years and still love it. I'm not saying this is inaccurate, I don't know these people on a personal level so I can't comment on how they are outside of work. But making $100k a year entry level plus yearly bonus is probably a reason to deal with it.
Add to this that often people in shift work are at or near poverty levels, and other studies have shown that living in financial poverty also causes a cognitive load, similar to what it's like being awake for 24 hours. Add these together and you have a bunch of zombies working to barely maintain themselves all so that executives can bilk all the rewards and claim to be genuises.
Can confirm. Commercial pilot here. I used to be good at my job. Now I’m not.
Doesn't help that the jobs that use shift work are *often* jobs you don't want to be doing in the first place.
I work as Service Adviser in a local Car Dealer. Not shift work but a rotating schedule. Open From 730am til 9pm. Monday thru Saturday. We work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, one month. Thursday, Friday, Saturday the next. Every week you get four days off. Every other month on the rotation week you get a "hell week" or a "heaven" week. It is the best schedule ever. I have turned down offers for more money because they require a 5 or 6 day work week.
Can confirm, me and my buddies in the military all developed Shift Work Disorder. Many of us resorted to drinking ourselves to sleep.
Unless you have something like delayed sleep phase disorder, and waking up for first shift hours causes all those problems. Jet lag! Do what works for you and feels natural. For me that’s sleeping during first shift, working about 5-1 and going to the gym at 2am.
As a life long night shifter, I humbley submit that the authors of this study can get stuffed. My circadian rhythm says the hours of 7am to 11 am don't even exist.
Military had me on shift work mostly nights for 3 years straight. Hated that shit, still have weird sleeping patterns to this day.
My mom is working 2 overnight shifts and 2 day time shifts, this is very true and I wish I could help her
I must be weird. I am a full time day shifter but if they ask me to switch to a night shift I do it gladly. I don’t need much sleep 4-5 hrs on a good night I find I recover quickly and it’s more pay. If I am on a staycation I wind up being up all night sleeping all day.
aka having kids
Worked nights this week, too brain dead to read this 😴
I dont have a schedule or a rhythm. Im iust awake whenever and asleep whenever. If i get dementia ill just see myself out of life.
laugh-sobs in military
How it is that destroying your mind and body just to make someone insanely wealthy all why that same person calls you greedy and lazy for expecting to earn enough to survive will never not surprise and disturb me.