I decided to start this blog to help out people that might work on the back shifts. I believe people on the back shifts deserve a better life and a great recognition. They sacrifice a lot, but no one talks about their contributions.

I know what you’re thinking, so why you? Why would you write about the people on the back shifts. Well, I have been working on the back shifts for a 2 months now. Mid way through it, I decided to capture the struggle. Here is a tad bit of my story that put me to do this experiment:

I work for a fortune 100 company and I work as an assistant production manager. I am in charge of a department where I oversee three shifts for a 12 and 2 production schedule (we work 12 days and shutdown for 2 days in a 14 day period). Each shift has its own supervisor. Unfortunately, I had a supervisor that had a family emergency so she went out on a leave. My other supervisor, wanted to quit because he had to take care of his elderly parents. Both events coincided at the same time. So I only had one supervisor left to cover three shifts.

My plan was to find coverage, since we have other supervisors that work in different departments that can cover the job. However, my boss had other ideas. My boss decided that I will cover the back shifts. My boss wanted me to get exposure and understand our operation on the back shifts.  The shift was going to be anywhere from 7 pm to 7 am. Without any hesitation, I decided to agree and just do it. But I had no idea what this was going to do for me personally and professionally.

The Journey

Before I started working on the back shifts I had a normal life. I used to work 8- 11 hours per day, play sports 2 – 4 times per week, cook and eat at home, and go on social events with my friends whenever possible and over hang out with them over the weekend.

The first week I was working from 7 pm to 3 am so it didn’t have a huge impact on my life. However, I started to slowly stepping away from sports because most of my games were at night. I also started sleeping less because my body was wired to wake up by 5 am every morning. Enjoying my time with my friends was no longer an option because I couldn’t join them for trivia or any nightly events. One thing that still remained the same, which is me cooking  and eating food at home.

As weeks progressed, my shift moved to 11 pm to 7 am and sometimes 7 pm to 7 am. At these times, I started noticing a lot of physical and physiological effects that I would like to share.

Sleep:

Once I was fully on the new schedule, it happened on week 2, I wasn’t able to sleep at all. I used to get off of work around 7:15 am and by the time I get home it would be closer to 8 am. Sometimes driving back home was a struggle where I was half a sleep while driving, but I was able to make it (not the proudest moment of my life). Once I get home, I would take a nap for an hour, whenever possible, because of the annoying phone calls from telemarketers, my apartment complex mowing the lawn, and the work phone calls I would get to solve on-going issues.

By the time I try to get back to sleep, it would be mid day (3 or 4 pm) and it would only last for 2 hours before I head back to work.

So, I was only averaging 3 – 4 hours of sleep every day.

Sports:

I was not able to play any sports because most sports are at night. Even when some of the sports were played in the late afternoon, it would cut into my nap time and I wasn’t able to sacrifice that yet. I haven’t been working out constantly too so it didn’t make a difference.

Cooking:

Everyday when I wake up from either naps I felt so tired, I didn’t want to get out of bed, and all what I kept thinking about is how do I get back to bed and sleep. I used to get so worried on my second nap, the one from 3 – 4 pm, because I would always feel I am going to miss work so I wasn’t able to sleep well. Also, I stopped cooking at home and instead I started eating lunch meats every single day. I would take some of the lunch meats with some bread and make sandwiches at work. Since that wasn’t enough, I started taking candy, granola bars, protein meals, and all the non-value added food with me and just munch on them most of the night.

Social life:

By now, you probably figured out the trend. I didn’t have a social life and my friends started to distant themselves from me because they know I would either decline or not respond to any invitations.

Conclusion and emotional effect:

In conclusion, I gained about 10 lbs in 5 weeks, my life became a mess, and I started to feel emotionally disturbed. There was also a second side of it too, which is the work side. Although I was working nights, I felt that everyone did not appreciate the work I was doing and every email I received or read felt as if people were attacking me. Even that our company culture is about developing people.

Survival Plan

With all what I had going on, I decided to find solutions to better my life. I started to listen to motivational speakers everyday and it made me super motivated. I also decided to figure out a way to survive this and share my experience with others.  Here is my survival list:

Sleep:

I had three options to overcome my sleep issues:

1. Buy darker shade blinds.
2. Buy a sleeping mask.
3. Over the counter medications. I used Melatonin as my option.

Since I have been tired, I just went ahead and bought the sleeping mask. I was able to sleep for 4 hours once I get home, go do chores once I wake up, then take a final nap for two hours before I start my shift.

This has helped a bit. I was averaging 6 hours of sleep every day.

Sports:

I was only able to play sports, soccer to be precise, one time during the past 7 weeks I have spent so far on the back shifts. The only time I played I was out of gas and I wasn’t able to run for more than 2 minutes so I had to be subbed out a lot. However, I started doing yoga to get myself in shape. I grabbed the first Youtube video and I followed the instructor.  For granted, this was my first time ever doing yoga and I thought it would be easy, but boy I was wrong. It is a hard exercise and it also made me focus on my life a bit.

Cooking:

I haven’t cracked the code on cooking yet, but I have been able to make rice on a rice cooker then add protein to it every day. My protein options were chicken, steak, and beans most of the time.

I am going to start cooking over the down weekends. My plan is to cock meals for two weeks to cover my everyday needs until the next down weekend. I’ll share in the future if that works.

Social life:

I decided to put my social life on hold until I figure out the essential three (sleep, sports, and cooking).

Conclusion:

Working on the back shifts is hard. It’s a life style and people would have to adapt to it.

I’ll share more as time progresses.