Generally, when someone works for a company for a long time, they get the better hours. Better shifts. Am I wrong? Every place I’ve ever worked (even my husband’s company but in a different department), you start out working graveyard’s (or third shift, or overnights). Then after a few years, people leave, you pay your dues, you get rewarded with better shifts.
Am I right? Why else would people stick around at a 24 hour job if it wasn’t for the hope of working “days” eventually?
I mean, I’m not just imagining this am I?
Well, apparently I am because my husband has the most seniority in his department (even more than his manager) yet he’s still working third shift.
(oh, and his shifts “can” change because every 12 weeks they draw numbers for new shifts, but for some stroke of bad luck he keeps getting stuck with the 3rd shift…over and over and over…)
As a family with 3 young, noisy boys. This sucks.
It’s hell for me to try and keep the boys quiet and entertained during the day so that Bob can get enough sleep to (barely) function. It’s hard to plan family activities around his wacky and ever-changing schedule. Even when he gets days off, he has to spend half of the time sleeping.
This results in a lot of grouchiness.
And, just yesterday, I made the promise to Anthony that “tomorrow is your dad’s day off, so he can take you down to see the submarines.” Well, today is tomorrow and where is his dad? Sleeping. I kinda forgot about the fact that dad needed to sleep instead of spending the afternoon doing something fun with his kid.
My bad.
I just want my husband to have a little bit of “normalcy” in his day. He’s worked hard. He’s old(er). I want him to enjoy having his son’s around while they are young enough to still want him around instead of being so tired that he just wants them to sit down and be quiet. He’s missing all the best parts of our boys.
Can you tell that I’m just a tad bit annoyed? There are plenty of people in his department that are younger, have no kids and more importantly, have less seniority. Why can’t they have the crappy shifts? My husband needs a break. His kids need their (awake & coherent) dad.
If you have a spouse working the overnight shifts, how do you manage? How do you get enough quality time together? How do you save your sanity??
I agree with you. I think ANYONE with that much seniority deserves better shifts! I remember when I was working for a call centre (Inbound only… I don’t harass people) When we first started, our shifts went by the last 4 digits of our social insurance number (Same as your SSN) but once we had been there for over 6 weeks, we had a better system. I think they need to take into consideration your husbands dedication to the company!
Oh Rhea, I feel for you and so very much understand. I worked nights for 12 years. Yep..12 long tired crabby years. I remember the “days off” which either you slept half of them away OR stayed awake and spent the day crabby and miserable. I was lucky enough, if you can call it that to spend most of those years working while the boys were in school fulltime. Yet thank you to whoever decided all day kindergarten way necessaryl
I also relate to the Daddy not being there and missing the boys lives. Scott and I only spent a year together, the rest of Kaden’s four years have been spent with him seeing his Daddy for a day or so on weekends. And it sucks. Your a single parent..you deal with everything.
While I have absolutely no advise for you..just know your not alone.
I totally know where you’re coming from!
My husband has been stuck on graves for the last two years and it sucks! We also have three young boys and he missed out on a lot of stuff. When he’s awake, he’s tired and crabby, and I just tell him to go back to bed because it’s not worth the tension and arguments in the house when he’s up. And on his nights off he plays softball or bowls on a league (depending on the season) so there is no time for anything with the family.
And as far as the kids go, they miss him! I feel like a single parent most of the time and quite overwhelmed. I finally told him that something had to fo before my sanity did! He was able to talk to his supervisor and get put on days a couple weeks out of the month, and he cut back on his sports.
It’s hard, especially if you have kids in sports and school and you’re the only one shuffling them around everywhere. Know you’re not alone and eventually it does get better. Like I said, I totally empathize with you and know where you are coming from! Good luck!
My boyfriend worked nights when we first moved to a new city. Well he worked a full 3rd shift and I ended up on second so we were both miserable. He had joint custody of his daughter who lives 45 minutes away and we could only really get her on weekend but we were so tired! Luckily we both eventually left where we were and got new jobs. He is on first shift 7:30-4. Unfortunatly now I work Thursday, Friday and Saturday 7:30 am – 8pm. That would be great if I had small children because I would only need a sitter two days a week but I don’t have any kids of my own. And since we still get his daughter friday afternoons to saturday afternoon I don’t see her except from the time I get home from work which is about 8:45 until one of us goes to bed which is usually by 10. We do also get her wednesdays but its only 5-8 and since we don’t have enough time to take her back to our place we just take his daughter to his moms since she lives close by for dinner. We wish we had jobs closer to his daugher but there are no jobs out that way so he had to move closer to a big city. We each still drive about 45 minutes east of our place to work and its about 45 minutes west from our place to pick up his daugher. Luckily now that she is 9 (gosh when I first met her she was just turning 3!) she is starting to understand that we have to work so we can pay bills and I work friday and saturdays and can’t change that.
That is so unfair that your hubby keeps getting drawn for 3rd shift. They should do it so that whoever gets 12 weeks on 3rd should get the next 12 weeks on a different shift!
Bob should talk to his boss because you are totally right; he’s missing his kids growing up. My brother in law just started third shift on a NEW job (no seniority there!) His daughter is almost 17 and it’s still hard for them to function as a family when he’s a 3rd shift zombie. I worked 3rd when I was in my early twenties and all I did was work, eat, sleep, then do it again the next night. It was miserable. My dad worked 3rd for 22 years. I was always alone after school (he was sleeping until dinner time, when he would eat then, you guessed it, leave for work) and I spent all day trying not do to anything to wake him up. From a child’s perspective, IT SUCKED!!! I hope you guys are able to work something better out for your family.
They shouldn’t draw for the shifts, it should be automatic rotation for all, days goes to afternoons, afternoons goes to night and nights go to days.
If it is twelve hour shifts nights goes to days and days goes to nights.
The people who have had days off are the ones coming in on the shift change day so it may seem they’ve had fewer days off, but that’s the way it goes on that one day.
For the health of everyone involved shift changes like this should not happen more frequently than once every three months, preferably once every six months, why? Because studies have shown that people that undergo more frequent shift changes have a shorter life span because the biological clock keeps getting disrupted.
I’m glad my husband is back on days. He did that 12 hr. night thing and with drive time/change over stuff it ends up being closer to 14 hours that he was gone. He’d come home, eat, stay up two hours maybe, then to bed until it was time to get up to get ready for work again. My husband is older too, so I hear you. You do get concerned about their health, but you also want a home life too.
Hopefully my husband can stay on the day shift, because there is another guy that wants to stay on nights. They have the same days on and same days off on the schedule. The bosses told the guys if they could buddy up with another person who wants the opposite shift then they can stay where they are. So, we will see if this still holds true when it’s time to once again shift. They are shifting I think every six weeks for now on. I told him this was not good, but he says the bosses do what the bosses want.
I truly feel this is the reason 12 hour shifts are baaaaaadddddd!!!!!! They are
not good mentally or for relationships, if people have to be on shifts than
shifts should not be longer than 8 hours. People need awake time with their
families, not just grouch time then sleep.
My husband is so grouchy when he works the night shift too. Some people’s biological clocks can’t adjust to them as well as others. I think it’s more true as we age.
Boo!
No fun. -At all!!
My husband worked graveyards for 9 years. It was hell. During that time, he had his shift changed a couple times to days. It always went back to graves. Then when I was pregnant, we requested that he be put on swings because I was having seizures and could not drive so he had to be around to drive me to the doctor. It took a lot of wrangling to get them to do it.
Now he has been there 15 years and they won’t change his start time back to 8:30 am or 9 am from 11 am. Unfortunately, seniority doesn’t always give you any pull as far as shifts go. But I know how hard it is to be quiet while your hubby sleeps all day and how grouchy they are even when they didn’t get woken up at all. Human beings are not made to work all night long. It actually can damage your health to do that long term.
I wish you luck getting it all worked out. And that lottery thing has to be against some labor law. It just has to be.
In my first trimester of pregnancy and I have abt 10 more weeks of overnights left at work until summer break. I have 3 kids at home all in elem school. I am exhusted. When I’m off work I sleep abt 14 hours!