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Night shift. Graveyard. “Shift of the Living Dead”. What ever you call it, ya gotta be just a little bit nuts to even think about working at night. Switching to graveyard shift takes a couple months to get used to, but if you are committed to working these ungodly hours, here are some tips to make the switch to graveyard shift as painless as possible.
**Alert Your Friends and Family**
This change of shift isn’t just going to affect you, ya know. Before you do anything else, tell everybody you know that you’ve switched to graveyard shift. This little piece of advice will save you countless groggy wake up calls in the middle of the day. Just about the worst thing that could happen when working graveyard shift is to have your brother drop by for breakfast at 10 a.m., right in the middle of your dream about Disneyland. Working graveyard shift is bad enough, but trying to do it without sleep is terrible. Also, try to make sure that you can pay most of your bills either online or by phone. Remember, the middle of your day will be about 1 a.m. for the rest of the world, so it’s not like you can drop by the insurance company to pay your premium.
**The Shift Change**
Sleep is very high up on my list of priorities for surviving graveyard shift. If you’re like most people, you’re used to being up in the day time, and your body isn’t gonna like you very much when you try to make it work when it’s supposed to be sleeping. The easiest way I’ve found to give your body a 180 degree shift change is to do it gradually. Hopefully your employer has given you enough time to adjust (4 or 5 days should do it), so the best way to change shifts is to stay up 2-3 hours later than you normally would each night, until you reach your target bed time.
If your boss is a slave driver and wants you to change shifts on a couple days notice, you’ll have to try to stay up at least 4 hours later than you normally would. Be prepared, because you will be tired. Very, very tired. To go along with this little tidbit of info, I don’t recommend sleeping on your breaks at work to try to catch up on rest either, unless you want the day shift supervisor waking you up and handing you a pretty pink piece of paper.
**Keep Your Shift On Your Days Off**
I realize that most of us have kids, and a lot of the time this isn’t possible, but keeping the same hours every day of the week is the healthiest way to survive graveyard shift. Some of the people I work with switch to day shift on their days off, and doctors say that this is just about the worst thing you can do for your health. Constantly changing your biological clock is extremely stressful on your body and can lead to numerous health problems such as high blood pressure. Plus, it’s a lot harder to go back to work after the weekend, as you have to adjust to graveyard shift all over again. If you know what’s good for you, don’t switch to days on your weekends. You’re a night worker now–the few, the proud, the crazy.
**Find a Hobby**
Night shift workers are a very lonely breed, especially on the weekends. Your friends won’t appreciate a call in the wee hours of the morning just to say hi. Nobody’s awake after midnight for the most part, so you’re pretty much in your own little world once you switch to graveyard shift. My advice is to get a gym membership to 24 Hour Fitness or another all night health club. If you’re not the workout type, make the best of your Blockbuster membership. You could even start your own blog. Now there’s something that will make those lonely hours just fly by! Just don’t sit there and watch TV, because I guarantee you’ll run out of money before QVC runs out of Elvis plates. Remember what they say about idle hands…
**Don’t Eat Dinner Before Bed**
I know you day shift workers are used to the norm. Breakfast, lunch, and then dinner. If you try this schedule on graveyard shift, you’re gonna feel like crap. Try to eat your biggest meal first, then at your lunch time (midnight or so), eat a lunch-sized meal. I know it’s tempting to eat all that lasagna that your spouse made when you get home from work, but the best idea is to have a very light meal before bed. When you eat large meals right before bed time, you’re gonna gain weight, as your body won’t be able to burn off all those calories. Not to mention the fact that you aren’t going to want to get up. Just look at Garfield in the morning.
Don’t be surprised if you hate graveyard shift for at least 6 months. Night shift will completely flip your life upside down if you let it. Just remember, only the well rested survive graveyard, so ya better get to bed.
mikey777 @ May 16, 2008
Job Advice, Interview Tips and More Comments (1)
Mikey777 is at it again, here to bring you only the latest stuff when it comes to looking for work. We’ve all had to hunt for jobs at one time or another, so why not make it easy? Now get your resume ready, gloss up those lips for some serious butt kissin’, and strap in for the express train to employment town. All aboard!!
First Stop On Our Illustrious Tour…
The absolute best in job search. #1 for all your work search needs. Who are they? They’re called Simply Hired. This is a fantastic all-in-one job search engine that not only pulls job listings from other sites such as SnagAJob and Monster in seconds, but you can search for average salaries for certain jobs in your area just by typing in your zip code and job title.
Example: I typed “cashier” and my zip code in the job salaries section, and Simply Hired told me that the average
cashier makes $12,000 a year in my area. How cool is that!
Searching for work here is really neat, especially if you’re looking to change careers. You can even find the latest career trends for your line of work. For example, I again typed “cashier” in the work place trends section, and it came up with a graph telling me that since April 2006, the amount of cashier jobs has increased by 40%.
Staying in the loop with the latest job openings at Simply Hired couldn’t be easier. Get job listings in your inbox, in an RSS reader, even on your cell phone. They even have a job forum, where you can discuss anything and everything job related. Tell your story of how you got fired, or discuss who’s the best employer. Hands down the best career site I’ve seen yet.
And If You’ll Look To Your Right…
Whether you’re a high end executive or a car detailer, another excellent job search resource is Yahoo HotJobs. Here you will find career tools, interview tips, resume advice and more. You can even upload your resume to their database so employers can find you, or have a professional resume written for you (fee based). Thousands of quality, high performance companies find their employees right here. Just use your existing Yahoo account to sign up. Yahoo runs a close second to Simply Hired for job search because of the ease of use and active employer resume searches. I’ve gotten replies within hours of posting my resume! Although I haven’t seen a feature that allows HotJobs to email job postings to you or an RSS feed, they’re still the second best career resource on the planet. When they say Hot Jobs, they mean it.
Glance Ahead, Past The Monkey House, 3 Trees Down We Find…
Not far behind Yahoo for job search convenience and number of quality perspective employers is CareerBuilder. Like Yahoo, these guys have thousands of employers in their database. You can even subscribe to their RSS job search feed for current openings in your field, or have positions emailed to your inbox. Your resume can be uploaded in a matter of minutes to their searchable database also, all for free. This is an excellent job search resource, just behind Yahoo, because employers here seem a bit less active as far as searching for your resume. CareerBuilder is more “fill out and email the job application”, so if that’s your thing, go for it!
Please Keep All Hands And Feed Inside The Train…
This job search company has come a long way since it first began in 2000. SnagAJob is an application based job search site, with neat features like wage calculators and highly targeted job classifications (i.e. jobs for high school students, good jobs for people over 55 years old, and more). This site is for hourly workers only, so you won’t find CEO jobs here. You may however be able to find a few middle management jobs at SnagAJob.
Companies that find workers here include AT&T, Rite Aid, Jiffy Lube, Pilot Travel Centers and so much more. SnagAJob boasts over 100,000 active job listings, is very easy to use, and their online application process is excellent. This is another site that you’ll need to proactively search for jobs. SnagAJob has a section where you can post your profile, but a lot of the jobs are positions that are entry level, so persistence is the way to go. The early bird gets the worm, or so I’ve heard.
Look Folks, It’s Taking Over Tokyo! It’s Not Godzilla, But…
Monster rates fair as far as job search sites go. Once a Monster in the job search field, they’ve fallen behind in recent years. They don’t seem to add anything new as far as resources and tools go, and in past experiences job hunting with Monster, I’ve had mediocre success. Here you can also subscribe to their RSS job feed or have jobs in your area emailed to you. You can also upload your resume here for free, but like CareerBuilder the employers aren’t very active as far as contacting you.
Our Last Stop On This Tour Is For The ‘Well-To-Do’…
I’m gonna list this job search site on my post simply because I’m curious. This new job resource is called The Ladders, and only posts jobs with salaries over $100k per year. Yowser! These folks aren’t kidding when they say $100k plus per year. I had to tell a small white lie to join (said I made $250k per year–and that was bein’ lazy), and from what I can tell, this is a corporate executive’s dream site. They offer 2 different types of memberships: Basic–limited access to job search(free), and Premium–unlimited access to job search (around $30 per month). Needless to say, you won’t be filling out an employment ap here. Find a job, submit your resume, and bingo! You’re VP of Google! With over 69,000 open jobs, there has to be something to suit your luxurious lifestyle at The Ladders. Cheerio!
I hope you’ve enjoyed your train ride to employment town, and that you survived the trip comfortably. Once you leave the hub, the only place left to go is to work. Now get to it!
mikey777 @ May 1, 2008
