I’m on a bit of a weird shift 3pm-3am (yes, 12 hour shifts, but I work less days overall) which is a bit of day shift then mostly night.

I hope I get to stay on it as long as I work here.

I miss all of the worst traffic on my commute.

I’m basically living the schedule we all dream about as teens and college kids- sleep in until noon, go home when the bars have kicked everyone out. That’s my every day, but it’s not so far removed from a normal schedule that it would be a huge adjustment to get up earlier to do stuff when I want/need to.

I work in a 911 dispatch dispatch center, to me, days shift kind of sucks, the calls are often nonstop and tend to be mostly dumb shit, night shift is (usually) slower so I have some time to read or bust out my switch and play games or whatever between calls, but when the phone rings it’s more likely to be something Interesting (which is admittedly not a plus for everyone given the nature of the job)

My wife works a normal day job, so our dog is only ever left alone for about 3 hours or so when we both work (although this has worked against us a bit since she expects a 3am walk and some playtime and attention)

This isn’t really a day/night shift thing, but the way my schedule works I never work more than 3 days in a row unless I go in for overtime, every other weekend is a 3 day weekend, I have days off during the week to get stuff done. I actually kind of struggle to find stuff to do with my PTO because I pretty much can fit everything in to my normal schedule, and if I plan things right I only need to take 2 days off to get a whole week off.

I’m a night owl. My body wants to go to sleep around 6am and wake up at like 2pm, and if it doesn’t get to it will rebel. I used to struggle with resetting my sleep schedule all the time. Falling asleep during the day, gradually drifting later on my days off, and usually feeling kinda shit.

Went back to working nights, driving a cab 5p-12a or 3p-12a depending on the day. I love it. I feel so much better. My body is never easy, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than it was. One less thing to worry about.

It is hard to make appointments, and companies are always trying to call my firmly muted phone at 9am when I tell them not to, but it’s a lot more comfortable. I see all kinds of neat crepuscular animals and there’s like no traffic.

I think it very much depends on your body’s natural rhythm. People like to chalk it up to ‘insomnia’, but that’s just pathologizing normal behavior. Nothing wrong with being nocturnal.

I worked night shift for 2.5 years (9:30pm-4:30am M-F) straight out of college. I’ll never do it again.

I actually didn’t mind being up and working late, I’m a night owl, it was everything else though. I think people look at the hours and go “well I’m up till 5am anyways”, but it’s not like you get home and fall asleep right away. You shower, eat, decompress, watch tv for a bit, it’s usually 8am before you’re actually falling asleep. Hungry after work? There’s two places open 24 hours in town, get used to eating those a lot. You can make a meal at home, just be careful not to wake up your roommates. In fact just be careful of that in general.

Friends wanna do something on Friday night (or any night)? You either can’t or have to call it quits early to leave for work. Drinking more than a beer is out. Friends want to do something Saturday at noon? You’re either joining them late or you’re a zombie all day. Everybody’s going to that movie you wanna see, but it starts at 6 and is 2.5 hours, you’re not gonna be able to make it. Got a girlfriend? She’s gonna feel a little lonely, especially if she works an evening shifts at a restaurant or something. You’re gonna be scrambling just to find hours to be together. Saturdays and Sundays you can kinda recover and live a normal life but you don’t wanna get out of rhythm too much because you have to go back to work Monday night. You just feel so off from everyone else, like you’re living in two separate worlds, it’s a weird quasi-isolation. You’re kinda depressed and in the winter you’ll go days where you barely see the sun. I lived with my best friend and some days the only time I’d see him would be the 30 minutes after he’d get up to go to work and I would be going to bed. Your coworkers become your best friends because they’re the only ones who really get it, which has its benefits if you work with cool people, but for me personally I kinda wanted to have a separate work and leisure life.

Some people enjoy it. Some people look at all the stuff I laid out and go “oh well that doesn’t really apply to me. I don’t have roommates or a gf, I don’t go out with friends and like being alone, I never see the sun much anyways”, etc etc, then maybe it’s for you. There are some positives. Driving is incredible. There’s a serenity to nobody on the road and it cuts your commute in half. Summer heat? Literally never have to deal with it.

And at the end of it all, I made it through and look back and laugh. But I’m not doing it again.

This is going to depend enormously on what your body clock is like, and how flexible it is. Mine is extremely flexible and infinitely reconfigurable so I find shift work is a doddle and I dont get jetlag at all. I’m on a shift right now, and loving it. But some people really struggle with anything that even slightly messes with their natural circadian rythyms and will really struggle with working shifts and it can actually seriously impatc their health. Such people should never be forced into shift work

It feels like shit tbh. I work at a Utilities company. I work 8 hour day shifts and 16 hour night shifts this repeats twice and I’m given 2 days off. Thankfully, it’s all quiet at night so we can snooze a bit.

It can get hard working the morning shifts since I like sleeping late. Regardless, I’m always tired. I’m not physically tired like manual labor tired but more or mentally exhausted tired all the way. Do it for 4 years though and you get used to the feeling of being tired.

I do feel that my IQ has gone down from the constant lack of sleep.