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Shift workers

Eating at 4am in a staff room

Started 7 October 2024 · 19 replies · 228 hearts · read 3k times

KezWigan, UK · 7 October 2024
1.8 years ago

A question rather than an update: Eating at 4am in a staff room

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

I have a plan for the ordinary weeks and no plan at all for the unusual ones, and the unusual ones are where everything has gone wrong.

Every piece of advice I read appears to have been written for somebody with a completely different week from mine, so I am asking people whose weeks look like this.

My household has adjusted to about half of this and the other half is causing small daily friction that I have not known how to raise.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

76

NettieBarrow, UK
#1

What surprised me was that my energy on shift improved noticeably at about month five, and that has been the durable benefit.

12

BassCoventry, UK
#2

I have found the guides here more usable than most because they do not assume a nine-to-five, which is rarer than it should be.

10me too 2

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#3

Facilitator note: this is a logistics thread rather than a clinical one, which is a relief, and I would still rather nobody offered instructions.

30

AshSunderland, UK
#4

Nettie — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Somebody here suggested treating my rota as the calendar rather than the month, and reorganising my planning that way solved several things at once.

13

TychoLeiden, NL
#5

What Bass described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

My experience is that this is entirely manageable on shifts and requires more deliberate planning than anybody tells you.

5

BoazHaarlem, NL
#6

I asked for my review appointments to be after a run of days rather than nights, and it made them considerably more useful.

10

NolwennRennes, FR
#7

What I underestimated was how much the tiredness compounded. A rough week on top of a rota change was much worse than either alone.

7me too 7

HuwWrexham, UK
#8

The fridge at work is not somewhere I trust, so mine never leaves the house, and that decision has removed a recurring worry.

12

RenataKraków, PL
#9

Something that helped was writing the day of the week on the box, because on a run of nights I genuinely lose track.

9

NorahDerry, NI
#10

Nolwenn — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I found that my worst weeks were always the transition weeks, and I now protect those rather than treating them as ordinary.

11

PrueChester, UK
#11

The thing I would say to a new shift worker is: pick your anchor day and protect it. Everything else can be flexible.

11

TobySwindon, UK
#12

Reading and nodding. Nothing to add, and I wanted you to know somebody had read it.

15

OrsolyaBudapest, HU
#13

My storage question was the one I asked here first, and I got a practical answer within an hour from somebody on a similar rota.

9

TorinBelfast, NI
#14

What Toby described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I do mine straight after my last night, before sleeping, and that has been the most consistent slot I have found in four years.

11me too 8

OdileMontreal, CA
#15

I keep everything at home rather than carrying it, and I built my schedule around being at home on that day. Fewer things to go wrong.

6

OrrinGlasgow, UK
#16

Orsolya has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

The thing nobody writes about is that a bad reaction on a night shift is much harder to manage than one at home on a Saturday.

14

TorrinAberdeen, UK
#17

Odile said something I want to sit with for a second.

What worked for me was very simple food on shift, the same things every time, requiring no decisions at three in the morning.

10me too 5

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#18

Thank you for the honesty about how hard the logistics have been. The accounts that admit the planning is exhausting are the useful ones.

22

RillaAberdeen, UK
#19

Sitting with you on this one.

11