Welcome to the Survival Guide for Night Shift Dads
I am a nightshift dad. I sleep through the day (I wish) and work all through the night. I make it simple. I just pretend I’m on a different time zone. I Eat breakfast at 6 pm, lunch at 12:00 midnight and dinner at 8 am. Easy isn’t it? Well I wish. I’m sure a lot of you also deal with the same thing every day. I am dedicating this blog to everyone like me. “A Night Shift Dad.”
I am a dad to a beautiful eight year old daughter, a full time husband to a lovely wife and a certified ‘vampire’. Let me begin by telling you a bit of background of why I chose the Night Shift life.
MY FIRST NIGHT SHIFT JOB
I’m a mechanical engineer by profession. My first job was at an aluminum wheel manufacturing company. I trained in Japan for a few months and brought the technology back to my home country. My first night shift job found me working on casting aluminum wheels, loading them onto CNC machines and painting and doing quality checks on them all at the same time.
We were a team of four (4), yes four engineers working together and producing 200 wheels per shift. It was not much different from the training we did in Japan. I truly believe that the Japanese have one if not the best work ethics in the whole world, but they hated working nights. Some superstitious Japanese friends of mine believe too much in ghosts which was probably the reason why they hated working nights.
It was from that experience that I learned to like working nights because I felt the freedom from the morning traffic and hustle and bustle of working in the morning.
I worked for a year and a half in that company switching shifts every two weeks. Though there came a time when I had to work for 24 hours for 5 days straight due to a shortage in manpower. I realized that I was human after all. I got sick after that and finally said “It’s not worth it.”
My other jobs in the manufacturing industry were regular day jobs, and I had several moments when I would work nights but it was not that often.
I got married a few years later, had a child. I started to look for more viable work. The service industry (particularly BPOs) was a big thing at that time promising bigger salaries compared to the manufacturing industry, and with me a new dad, found it really enticing to switch careers. So I did and it was a decision I did not regret.
FOREVER NIGHTS
The shift to the service industry opened my eyes to the world of working nights. For almost five years to this day I have been working nights. I cannot complain, aside from the added premium mandated by law when working nights, I find it liberating.
I’m free from the early morning rush to work as I leave the office everyone else is just waking up or heading off to their day jobs.
I’m free from expensive lunches and dinner meetings or other after work activities. Sure I don’t have a night life but who needs it. I mean, I don’t need to go off and get drunk after work just to have a splitting headache when I go to work the next day.
My world turned topsy-turvy but I just pretended I work on a different time zone. I work for technical support virtually assisting clients from North America so it fits the profile. It’s fun and rewarding at the same time.
PERKS FOR WORKING NIGHTS
Now for the one of the perks;
Stronger Relationships – working nights rebuilt my relationship with my wife. She has a day job. I took the chance to bring her to work from time to time giving me added quality time. Some say that a lot of relationships get broken when one works a different shift, but I think differently. It built a fondness for her since I’m not with her at work nights. Our weekends became more precious than before. Plus the chance to send her off to work before my day ends added glue to our ten year relationship to date, why? When I was at my day job, while we go to work together, my mind was already thinking of work. Unlike when my day is about to end, I am now focused on my wife and our ‘quality’ talks.
More of my story on my next post..10 Perks for Working the Nights for First Time Shift Workers
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