napping on the job...lol. In my defence I do electrical maintenance for major manufacturer, and the job is as dull as it comes. Not to mention I'm on the night shift 7pm to 7am.

Couldn't have been worse... Lights off, feet up on the office desk, snoring like a banshee. Shift super comes running in "machine down, machine down, the plant's at a stand still...what the hell are you doing? I've been looking all over for you!"

Worst part is now I have to find a new spot to hide during the night,....DAMN IT..!

Wouldn't worry me so much, just so long as I know where to go when things go pear shaped. We also have personal radios, which does help to forewarn one.

PS
Is that a 12 hour, 5 day week? I find an 8 hour (22:00 - 06:00), 5 day week more than enough.

It's a 12hr continental shift, meaning....: In a pay cycle (2 weeks), I work a total of 7 days. So if you can follow this (most have problems...lol):

The cycle starts with: Mon/Tues "on" or "working", Wed/Thurs "off", Fri/Sat/Sun "on", It then flips for the following week. Mon/Tues "off", Wed/Thurs "on", Fri/Sat/Sun "off".

Over the long weekend off it flips to nights and then repeats the cycle. So on and so forth. It's not the best schedule, but if you do the math I only work half the year, and taking vacation days in the right spots gives you excessive amounts of time away from the daily grind. The trick is to get nap time in during the midnights so your not completely changing your sleep cycle all the time. I don't know how the production people do it.

There's many a way to implement a continuous shift pattern, but as coincidence would have it we have a department that works exactly the same 12 hour 2-3 pattern, only here it’s 06:00 – 18:00 and vice versa. One thing I noticed though, having worked through a few numbers (at one time there was talk of, my two weekend colleagues, A.N. Other and myself doing some sort of rolling pattern), is that although I work significantly more days in a year, the hours are actually fewer; i.e. –

(52 x 5) – 33 (annual holiday entitlement) = 227 days per year.
227 x 8 = 1816 hours per year.

Against

26 x 7 = 182 days per year
182 x 12 = 2184 hours per year
N.B. These figures do not include holiday entitlement because they’re worked a little differently to the norm. – I need my other computer to be exact. However, if I recollect correctly the annual hours are still a shade over 2000 for the year.

The term actually was intended to be "continental shift". That's just term used around here for the shift pattern. Disregard this if you knew what I meant.


The way my shift .vs. hours works out. I work less days in a given year when compared to someone working a standard work week. But also end up getting more hours per pay cycle.

Standard cycle (2wk period) is: 10 days 8hrs a day = 40hrs wk /or/ 80hrs for the cycle.

Continental cycle (2wk period) is: 7 days 12hr shifts = 42hrs wk /or/ 84hrs for the cycle.

There's also a hourly rate premium of approx $1 a hour while on midnights. Only real downside is working every second weekend. If I had kids...I don't know if I would do it personally.

This is one of the reasons why I love my job. Im a slot tech at Foxwoods, yes I am still there for those you know me from years ago.

My department is one of a select few who has 10 hour working days, with 3 days off. I work from 14:45 to 00:45 with Sunday, Monday and Tuesdays off every week. For the nearly 9 years that I've been there and the 3 different departments, I've always had the opition of Sunday and Monday off, now I have those two plus a third day.