Night shifts

Tonight is my second night in a row sleeping at home. Before that I worked eight night shifts in a row. I was helping with starting up the sulphuric acid plant at work. We made a bunch of changes to the control system while it was shut down for maintenance, so they got me and another engineer to rotate shifts during startup to troubleshoot the control system and help the operators get used to the changes.

This was my first experience with consistent night shifts. (I helped with another plant startup last fall for about a night and a half, and those times weren't nearly as scheduled.) So here are a few of my thoughts:

I got to know some people a lot better. When a big part of our job is just to be there just in case someone needs help, interesting conversations can happen.

Sometimes it's nice to have some time when I don't really have to do anything and it's still considered work. Normally if I've got nothing to do on one project, I pull out a different project and work on it.

In twelve-hour shifts, especially when there are less people around for conversations, there is too much time with nothing to do.

Just like when I helped with that other startup last year, I got kind of tense waiting for stuff to happen. When I arrived on certain days, I didn't know exactly what time the most important stuff would be happening, and neither did the bosses. I need to learn to get less tense when things get delayed and I'm waiting around. I also didn't like not knowing how many nights I'd have to work.

I don't regret trying night shift, but I don't want to do it regularly.