techsupport: After dark...

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

So, I'm dying to know, and I haven't seen any other posts on it:

How many of you work the overnight or graveyard shifts? About three months ago, I moved from 2nd shift (9a-8p Sunday through Wednesday) to 3rd shift (8p-7a Saturday through Tuesday) and it's been great. My employer pays a shift differential, so "mo money," and the people are downright cool. Anyone else working when everyone else is sleeping?

Comments

[moosie.livejournal.com]

I was, I did it for ** years, but now have taken an Asst. position during the swings shift. I do miss the grave shift though.

~M~

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

Yes. I am the graveyard guy.

In a department of 200+ people, I am the one person at night.

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

Wow .. At least I have 5 "full timers" and an unknown number of temporary people with me on this shift. On Saturdays it's a lot slimmer (just 3 of us), but I'm never alone. Being the only person up here would suck, I'd think.

[bookofnights.livejournal.com]

I did it for three years. "Company" didn't pay a shift differential. Their theory was "If you don't like it, quit". I really liked the people. I enjoyed the shift, but it played havoc with my home life. It was like people thought if I were home all day, that I must be free to do things with them, and if I said "I'm sleeping", that was just an excuse.

le sigh

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

I've run into that, but I tend to only sleep about 7 hours anyway, so when I get home, I'm back up again at 2:30PM. Leaves me five hours to get stuff done and hang out with other people. Though I did have to change my cell phone greeting to something like "You've reached Wes' cell phone. I work nights so I'm usually awake from 4pm to 9am. If you've called me outside those hours, my phone is on silent so leave a message."

[dr-atheist.livejournal.com]

I'm working a graveyard shift now, it's 5am here. I do a weekly changing shift, one week 0000-0800, then 0800-1600 then 1600-0000.
so tired...

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

Eww... Rotational shifts. I'm terribly sorry for you. :(

[dr-atheist.livejournal.com]

I don't mind it actually, as it means my job is varied, morning shifts backup maintenence/data creation/deletion, day shifts, user support operational running of the systems, evening shift end of day work, updates running backups. Also gives me some days off to be able to get round shops without crowds etc. I think it annoys my girlfriend more because it means that I am often keeping different hours to her and never really establish a sleep pattern.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

God, I wish.

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

Come to the dark side...

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

I've done graveyard, in the grocery biz, and positively loved it.

*waveth*

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Ive got the one shift that pretty much ensures job security - 11pm-8am, Friday, saturday, sunday and monday :)

Re: *waveth*

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

Hah. Yep, that looks like a shift nobody else would want. We don't have a Fri-Mon shift, or I'd take that one. I love working the shifts other people hate. Especially being off on "weekdays," since I can go places and not have to stand in line.

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

I pull the graveyards abotut once every 6 weeks - you do 11:30 to 7:30 for a full 7 days then get 3 off. There's two of us on, different people each time. Sometimes you and your fellow get on brilliantly, sometimes you wish you were several buildings away.

It's a different style - you get the drunken lost mobiles ("Let me transfer you, madam"), the insomniac rebuilders ("One more time to try and install this USB WIn 98 connection and why the hell aren't you out on such a glorious Friday night you loser!!!") and the early morning Ebay maniacs ("No, our servers aren't down - you've used up all your data and you're on dial-up speed. Refreshing that 500mb picture five times every minute will do that to your data allowance."). You get the occasional silly queue when the main mail server goes down and you've got 200 people ringing in at once - but they're rare. Oh - and you get the first-day-of-month bum-rush of all the people who were over their data limit and waiting for it to reset - it can take about 2 hours after midnight before all the data monitors get reset, we tell them "it will get reset in the morning and should be up by about 7am", but there's always people who want it NOW!!!!!

I love it. I see my family more as I get to have dinner with them before I go. The money is good.

But it plays hell with my social life.

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

On our third shift, everything's a "critical" problem, of course. We don't do end-user stuff, so there's no fun to be had there.

As for the family, amen to that. We usually head to my parents' for dinner before I schlep off to work at 8pm.

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

Closest I got to graveyard shift was the evil 24x7 pager I was on . . . Our Helpdesk worked 7-4:30 otherwise which was the general time I'd be there unless I had projects.

I did deal with some of the graveyard shifters at 2am or so at the big company that swallowed my company before I was finally laid off. Most were rather intelligent and nice people to talk to. And when I explained things to them . . . They got it!

Not like some of the daytime hell desk people that company employed. Yowza. My head hurt trying to explain things to a couple of them. "And you landed this job how? Particularly considering there are plenty of GOOD techs out there crying for work"

So anyway to answer your question . . . Yes and no. ;-)

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I work Midnight to 8am.
Money = More than before
Work = Less than before

It's all relative. My sleeping patterns are fucked.

I've been playing GTA most of the time at work for the last few weeks

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

But from what I heard from a previous housemate of yours, your sleeping patterns were pretty well stuffed anyway...

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

WHO ARE YOU DAMMIT?!!?

I am threatened by the unkown...

[dpaul007.livejournal.com]

I was the ONLY person on the 12am - 8am shift at one job.

Generous salary, no boss, no cow-orkers, maybe 3-4 calls a night and all the mp3s I could queue up in 8 hours.

I was allowed - no, encouraged - to load up games on the computer to amuse myself.

And the one time I got caught sleeping?

The boss smiled and said, "At least the lights were on and your phone was logged in. Try not to make a habit of it, though. Have a good day."

Man, that was a good job.

[inahandbasket]

I wish.
my girlfriend would kill me. ;o)

[sketchydave.livejournal.com]

I used to work at an ISP during the dot-com era. I was in college at the time and I worked there on breaks. It actually worked rather well, they had an extra body when most people wanted vacations. And I got stuck on the midnight to 8am shift on weekends for the most part. It worked out great for me, it was killer money and looked great on my resume.

We did monitoring for web servers, legacy T1s, and created new accounts on the servers. No one ever called on the weekends, but we had to be there to monitor the servers and call the engineers if there was ever any downtime.

Here's the fun part. I'm the only one in the whole building. So I set all the alarms up to audio and the speaker on the phone cranked all the way. I slept under my desk from 1am to 6am, got up for some free coffee, and watched a DVD until the next guy came in.

Management new about it and was cool about it because if something ever broke I was on it in no time.

[springdew.livejournal.com]

I expected to see loosingmyfaith weighing in here. She and I are on the same third shift team and we absolutely love it. With the lower call volume and the more casual management, there's much more time to learn stuff, to really get down into the guts of an issue, and do it at a more relaxed pace.

On this shift, we are more like the tech support we are meant to be, rather than the de facto call center that the daytime shifts have to be.

Plus, we are a very close-knit team of five, and we can joke about things the dayshifters can't even -think- about without HR getting a whiff and screaming harassment.

Third shift forever!

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

That's ours exactly! We joke about ALL KINDS of stuff. A banner should be put up at the entrance to our cube section .. "24x7 is rated 'R' for language, sexual content, but no violence."

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

24x7 is rated 'R' for language, sexual content, but no violence

NO violence????

Not even threatenend upon the customers??????

"more like the tech support we are meant to be"

[dpaul007.livejournal.com]

*applause*

Being able to get inside an issue with a (l)user who's not at the tech level we are (otherwise, why would they call?) takes more time than the marketeers and HR drones will ever admit.

If only the suits would let us do our freakin' jobs...

Re: "more like the tech support we are meant to be"

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Fight the man, dude..

/serious= It doesn't have to be that painful..