Shift patterns

[welshbairn]

Used to be ok on fixed shifts, whatever the hours, but picked up every bug going around when I switched. Weekly changes from night to day can't be healthy.

Edited July 21, 2021 by welshbairn

[Iminavest]

Monday - Friday 7:30am - 3:30pm

Which is pretty great.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

8 hours ago, scottsdad said:

Did a few night shifts in the supermarket as a teenager. More recently when working in a lab in France, we had beamtime for 72 hours and the rules said that we had to be working for all of those. So we did a shift system of 8 hours off, 8 on for the three days. 

Not much admittedly. My dad was a policeman and for almost all his 30 years he was on shifts, rotating between back shift (3-11), early shift (7-3), day shift (9-5) and night shift (11-7). Seven days on, two off. I remember his wall chart for the year ahead, and him filling it in. He knew months and months in advance what his shifts were.

The west used to do a shift pattern called ‘strathpol 24’ which sounded awful and then there was one where you did 6 or 7 weeks of nights etc. Changed to something thats called vsa 3 lates, 2 off, 4 earlies (0645-1600/1700) 2 off, 3 nights (2100-0700), 3 off, 4 lates (1600-0200) 2off, 3 earlies, 2 off then finished with 4 nights  (2200-0700) 3 off. But there was talk of moving to a 2 earlies, 2 lates, 2 nights and 4 off pattern which would be nice. 

[Andy Dufresne]

The job i am in now is mon-fri 8.45-1745 but my last (13 years ago) i did not have set hours just as long as the work was done so i blitzed it monday till thursday so i could finish at 9am on the friday.

[SANTAN]

I currently switch between 8:00-16:30 and 11:30-20:00 which is fine with me for WFH but wouldn't work if I had to travel. We get two random days off during the week and I don't ever really mind unless I don't have a day off between the switch, finishing work at 8pm and starting the next day at 8am should be illegal imo. 

[Bert Raccoon]

54 minutes ago, SANTAN said:

I currently switch between 8:00-16:30 and 11:30-20:00 which is fine with me for WFH but wouldn't work if I had to travel. We get two random days off during the week and I don't ever really mind unless I don't have a day off between the switch, finishing work at 8pm and starting the next day at 8am should be illegal imo. 

Used to work a 12-8 on a Saturday then an 8-4 on the Sunday, complete waste of a weekend 

[SANTAN]

1 minute ago, Bert Raccoon said:

Used to work a 12-8 on a Saturday then an 8-4 on the Sunday, complete waste of a weekend 

Aye that sounds brutal. Did you always get midweek days off? 

I do kinda like the variety of random days off but the lack of consistent Saturdays is grim stuff. 

[Bert Raccoon]

1 minute ago, SANTAN said:

Aye that sounds brutal. Did you always get midweek days off? 

I do kinda like the variety of random days off but the lack of consistent Saturdays is grim stuff. 

Yeah, two random days together during the week which wasn't the worst. Same shift pattern you would do four days of anything from 8-4 to 10-6 but would always have one 12-8 every week, horrible 

[Moomintroll]

I have to count my blessings as I only work 1 Saturday and 1 Sunday every 4 weeks, my shifts are a mix of 8:30am, 11am, 12 & 2 pm starts with a total 8 hour shift which can be bloody annoying & a good excuse for a long lie-in with equal measure.

[Trackdaybob]

4 shifts every week. 4 week cycle.

Mon-Thurs 0700-1700 (week 1)

Mon-Thurs 1700-0245 (week 2)

Tue-Fri (0700-1645 (week3)

Mon-Thurs 1700-0245 (week 4)

And so on. Works for me  

[gc_smfc]

Standard offshore 12 hour shift for 4 weeks or however long I want to stay onboard for. I currently starting my third week of 1800-0600.

Preference goes 1200-0000, 0600-1800, 1800-0600, then 0000-1200, which I'd only nominate to do if the time difference matches up with home. 

[welshbairn]

Did split shifts in a hotel for a while, 0600-1200, back at 1800-12 midnight and repeat. That was knackering.

[invergowrie arab]

Mon to Fri 9-5 but I tend to do 9-6 and get every second Friday off.

5-6 are my most productive hours as I'm not bothered by inane emails.

When I used to call centre work for BT business we were 24 hours for some stupid reason.

7- 3, 3-11, 11-7 shift.

If you landed the 11pm - 7am shift you would be lucky to take two calls. It was the golden age of full Internet access at work before employers cottoned onto monitoring staff Internet usage and it was a plum shift for the World of Warcraft lads. 

I ended up losing money on those shifts playing poker 

[Arabdownunder]

17 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Used to work in Michelin back in the day.

Rotating five and a half day early shift, five day late shift and six night night shift.  It meant you never had a full weekend off.

It was awful but back then (45 years ago) it paid about double what any other unskilled worker in the city was getting paid.

 

Yep. I did six months at the Michy in the mid-eighties. Reckon it would have been 15 years later before I was taking home the same money. 

[SlipperyP]

Mon to Fri 08:00 to 16:00 day shift (week 1)

Mon to Fri 00:00 to 08:00 night shift (week 2)

Mon to Fri 16:00 to 00:00 back shift (week 3)

between week 2 & 3 finishing at 08:00 on a Friday morning and not starting again until 16:00 on the Monday, were a complete mess.  I really enjoyed shift work.  Night shift was great.  Back shift was the worst, just because you always thought you would be missing something.  We used to phone in takeaways and watch the fitba in the store room.  Day shift was shite as that's when all the suits would be in.....

[Melanius Mullarkey]

21 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Used to work in Michelin back in the day.

Rotating five and a half day early shift, five day late shift and six night night shift.  It meant you never had a full weekend off.

Sounds tyring.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

I did shift work for a short time when I was a teenager at Yooni. I hated it. I missed over half the summer that year by having to work weird weekends and evening hours. 

I binned that job and not done any shift work since. Still bitter about it tbh.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

From entering the wonderful world of wage slavery:

Accounts clerk: 37 hr mon-fri, with some flexibility of start and finish times. Meh. (The job and the hours, although working for BREL  meant one of the perks was a travel card giving me free and massively discounted rail travel)

Licensed trade (various): Christ, the hours we did in this game were mental. Every day a split shift (in theory) as we closed in the afternoons in those days. In fact, this was re-stocking, admin and prep time. Normal days were 0800 to let the cleaner in until midnight when we'd got the bar cleared. Running a boozer, especially when we ran a York "circuit" pub, was great fun, but most definitely a young person's game. One and a half days off a week.

Terry's (Chocolate factory): spent a year or so rotating 6-2/2-10 before landing a management position on permanent nights. Hated 2-10, as you were always waiting to go to work. Nights was a different country, and I had a really good crew. Six years was enough, mind. The kids hardly saw me, and Mrs WRK and I were like ships in the night. 

Prison Service: Twenty four years as Officer, working a variety of early, late, long day(A shift) and nights, with BH cover required (obviously). Probably my favourite of all my working patterns, as E and L shifts could be combined, giving an extra rest day, midweek rest days are much better than weekends if you need to get shit done (car service, any personal appointments, etc. - not to mention the shops are quieter).

After my stroke, it was off the landings and into an office(ish) to cover H&S at another nick. A mon-fri billet with some flexibility, I've been enjoying this, but can't say I'm sorry to see the secondment coming to an end in the next couple of months. Covid has made this job at once frustrating and fulfilling, but I'm getting fed up with the commute. 45 miles each way takes up an extra ten hours each week, and I've been used to (literally) a 150 yard home-work journey for nearly a quarter of a century. Looks like I may have the choice of an office-bound position or a lower-grade, but operational (hence 17% UHA) position when I get back to my "home" Jail. Whichever, I'll be coasting until retirement at the back end of next year. 

[Ross.]

Done a few different shift patterns. Monday to Friday 6am to 2pm took a bit of getting used to, but was much better than the 12pm to 10pm effort that we rotated with. 2 weeks of each at a time.

Worked somewhere else doing 12 hour shifts, 5 days one week, 3 days the next. The way the schedule went you would end up with Thursday to Tuesday off every 6th week which was absolutely tremendous for getting away.

Done night shift at the IBM in Greenock when I was a student down that way, was always good for a few quid during the holidays. Took a few days to get into the swing of it but never understood how some people struggled so badly with nightshift, I found it quite easy. That said. I much prefer Monday to Friday and standard office hours.

[Arabdownunder]

Shiftwork, including weekends was great when I was young and free. Days off during the week etc. Didn't work so well when the kids went to school and the rest of the household was operating on a "normal" M-F schedule.