365x24x7 (sleep patterns)

Fri Apr 15 17:24:45 UTC 2011

 In a past work life, there was a short experimental run where it was 
 believed that the company I worked for could achieve 24/7 coverage 
 through individuals being on-call throughout the entire weekend AND 
 doing overnight maintenance during the week in 12 hour daily shifts from 
 8PM to 8AM. Needless to say, coming from a daytime schedule one week, 
 covering all pages on a weekend which prevented you from getting much 
 sleep, working 5 12 hour shifts in the following week on shortened sleep 
 cycles (over 100 hours in total with the on-call and 12 hour shifts), 
 then switching back to daytime hours the next week took a toll on me 
 rather quickly. I think we got an extra week day off in there somewhere 
 to recover the following week, but it was basically like running a 
 person into the ground until they were almost dead, then letting them 
 recover while the same thing was done to the next person. There were 
 only 4 people to abuse like this at the time so it happened once a 
 month. Luckily everyone came to their senses and realized this wasn't 
 sustainable and it didn't last for more than a few months total.

 Moral of the story, don't do this to people unless you're into torture. 
 :)

 -Vinny

 On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:53:47 -0500, Chad Dailey wrote:
> +1.  I'd go to six months, having been the night shift bitch.  
> Flipping
> shifts around damn near killed me.
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Mark Green <ktm200exc at hotmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Suggestion; once on the 'night shift' stay put for at least three 
>> months...
>>  Sleep patterns take time to adjust.  Jumping between day and night 
>> shifts
>> will burn out even the most motivated employee.
>>
>> Mark Green
>>
>>
>>
>>
> ..snip..