Friday, January 12, 2007

Turning into a Nocturnal Being
Just 2 weeks into night shift; have seen mostly hectic nights - the usual fire-fighting issues, multiple tool inhibitions coupled with process issues that seem to drag on forever... And I thought night shifts are supposed to be yawn-inducingly-peaceful. The only better part is not having bosses bugging or barking orders at you. So you call the shots, making sure the passdown & whatever sh!t it encompasses gets delivered by sunrise.. or it's gonna be a heck of a grueling morning meeting to endure, daily.
Mumble thru the passdown, get a few facts jumbled up or miss out some minute details will be yelling Hey, y'all take a shot at me! - an open invitation for an interrogation. The prospect of getting screwed in front of the whole module at morning meetings is just part of the night shift engineer's JD. Period.
So you pinch yourself hard in the butt to stay alert & get the morning passdown delivered properly & convincingly. For that twilight hour, you got to play know-it-all, & play it right. Along the way, you also learn that legitimizing procrastination is no longer just a term, but a valuable soft-skill to pick up real quick to ensure your survivability. With half the work force functioning in semi-sleep mode, it's pretty difficult to get anything done properly & on time. Delays for work-in-progress - you're accountable for that too.
Only after that you'd get to go home hoping that the fully functional larger pool of experts & manpower during the day do their job well. It can be nightmarish to come back during nightfall & have the same sh!t staring at you in the passdown.
Clock-in at 730pm, clock-out the next morning at 900am, after settling the passdown. Go home, sleep, wake up, get prepared & take a meal, come to work - repeat vicious cycle for 3 to 4 shift days a week. You'd be too damn tired to do anything else.
Now the good part is that you get to have 3 to 4 consecutive days off per week. Minus a day off that, for transition period. It still gets a little disorienting having to alternate day-night & night-day. Accustomed to working 60 hour weeks for most of the past year, now what am I going to do with so much free time? More time spent pondering on the meaning of my mundane existence, I guess…
All the ramblings & b^tching of life in the production line. Love it or hate it, I’m doing just fine.

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