That noise you hear is the sound of America grumping. And yawning. And struggling to get comfortable with the night shift. An estimated 14.5 million employees work nonstandard hours-evenings, overnight, rotating shifts and split shifts-and in an economy gone global and a culture hungry for 24-hour everything, the numbers are growing. Already, one out of five full-timers works a nontraditional shift, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And it’s not just bluecollar workers at GM and no-collar workers at 7-Eleven who populate the night shift, but white-collar wizards at financial hubs in New York and Chicago. More women, too, are carrying lunch pails into the night. “The world has become more integrated,” says Robert Hodrick, professor of finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. “You can’t just think of it as an eight-hour day.”
The result is a growing number of families living at odds with the rest of the world-and each other. “You’re so used to your parents coming home at a certain time, and you just think that’s the way,” says Lawrence Bond, 27, who does the overnight tour at Globex, a new 24-hour trading system of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. After four months Bond is a fan of the shift-he gets by on less sleep, finds more time for his aging grandparents and relishes having fewer managers at work-but his fiancee, Andrea Corsini, says he is sometimes moody. “He’s just exhausted,” says Corsini, “so sometimes he’s a little crabby.”
Since we’re designed to work by day and sleep by night, when we’re forced to get up with Jay Leno and go to sleep with Mister Rogers, the effect is what sleep expert Kenneth Groh calls “jet lag without the geographical displacements.” In short, night-shifters are more irritable, less alert, quicker to err at work and conk out at home.
All that stress spills onto the family. Evening shift is toughest on kids, who miss having parents around for dinner and Little League, while “graveyard” hours are toughest on mates, who may resent sleeping in an empty bed. In two years as an operator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., Jaime Mantel, 31, has learned that high-tech machines have no mercy: the accelerator runs 24 hours a day and so do employees. By the time he rotates through four weeks and four different shifts, he’s missed gatherings, holidays, anniversaries and even his 4-year-old son Corbin’s birthday. “It’s the rotating that’s horrible,” says his wife, Vicki, a veterinary assistant, who says the stress has helped seal their decision not to have another child. “During the winter, when it’s real cold, it’s hard to make [Corbin] understand ‘Daddy’s asleep, we have to be real quiet’.”
Technology may offer the best hope for resetting the body’s internal clock. Since January the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. has used overhead lighting panels to help control-room workers acclimate to latenight hours. Developed by Light Sciences, Inc., the panels set light levels at 1,000 to 10,000 lux-well above the typical office level of 100 to 175 lux-which changes the body’s internal timekeeper by triggering hormone secretions that affect alertness. A report on the project is due this month, but Light Sciences president Matthew Weisman cautions that families still need to understand how wearing shift work is on body and soul. “They go home to try to go to bed at a time when the brain is saying ‘Wake up!”’
Shift work also creates a sense of isolation few 9-to-5ers experience. Friends? You can’t call to gossip in the middle of the night. Dinner plans? They’re nearly impossible. Diane Diliberto’s husband and brother-in-law own Cedar Tavern in New York City’s Greenwich Village and take turns working the 6 p.m.-to-4 a.m. shift, which leaves her social life in tatters. “It wasn’t that lonely when the kids were here,” she says of her five teenagers. “Now they go do their social things on Friday night or Saturday night…It’s not like ‘Let’s all snuggle up and do bedtime stories’ anymore.”
Although the Dilibertos say their marriage is strong, that’s not the case with everyone who toils into the night. “Shift work is a good place to hide a bad marriage,” says University of Nebraska sociologist Lynn White. “Some people choose shift work because they would like more independence from their family.” And some unwittingly wind up with more independence. In one of the rare studies of night-shifters, White tracked nearly 1,700 employees between 1980 and 1983 and found that working odd hours has a “modest” negative effect on marital quality. Despite that, they’re one and a half times more likely to get divorced than those who work normal hours. A key reason: more jealousy and concerns about faithfulness.
If it’s so tricky to keep family life going, why does anyone work nights? They have to. Traditionally, night jobs haven’t required much experience, making them a haven for young, less-educated workers. But that doesn’t mean night-shift workers are thrilled-as White’s survey showed, about half dropped out within three years. Which could be where the McIntyres are heading. They find Patrick’s night hours so stressful that they’re thinking of selling their house so Susan can quit working and he can go back to days. “If it means me getting out and finding something for two thirds of the salary and us having to do some changes, I think we’re going to have to do that,” Pat says.
_B_Better baby-sitting:_b_There are child-care benefits in “sequential” parenting, in which Mom passes off the kids to Dad and vice versa. Although nurse Kathleen Bailey switched to part time when her children-James, 7, Sarah, 5, and Nancy, 7 months-were born, she kept her overnight shift in the emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Especially when friends told her how much they paid for day care. “My husband said, ‘Oh my god, maybe [the night shift] isn’t the hardship I thought it was’.” Often, the only alternative is “night care,” which has its own drawbacks. Says University of Maryland sociologist Harriet Presser: “The problem with bringing a child to a child-care center at night is, sometimes your job starts at 10 or 12 o’clock at night, and then you have to wake up a kid.”
But for some creatures of the dark, the night shift isn’t a hardship. Mitchell (Sonny) English is a “minuteman” for the Illinois Department of Transportation, who considers his 9 p.m.-to-5 a.m. tour “the best shift going.” He’s there when his three kids get up. He’s there for dentist appointments and activities at school. He’s not even fazed that he gets to see his wife, Rosemary, only at breakfast at 6 a.m.-before she rushes off to work. The only downside is when he draws the blinds to go to bed and the sun is slanting through. “You feel like Dracula,” English, 39, says. But unlike most folks working graveyard hours, the count didn’t have to explain his gloominess to a boss and a family.
Why do two-income spouses and unmarried mothers with children under the age of 6 work nontraditional hours?
FATHERS MOTHERS Married Unmarried Demand of job 68.7% 29.6% 46.7% Could not get any other job 4.2% 7.0% 9.3% Better child-care arrangements 7.6% 41.9% 22.4% Better pay 6.6% 1.8% 2.1% Allows time for school 1.2% 0.7% 10.1%
SOURCE: HARRIET PRESSER, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
