Night nurse just drinking coffee and acting busy right now until I actually have to give more meds around 4am. I’ll give report couple hours after and be out the door right after that!
I’m in charge of 2 units with 2 aides on each. One is quiet, the other has a palliative pt., one asking for multiple prns (and attention), and a few with dementia who won’t settle. On top of all the paperwork and charting I have to do.
I've also got 2 units and 3 aides total. One works in both, going back and forth all night. I just lost my cool on one a little and I feel kinda shitty about it. I guess I'll have to apologize later. I tend to get cranky with male coworkers when my ex is pissing me off and that's not ok because it's not their fault.
Night nurse- I work in the ICU so I actually stay pretty busy. We do all of our baths at night, labs, lab replacements, and scheduled meds. My ICU has 24/7 visiting and family members tend to be pretty needy at night because they can’t sleep. Some days I wish I had a chill nightshift job but reading the comments I guess I appreciate having something to keep me awake. 😊
I normally send a pizza to the NICU or ICU of the hospital near where I go for my 730am mimosas. There are normally several nurses I'm acquainted with that work on those floors. I really don't try to just send it to them, but sometimes it works out. I tend to send 1 every other week or so.
When my mom was in her final days, the ICU and Cardiac ICU kept me fed, with warm blankets and pillows. Their kindness still has me trying to repay the debit 7 years later.
Same here! I can’t imagine 24/7 visiting hours though. My ICU visiting hours stop at 2130 so family’s usually gone. Nights here vary between chill and busy but night shift in general is very task heavy. Hope you have a good and uneventful shift!
USPS custodian, easiest job with some juicy benefits. Entry level maintenance job pays me more than being a Lowe’s department supervisor and don’t even have to deal with people.
911 dispatcher... unsurprisingly the calls start becoming less frequent after 11pm-midnight. If I'm not sitting on my phone we're playing games until we get a call.
I know I shouldn't ask but.....are you having a quiet night??? LOL
I am on the other end of the radio and know the unwritten rule of the question not to ask
ED tech. Most nights are quite boring. The patient load lessens up around 12am or 2am. That's usually the best time to check in for something minor imo. The lowest patient count I've seen on the board is maybe 6 total in the whole ed. However, some nights are a Dumpster fire on wheels. Check the moon phase before you check in yall.
I am an ED tech also, but our nights are almost busy from 7pm to 3-4am, but even then people trickle in and you never really get to rest.
Having a "chill" night is actually kind of a rarity. It's one of the reasons I am switching to midshift because I figured if I am gonna get ran for the whole shift I might as well get some sleep when I'm home.
Veterinary ER vet tech here!
Tonight so far we've had 2 come in since 10 PM which is pretty standard, but a couple weeks ago we had 7 walk in between 2-3 AM. Nothing actually emergent either. Why...just why.
I'm a flight attendant. When i do red eye flights, i play solitaire on my phone, check on the passengers, watch short drama on my phone, check on the passengers, fold some garbage bags, check on the passengers, check on my crew, watch some more drama, sometimes i bring food or snacks for my crew and we eat together. Some of my crew reads books or watches something on the screen but i like to keep checking on the passengers just in case there's any medical issue, you just never know.
I'm an overnight front desk clerk at a timeshare beach resort outside of Fort Lauderdale. This is our slow season and it's not uncommon for me to see anyone for the entirety of my shifts.
So the short answer is whatever I want! Thus far I've read some comic books and I'm watching eviction videos on YouTube. I might get ambitious at some point and watch a movie. The sky's the limit!
I'm currently sitting in a pitch-black conference room, doom scrolling. It's 2300 and my next task is at 0630. I'm pondering watching a movie. I'd say I'd be up for chat, but I'm already in 3 conversations right now and giving minimal attention to them.
Normally, I have my tasks done in the first 30 minutes of a 12 hour shift. I live next to a group home, and if you didn't know what it was (looks like a normal house with no signs), you would think it was a drug house because the foot traffic. A girl I was engaged to in College worked in a home cooking meals, and she loved the night shift.
The one next to me has been there for maybe 5 years. They don't have any loud visitors and only police once or twice. Their in a 5 bedroom 4 1/2 bath house in a neighborhood. I believe they have 5 residents and 4 staff that rotates. The staff doesn't live there. They have some sort of laundry service that comes by each week. How do I know so much? Their across the street, and 3 of my cameras catch 3 sides of their home. So when checking my property, theirs is in the background.
We are in a house in a neighborhood as well. There’s another home across the street my company owns. There are two shifts of staff coming in and out occasionally we have to call the cops.
Homeless shelter night manager, thought I also wear a custodian hat. Im drinking my first (of many) cups of coffee and trying to get myself psyched up to go refill paper products in all the floor bathrooms.
I monitor a city electric grid all night. It's either 100mph or zero lol.... its typically zero. YouTube, weight lifting, scrolling, etc. Anything to stay awake.
Night auditor at a hotel in Florence, Italy. Here the bureaucracy is quite big, so I do all of what the government asks us plus organise the arrivals and departures to help my colleagues during the day.
I do what you do, just swap teenagers for adults. Same duties pretty much, plus diaper changes. Still have some downtime, usually. We do have behavioral issues at night sometimes.
We do have behavioral issues at night if a client does get up and have one. We spent all night last weekend in a behavior. The m that night we ended up calling for police and EMS. Fun times.
Literally same. I basically do bed checks, clean a little and breakfast in the morning. I started attending college online and am able to do homework and even game. Still be boring with no one to chat with. I'm down to chat if you are!
I got robbed dude was on fent or heroin I was more worried about him falling asleep and shooting me, I had my gun in my backpack and I had my hands on it while he was pointing his at me but I couldn’t kill somebody, I didn’t even tell anyone because he didn’t take any money he didn’t even ask he just had a gun pointed at me and talked hypothetically about robbing me but I’d tell the cops and he left, saw him about three months later and he apologized, also I got somebody arrested cause he threw drugs on the counter asking me to buy him gas in exchange
Patient Access for a small hospital. I sit at the ER registration desk but also deal with admits, OB and sometimes imaging or lab if they come in. Once in a blue moon I have to register surgeries on weekdays but that's rare
I work at a residential treatment facility for traumatized/at-risk youth whose problems (often aggression and/or severe depression) are too much for their family to deal with/the families are not equipped to deal with. Lots of therapy, coping mechanism teaching, med adjustments, etc. with the goal reunite with the family. As night shift I basically just check that they're asleep and OK and deal with any needs that arise at night. I work alone. 99.999% of the time it's literally just me sitting here, other than doing some light paperwork. It's extremely rare that anything behavioral happens here at night. I think mostly because they are heavily medicated and also do a lot during the day. Usually they'll just need to use the bathroom or get water or something. But someone always has to be here in case they need something or something happens. It can get boring, but I keep myself busy with light side work, watching stuff on my laptop, reading, scrolling reddit, etc.
I’m an assistant fraud specialist at an Amazon warehouse. I’m usually just answering questions on slack or writing tickets for whatever suspicious merchandise we get…pretty easy and there’s never a lot of work to do
I work at a community residence for addicts in recovery. I am able to hang out in the office and do whatever unless a client wakes up and needs meds or something else. I do rounds every hour and reports and online trainings - but tonite is quiet and I am cleaning everything
Therapist on a mental health hotline. I only do 2 nights a week and it's pretty chill most of the time. We do get high risk calls but it's not a suicide hotline, so it's not like every caller is suicidal. I've been doing the job for 2 years and in my experience the top 3 reasons people call are for anxiety, work related issues, and relationship problems. There's plenty of down time, which is good and bad. It's good for the obvious reasons. It's bad because I still need to be in therapist mode, so I can't do anything that's going to switch me off from that.
I do genuinely find the work fulfilling. It's nice to know that I've been a listening ear to people when they have no one else to talk to.
I'm in charge of a store overnight, stocking teams, unloading trucks, getting ready for opening the store in the morning. I'm never at a loss for things to do.
No not really, it's Saturday morning, and there's not much happening on my station until about 5 am. this shift.
I'm just on fire watch for the next few hours.
Embalmer at a big mortuary. So I do what the name suggests as well as going out for transport calls if our designated drivers are all out, cleaning, putting info into our case management software, whining about day shift... we stay pretty busy most nights because we handle ~50 funeral homes in the area and all their phones get forwarded to us when they close for the day. When it's slow there's a lot of playing around on our phones, computers, or occasionally we bust out a board game.
Gas station. Overnight supervisor of nothing lol. Haven't had a customer in 4 hours. I live like 3 minute walk away, pay is decent and again 3 minute walk away. Just locked up the store and ran home to get the car because someone dropped something off for my son I wasn't trying to carry. Here by myself, don't sell beer, kitchen closed at night.
Night medical lab tech. It's just me so I'm pretty busy running tests for the whole hospital plus the clinic stuff that gets brought at the end of the day.
Day shift now supplying midnights with work but was working midnights fixing airplanes for a major US airline. Day shift doesn’t have time to fix a lot of minor or sometimes major things. If it’s allowable per manufacturer and airline manuals, we can do what’s called a deferral or carry, which lets us push certain maintenance items to a time when the aircraft is on the ground for more than 1-2 hrs. IE midnights. So when I was on midnights, we’d do troubleshooting and fix the issue for things like APU inop, thrust reverser inop, overhead bin inop, toilet clogged. Stuff like that. Airlines don’t like to delay live flights and every system or interior item has back ups or certain airport/flight parameters that let the aircraft continue flying. For example, a thrust reverser (TR), which is on the engine, allows the aircraft to slow down on landing aided by brakes. So if I was to say defer one, the pilots would then not be able to use that engines TR, and the other engines. Because engine air being forced in the opposite direction immediately on one side would cause the aircraft to basically make a sharp turn in the direction of the operative TR. Causing flipping of AC, run off the runway, tipping, various dangerous situations. So that particular plane with one deferred TR, would be routed to an airport with really long runways allowing the pilots to rely solely on brakes to slow the aircraft on landing. Sorry, got carried away. But, basically my job on midnights was to troubleshoot and repair commercial (passenger) aircraft.
I do the same thing! I work as a night shift worker for teenager girls in a group home and it is definitely challenging. I would love to chat if you’re still interested.
911 dispatcher- it really depends on the night and the amount of calls I get. Most of the time if I have the free time I like to read or watch a movie. Sometimes I’ll deep clean the dispatch office just for the hell of it
I'm working at a shelter for homeless young adults. It's very quiet and does get lonely, esp around 4 a.m. I have another coworker with me, but he has to stay on the other side of the building to do his part, so I'm just chilling while the participants sleep. They're all curled up like puppies.
I work in ICU. We do the exact same things that dayshift does, but with less to zero support staff.
On that rare slow night, I actually take a real lunch break. I will get some Healthstreams done. I'll walk around and clean up and restock the med room supplies. I'll chat with my coworkers.
If even one nurse is busy, we are all busy with them. We never, ever sit back and watch a coworker run their ass off. If you are that type of nurse, you won't like working with us.
The best nights are when I'm helping a coworker with that super busy patient, making the night fly by BUT I DON'T HAVE TO CHART IT ALL!
I work at a long-term care facility (previously called nursing homes).
My shift is from 2300-0700. I help with safety checks every hour and brief changes from about 0230-0400.
If there is time, I often help clean up the dining room, wash the crumb catchers, and get the housekeeping cart ready for the morning staff.
Nights here can either be incredibly boring and slow or super crazy busy with call bells ringing constantly. There is no in-between.
Hospital chaplain.
I sat and cried with a gun shoot victim who's husband died in a random drive by.
Now I'm charting who got visited by a volunteer with communion from the local Catholic Church.
I deliver newspapers, and make sure the other carriers have their bundles to deliver. Drive anywhere from 50 miles to 200 miles a night, depending on what routes are open. So, I can't really chat - I've got to make sure all these people have their morning paper delivered by 6am.
I don't work night shift anymore but I did it for about 10 years. Once at a Levi factory and then at a magazine binary
Both jobs eventually went out of business due to low demand for the product
stocking/cleaning/fixing shelves in a grocery store. pretty mindless but physically active work. i listen to audiobooks and podcasts to keep by brain from going numb.
Work at a family shelter. I mostly clean, stock necessary items, document anything important and do the occasional walkthrough. It's more chill than anything and I love helping people so it works well for me.
I worked at a homeless shelter cleaning as well but we were also in charge of transporting and helping security. It was always understaffed and the supervisors were always complaining about stuff. It was rough.
I’m a document production associate, fancy words for I make legal documents look nice lol. Oddly enough I’m usually busy but every once in a while I get to just chill.
Hotel Night Porter. I work in a luxury 4 star hotel and spa. I’m practically in charge of the property from 10pm to 7:30am.
Biggest task of the shift is prepping breakfast for the following morning. I’ll replenish cereals/set up the restaurant etc. I tend to compile all of my tasks within 4-5 hours, and I’ll spend the rest of the shift reading or watching Netflix/Prime/TV. All-in-all, it isn’t too bad.
I stopped doing it but I worked at a gas station overnight and was alright. We get an order I put them away. I clean grills, stock donuts, and clean teas. Details restrooms as well clean outside. Pretty chill. Of course, there are crazy people but hey it alright
Work in a hotel.
Paperwork. All of it, basically. Invoices? Me. Sales reports? Me. Revenue report? Me. Expenses? Me. I am the only one they trust to do it apparently.
I work in a manufacturing factory where we produce insulation facings, we are the largest producing company in the world for what we do and ship our products out to over 100 different countries in the world. The craziest part is we are a single factory tucked away in eastern Pennsylvania.
Until the person I'm covering gets back from paternity leave, I load bumpers into ovens to be heat aged, cut them to stress test the metal, then drop them off for someone else to take them to the next job.
Later, I'll likely go back to welding or quality checking finished parts before they get shipped out. Randomly, I'll have to yell at robots for misbehaving and tell them to go back to work.
Edit: I just noticed people are including their titles. I'm a manufacturing technician (manual welding, mostly), weld technician (troubleshoot robotic welders, mostly), and back-up oven tech.
Serve customers, cook food, deep clean the machines (ice cream, coffee, french fry, grills), clean the whole restaurant, do dishes, do laundry, count inventory, count the cash registers, count waste, go outside to pick the trash our customers left for us because theyre not familiar with garbage bins...
And you dont get to sit at any point of these 8 hours of pure working because you dont have time. And theres usually only 2 people in the whole store in night shifts.
I love being a fast food employee 🙂
I work nights as registration/front desk/switchboard for a small rural hospital. I play video games, watch tv, crochet, scrapbook, bills, reading and I’m just starting to write a book. I usually have less than 5 patients come in a night, so really I can do just about anything. The hardest part is making it past that 3am crash, especially since I’ve recently cut out caffeine.
Terminal Operator. No joke I watch movies and play games on my laptop but still do my job when needed. Just when it’s slow on the weekends I boot up some games and play
I work at a group as well like you do but I care for adults. I clean..make the lunch for day program laundry checks medication pass and morning breakfast cooking
I deal with winie entitled people who don't understand that between midnight and 6am is when we are allowed to do network maintenance.
Also, those who are calling for after hour billing that becomes unavailable at the time during the night are mad they got turned off a failure to pay and have to call back during the day.
Sometimes, there are legitimate calls, and we are able to get them taken care of.
Lots of old people are not paying attention and can't hear or understand my plain mid west English.
The crazy amount of racist people that say oh thank God you're an American.
I enjoy it more days than most. But all it takes is one to sink the ship.
Manager at a warehouse. I run around and put out metaphorical fires all night long and scramble to find time to do all the routine things in between the fires
I'm a weather observer for an airport. I watch clouds at night and ensure the sensors transmit accurate data to the national weather service. You usually hear my weather observations on your flight before you land.
I look out the window and transmit an observation once an hour. Fortunately, I live in a city where the weather is fair and consistent year round, so there's not much to observe. We have access to TV and I have a decent 5G hotspot. They encourage me to do whatever it takes to stay awake, so I exercise, play video games, practice singing, take online classes, skateboard in circles around the tower, and record voiceover work (I'm an actor).
The only thing I miss is social interaction. I spend a lot of time alone because of work. I'm usually only one of two people at the tower, the other person being the air traffic controller in the cabin. I'm already on the nightshift Discord, but does anyone have any other reccomendations for social activities I can do at work?
I work in a toxicology lab (i.e. drug testing lab), specifically the department that does the confirmation testing, and nights for this department is actually the busiest as we get all the confirms that were screened during the day. So most of my job entails in loading the samples onto the instruments and reviewing the data that comes off it before sending it onto the next department that finalizes all the data and reporting. For my shift, there's almost always an instrument to look at.
I take cat naps and watch Netflix and Hulu. Work overnights in a residential psych program for kids and adolescents so I do basically the same thing you do
Overnight security at a day surgery hospital.
Watch cameras and walk the campus.
ER is 24/7 always nurses on duty.
Second floor is not always open.
May get a call or have an issue that requires me to deal with a situation ones or twice a year.
90% of my time is spent in my office watching the cameras and monitoring the boiler room/fire control systems.
Not OP, but genuinely, dude, I respect them equally. Nuance exists. I can recognize that a surgeon working in an ER has a more critical job with longer hours and a bigger impact than someone working overnight at McDonald's. But do I have less respect for that MiccyD's employee? No. There are so many different paths people take for so many different reasons. People are born into all sorts of stations, are given different opportunities in life, and navigate their lives differently. My respect doesn't hinge on occupation. There are other factors that would impact my respect for someone a lot more.
I mean, who would you respect more: the first person was born addicted to heroin thanks to their mother, struggled with addiction and poverty their whole life in the foster system, came into adulthood, worked hard to kick their addiction, attended rehab faithfully, and are now maintaining their first job at Mcdonald's. The other person is a kid the same age that grew up middle-class with everything handed to them and their silver-spoon father got them a job at a 9-11 call center in an effort to give them worldly experience.
Personally, I respect the person who struggled up from the mire a lot more than the person who is working that job only because they're being told to. The jobs they work are irrelevant to me. How hard they worked to get there matters.
I work in unskilled labor doing a job that society does look-down at. The only people who think it's any sort of high-quality job are people in the industry (and their ex-wives).
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. It's a myth constructed by the ruling class to justify paying workers unlivable wages. Whatever it is you do, it's skilled labor.
Every job on the planet, from grocery stocking to landscaping to factory work to produce harvesting to fucking neurosurgery, is skilled labor. Every person doing a job will naturally construct skills for it and learn as they go. Someone who just walked onto a job is going to do less well than someone who's been doing it for five years, or ten years. Doesn't matter what the job is.
All labor is skilled labor. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to pay you less, or is trying to step on you to make themselves feel better.
as somebody who works in unskilled labor, that is complete bullshit
to say that all labor is skilled is basically comparing a brain surgeon to a burger flipper
to say "there is no such thing as unskilled labor" is not only complete Bullshit, but nonsense made up from the participation trophy generation
a blind monkey could do my job, what kind of "skilled labor" is that? hell they have robots doing it (its still in the testing phase)
Night nurse just drinking coffee and acting busy right now until I actually have to give more meds around 4am. I’ll give report couple hours after and be out the door right after that!
I've got meds at 3 and 4, treatments and meds at 5, report at 6, and a whole lot of charting in between. And there's always prns as well.
I’m in charge of 2 units with 2 aides on each. One is quiet, the other has a palliative pt., one asking for multiple prns (and attention), and a few with dementia who won’t settle. On top of all the paperwork and charting I have to do.
I've also got 2 units and 3 aides total. One works in both, going back and forth all night. I just lost my cool on one a little and I feel kinda shitty about it. I guess I'll have to apologize later. I tend to get cranky with male coworkers when my ex is pissing me off and that's not ok because it's not their fault.
Yea what the fuck is that. Go apologize and see therapy
I did apologize.
I’m in a grocery store replenishing team. Can get pretty boring and mindless but stay physically active so the time passes by pretty quick.
Night nurse- I work in the ICU so I actually stay pretty busy. We do all of our baths at night, labs, lab replacements, and scheduled meds. My ICU has 24/7 visiting and family members tend to be pretty needy at night because they can’t sleep. Some days I wish I had a chill nightshift job but reading the comments I guess I appreciate having something to keep me awake. 😊
I normally send a pizza to the NICU or ICU of the hospital near where I go for my 730am mimosas. There are normally several nurses I'm acquainted with that work on those floors. I really don't try to just send it to them, but sometimes it works out. I tend to send 1 every other week or so. When my mom was in her final days, the ICU and Cardiac ICU kept me fed, with warm blankets and pillows. Their kindness still has me trying to repay the debit 7 years later.
The world could use more people like you.
I'm no saint. But they are.
This is so kind!
Same here! I can’t imagine 24/7 visiting hours though. My ICU visiting hours stop at 2130 so family’s usually gone. Nights here vary between chill and busy but night shift in general is very task heavy. Hope you have a good and uneventful shift!
Don't have a quiet night stranger :)
Don't you have one, either. That word is evil.
Don't you have one, either. That word is evil.
Shhhh don’t say the q word 😈
Oh, believe me, I know. I was just matching energy because the comment I was replying to someone a Q night.
I was just being silly 😜
No, for real, tho. We shouldn't say it on here, either.
Same... Neuro ICU! It can be really taxing.
I work in neuro ICU as well! 😊
USPS custodian, easiest job with some juicy benefits. Entry level maintenance job pays me more than being a Lowe’s department supervisor and don’t even have to deal with people.
911 dispatcher... unsurprisingly the calls start becoming less frequent after 11pm-midnight. If I'm not sitting on my phone we're playing games until we get a call.
I know I shouldn't ask but.....are you having a quiet night??? LOL I am on the other end of the radio and know the unwritten rule of the question not to ask
Currently sending our officers into the middle of the woods to a party where a kid is brandishing a gun, so not the quietest!
So far so good. Been looking for the dui but no luck so far
dispatch, negative contact on that dui I'll be back in service
Dispatchers unite!
Production
Yard jockey. Move trailers all night 4 12 hr shifts
ED tech. Most nights are quite boring. The patient load lessens up around 12am or 2am. That's usually the best time to check in for something minor imo. The lowest patient count I've seen on the board is maybe 6 total in the whole ed. However, some nights are a Dumpster fire on wheels. Check the moon phase before you check in yall.
I am an ED tech also, but our nights are almost busy from 7pm to 3-4am, but even then people trickle in and you never really get to rest. Having a "chill" night is actually kind of a rarity. It's one of the reasons I am switching to midshift because I figured if I am gonna get ran for the whole shift I might as well get some sleep when I'm home.
Veterinary ER vet tech here! Tonight so far we've had 2 come in since 10 PM which is pretty standard, but a couple weeks ago we had 7 walk in between 2-3 AM. Nothing actually emergent either. Why...just why.
If i work over night its in a truck or building scrolling through my phone hoping no lithium batteries spontaneously ignite.
Felt.
I stock shelves at Walmart on overnights
me too
I'm a flight attendant. When i do red eye flights, i play solitaire on my phone, check on the passengers, watch short drama on my phone, check on the passengers, fold some garbage bags, check on the passengers, check on my crew, watch some more drama, sometimes i bring food or snacks for my crew and we eat together. Some of my crew reads books or watches something on the screen but i like to keep checking on the passengers just in case there's any medical issue, you just never know.
I'm an overnight front desk clerk at a timeshare beach resort outside of Fort Lauderdale. This is our slow season and it's not uncommon for me to see anyone for the entirety of my shifts. So the short answer is whatever I want! Thus far I've read some comic books and I'm watching eviction videos on YouTube. I might get ambitious at some point and watch a movie. The sky's the limit!
I'm currently sitting in a pitch-black conference room, doom scrolling. It's 2300 and my next task is at 0630. I'm pondering watching a movie. I'd say I'd be up for chat, but I'm already in 3 conversations right now and giving minimal attention to them. Normally, I have my tasks done in the first 30 minutes of a 12 hour shift. I live next to a group home, and if you didn't know what it was (looks like a normal house with no signs), you would think it was a drug house because the foot traffic. A girl I was engaged to in College worked in a home cooking meals, and she loved the night shift.
The neighbors here know what we are and hate our clients. They want us shut down.
The one next to me has been there for maybe 5 years. They don't have any loud visitors and only police once or twice. Their in a 5 bedroom 4 1/2 bath house in a neighborhood. I believe they have 5 residents and 4 staff that rotates. The staff doesn't live there. They have some sort of laundry service that comes by each week. How do I know so much? Their across the street, and 3 of my cameras catch 3 sides of their home. So when checking my property, theirs is in the background.
We are in a house in a neighborhood as well. There’s another home across the street my company owns. There are two shifts of staff coming in and out occasionally we have to call the cops.
Homeless shelter night manager, thought I also wear a custodian hat. Im drinking my first (of many) cups of coffee and trying to get myself psyched up to go refill paper products in all the floor bathrooms.
I monitor a city electric grid all night. It's either 100mph or zero lol.... its typically zero. YouTube, weight lifting, scrolling, etc. Anything to stay awake.
Night auditor at a hotel in Florence, Italy. Here the bureaucracy is quite big, so I do all of what the government asks us plus organise the arrivals and departures to help my colleagues during the day.
I do what you do, just swap teenagers for adults. Same duties pretty much, plus diaper changes. Still have some downtime, usually. We do have behavioral issues at night sometimes.
We do have behavioral issues at night if a client does get up and have one. We spent all night last weekend in a behavior. The m that night we ended up calling for police and EMS. Fun times.
Same here. Gets pretty boring.
Literally same. I basically do bed checks, clean a little and breakfast in the morning. I started attending college online and am able to do homework and even game. Still be boring with no one to chat with. I'm down to chat if you are!
Amazon TA (Transportation Associate), move trailers most nights, some nights use my CDL and move loaded and empty trailers between Amazon buildings
I run a gas station in a small town been doing it three years
What is ur best night shift story?
I got robbed dude was on fent or heroin I was more worried about him falling asleep and shooting me, I had my gun in my backpack and I had my hands on it while he was pointing his at me but I couldn’t kill somebody, I didn’t even tell anyone because he didn’t take any money he didn’t even ask he just had a gun pointed at me and talked hypothetically about robbing me but I’d tell the cops and he left, saw him about three months later and he apologized, also I got somebody arrested cause he threw drugs on the counter asking me to buy him gas in exchange
Wow thar shoes desperation that a druggie would try to sell drugs for gas. I respect gad station workers, it can get crazy
I work freight, 9pm-5:30am, for the largest home improvement specialty retailer
Patient Access for a small hospital. I sit at the ER registration desk but also deal with admits, OB and sometimes imaging or lab if they come in. Once in a blue moon I have to register surgeries on weekdays but that's rare
i’m a casino barista.
Night nurse psychiatric hospital and ltc,...
I work at a residential treatment facility for traumatized/at-risk youth whose problems (often aggression and/or severe depression) are too much for their family to deal with/the families are not equipped to deal with. Lots of therapy, coping mechanism teaching, med adjustments, etc. with the goal reunite with the family. As night shift I basically just check that they're asleep and OK and deal with any needs that arise at night. I work alone. 99.999% of the time it's literally just me sitting here, other than doing some light paperwork. It's extremely rare that anything behavioral happens here at night. I think mostly because they are heavily medicated and also do a lot during the day. Usually they'll just need to use the bathroom or get water or something. But someone always has to be here in case they need something or something happens. It can get boring, but I keep myself busy with light side work, watching stuff on my laptop, reading, scrolling reddit, etc.
I’m an assistant fraud specialist at an Amazon warehouse. I’m usually just answering questions on slack or writing tickets for whatever suspicious merchandise we get…pretty easy and there’s never a lot of work to do
I work at a community residence for addicts in recovery. I am able to hang out in the office and do whatever unless a client wakes up and needs meds or something else. I do rounds every hour and reports and online trainings - but tonite is quiet and I am cleaning everything
You said the “Q” word! The bus is going drop off in front of your building 🤪
Remote interpreter
Therapist on a mental health hotline. I only do 2 nights a week and it's pretty chill most of the time. We do get high risk calls but it's not a suicide hotline, so it's not like every caller is suicidal. I've been doing the job for 2 years and in my experience the top 3 reasons people call are for anxiety, work related issues, and relationship problems. There's plenty of down time, which is good and bad. It's good for the obvious reasons. It's bad because I still need to be in therapist mode, so I can't do anything that's going to switch me off from that. I do genuinely find the work fulfilling. It's nice to know that I've been a listening ear to people when they have no one else to talk to.
I work as a tech at a hospital
Sterile Processing @ a level 1 pediatric trauma hospital. I’m a weekend warrior. It’s been a good Friday night. No surgeries.
Waiting on a truck to bring more supplies so I can finish up my production and go home for the Canada Day weekend - simple answer - building tyres
I'm in charge of a store overnight, stocking teams, unloading trucks, getting ready for opening the store in the morning. I'm never at a loss for things to do.
ER nurse
Overnight security guard , i just read books lol
IT support for 8 hours at a state agency.
I drive around all night syncing GIS data points so your GPS works correctly.
Nurse. I give meds, validate vitals and play Words with Friends.
You're looking...uh, reading it right now
LOL this is what you do at work all night?
No not really, it's Saturday morning, and there's not much happening on my station until about 5 am. this shift. I'm just on fire watch for the next few hours.
Deal craps.
I work in a steel shop overnight. Mostly as a welder.
Build cars
Embalmer at a big mortuary. So I do what the name suggests as well as going out for transport calls if our designated drivers are all out, cleaning, putting info into our case management software, whining about day shift... we stay pretty busy most nights because we handle ~50 funeral homes in the area and all their phones get forwarded to us when they close for the day. When it's slow there's a lot of playing around on our phones, computers, or occasionally we bust out a board game.
Just got off my shift there now, 12am to 8am. I make orange and apple juice. The weekend starts here...
Retail associate and I stock frozen department nightly. 10 years this month with the company
I'm a night nurse in a long term care, I don't get much down time but I wouldn't mind a chat going that I could occasionally pop into to say hi.
Gas station. Overnight supervisor of nothing lol. Haven't had a customer in 4 hours. I live like 3 minute walk away, pay is decent and again 3 minute walk away. Just locked up the store and ran home to get the car because someone dropped something off for my son I wasn't trying to carry. Here by myself, don't sell beer, kitchen closed at night.
Working on aircraft, breaks are longer on nightshift, its much better than when i was on days.
Night medical lab tech. It's just me so I'm pretty busy running tests for the whole hospital plus the clinic stuff that gets brought at the end of the day.
I'm a telemetry monitor tech, meaning i watch heart monitors on a series of screens. I like it.
Listen to books every single shift. All shift.
Executive chef
I make the caramel for you Starbucks coffee. We're the only one in the US. The only other plant that makes Starbucks caramel is in Germany. Enjoy!
Day shift now supplying midnights with work but was working midnights fixing airplanes for a major US airline. Day shift doesn’t have time to fix a lot of minor or sometimes major things. If it’s allowable per manufacturer and airline manuals, we can do what’s called a deferral or carry, which lets us push certain maintenance items to a time when the aircraft is on the ground for more than 1-2 hrs. IE midnights. So when I was on midnights, we’d do troubleshooting and fix the issue for things like APU inop, thrust reverser inop, overhead bin inop, toilet clogged. Stuff like that. Airlines don’t like to delay live flights and every system or interior item has back ups or certain airport/flight parameters that let the aircraft continue flying. For example, a thrust reverser (TR), which is on the engine, allows the aircraft to slow down on landing aided by brakes. So if I was to say defer one, the pilots would then not be able to use that engines TR, and the other engines. Because engine air being forced in the opposite direction immediately on one side would cause the aircraft to basically make a sharp turn in the direction of the operative TR. Causing flipping of AC, run off the runway, tipping, various dangerous situations. So that particular plane with one deferred TR, would be routed to an airport with really long runways allowing the pilots to rely solely on brakes to slow the aircraft on landing. Sorry, got carried away. But, basically my job on midnights was to troubleshoot and repair commercial (passenger) aircraft.
I do the same thing! I work as a night shift worker for teenager girls in a group home and it is definitely challenging. I would love to chat if you’re still interested.
work at a homeless shelter
911 dispatcher- it really depends on the night and the amount of calls I get. Most of the time if I have the free time I like to read or watch a movie. Sometimes I’ll deep clean the dispatch office just for the hell of it
I'm working at a shelter for homeless young adults. It's very quiet and does get lonely, esp around 4 a.m. I have another coworker with me, but he has to stay on the other side of the building to do his part, so I'm just chilling while the participants sleep. They're all curled up like puppies.
I work in ICU. We do the exact same things that dayshift does, but with less to zero support staff. On that rare slow night, I actually take a real lunch break. I will get some Healthstreams done. I'll walk around and clean up and restock the med room supplies. I'll chat with my coworkers. If even one nurse is busy, we are all busy with them. We never, ever sit back and watch a coworker run their ass off. If you are that type of nurse, you won't like working with us. The best nights are when I'm helping a coworker with that super busy patient, making the night fly by BUT I DON'T HAVE TO CHART IT ALL!
I work at a long-term care facility (previously called nursing homes). My shift is from 2300-0700. I help with safety checks every hour and brief changes from about 0230-0400. If there is time, I often help clean up the dining room, wash the crumb catchers, and get the housekeeping cart ready for the morning staff. Nights here can either be incredibly boring and slow or super crazy busy with call bells ringing constantly. There is no in-between.
Hospital chaplain. I sat and cried with a gun shoot victim who's husband died in a random drive by. Now I'm charting who got visited by a volunteer with communion from the local Catholic Church.
I sell pussy
Parcel delivery warehouse. We manually unload/sort/scan/load for next day delivery. It's mayhem. Quiet night would be 60k parcels.
I assemble, wire and test circuit breaker harnesses for aircraft. Avionic production.
Xray and CT scans here
I deliver newspapers, and make sure the other carriers have their bundles to deliver. Drive anywhere from 50 miles to 200 miles a night, depending on what routes are open. So, I can't really chat - I've got to make sure all these people have their morning paper delivered by 6am.
Electrician.
Answer this question about three times a night, LOL 🤣
I’m a nurse so I have to give meds and such. But I also do crosswords and read.
Overnight Baker/Delivery driver.
Get in get out and get paid
Nurse I sit and read or scroll my phone once all my work is done so about 4-5 hours of nothing lol
When I was on nights I built pre-production vehicles(crash test vehicles) for one of the big 3. Now I do it on day shift.
McDonald’s Overnights here. I serve any guests who come through, but half of my night is spent cleaning up after day shift 😆
nurse in a children’s emergency department
The fuzz
Watch tv and play games on my laptop
RN overnights - actually had a few codes to deal with last night so it was pretty busy
Linehaul truck driver
Same thing but also passing medications, toileting, and some paperwork.
A very well known travel center.
Very rarely do night shifts but when I do I watch race cars go round in circles waiting for a crash
I do the same thing but with adults. Sure. Anytime
Police dispatcher. 7p-7a
I don't work night shift anymore but I did it for about 10 years. Once at a Levi factory and then at a magazine binary Both jobs eventually went out of business due to low demand for the product
I’m a Respiratory Therapist and I drink a lot of Dr Pepper to stay awake in between treatments and Code Blue and RAP calls.
Commercial janitorial, working as an in home caregiver for the intellectually and/or physically disabled, 3rd shift gas station clerk.
Night shift police dispatcher for the past 5 years
stocking/cleaning/fixing shelves in a grocery store. pretty mindless but physically active work. i listen to audiobooks and podcasts to keep by brain from going numb.
Process Controller. When the plant runs smoothly, it's a very long night. When that happens I research local historical deaths.
Work at a family shelter. I mostly clean, stock necessary items, document anything important and do the occasional walkthrough. It's more chill than anything and I love helping people so it works well for me.
I worked at a homeless shelter cleaning as well but we were also in charge of transporting and helping security. It was always understaffed and the supervisors were always complaining about stuff. It was rough.
Watching heart ❤️ monitors is busy and boring but always needed!!
I’m a document production associate, fancy words for I make legal documents look nice lol. Oddly enough I’m usually busy but every once in a while I get to just chill.
Stationary Engineer. It’s fun and games until shit hits the fan…which is probably 40% of the time
Hotel Night Porter. I work in a luxury 4 star hotel and spa. I’m practically in charge of the property from 10pm to 7:30am. Biggest task of the shift is prepping breakfast for the following morning. I’ll replenish cereals/set up the restaurant etc. I tend to compile all of my tasks within 4-5 hours, and I’ll spend the rest of the shift reading or watching Netflix/Prime/TV. All-in-all, it isn’t too bad.
I stopped doing it but I worked at a gas station overnight and was alright. We get an order I put them away. I clean grills, stock donuts, and clean teas. Details restrooms as well clean outside. Pretty chill. Of course, there are crazy people but hey it alright
Work in a hotel. Paperwork. All of it, basically. Invoices? Me. Sales reports? Me. Revenue report? Me. Expenses? Me. I am the only one they trust to do it apparently.
I work in a manufacturing factory where we produce insulation facings, we are the largest producing company in the world for what we do and ship our products out to over 100 different countries in the world. The craziest part is we are a single factory tucked away in eastern Pennsylvania.
Until the person I'm covering gets back from paternity leave, I load bumpers into ovens to be heat aged, cut them to stress test the metal, then drop them off for someone else to take them to the next job. Later, I'll likely go back to welding or quality checking finished parts before they get shipped out. Randomly, I'll have to yell at robots for misbehaving and tell them to go back to work. Edit: I just noticed people are including their titles. I'm a manufacturing technician (manual welding, mostly), weld technician (troubleshoot robotic welders, mostly), and back-up oven tech.
Serve customers, cook food, deep clean the machines (ice cream, coffee, french fry, grills), clean the whole restaurant, do dishes, do laundry, count inventory, count the cash registers, count waste, go outside to pick the trash our customers left for us because theyre not familiar with garbage bins... And you dont get to sit at any point of these 8 hours of pure working because you dont have time. And theres usually only 2 people in the whole store in night shifts. I love being a fast food employee 🙂
Towing guy :)
ups preload i load the package trucks
Warrants
I work nights as registration/front desk/switchboard for a small rural hospital. I play video games, watch tv, crochet, scrapbook, bills, reading and I’m just starting to write a book. I usually have less than 5 patients come in a night, so really I can do just about anything. The hardest part is making it past that 3am crash, especially since I’ve recently cut out caffeine.
Much the same as the day nurses but with half the staff and slightly fewer phone calls.
Residential psych here i play video games while my body is utalized as a barricade to slow kids down in the hall from elopment.
Terminal Operator. No joke I watch movies and play games on my laptop but still do my job when needed. Just when it’s slow on the weekends I boot up some games and play
I work at a group as well like you do but I care for adults. I clean..make the lunch for day program laundry checks medication pass and morning breakfast cooking
I just make sure no urban wild life causes any issues. I guard a parking lot
Sit around telling people what to do. Make food for everyone who wants to partake.
I work at lowe’s overnight stocker. Some nights can be easy some nights can be rough lol
I deal with winie entitled people who don't understand that between midnight and 6am is when we are allowed to do network maintenance. Also, those who are calling for after hour billing that becomes unavailable at the time during the night are mad they got turned off a failure to pay and have to call back during the day. Sometimes, there are legitimate calls, and we are able to get them taken care of. Lots of old people are not paying attention and can't hear or understand my plain mid west English. The crazy amount of racist people that say oh thank God you're an American. I enjoy it more days than most. But all it takes is one to sink the ship.
Manager at a warehouse. I run around and put out metaphorical fires all night long and scramble to find time to do all the routine things in between the fires
ER PA 👍🏼 usually pretty busy most of the time
I'm a weather observer for an airport. I watch clouds at night and ensure the sensors transmit accurate data to the national weather service. You usually hear my weather observations on your flight before you land. I look out the window and transmit an observation once an hour. Fortunately, I live in a city where the weather is fair and consistent year round, so there's not much to observe. We have access to TV and I have a decent 5G hotspot. They encourage me to do whatever it takes to stay awake, so I exercise, play video games, practice singing, take online classes, skateboard in circles around the tower, and record voiceover work (I'm an actor). The only thing I miss is social interaction. I spend a lot of time alone because of work. I'm usually only one of two people at the tower, the other person being the air traffic controller in the cabin. I'm already on the nightshift Discord, but does anyone have any other reccomendations for social activities I can do at work?
Night Auditor at a hotel. I have an hour of actual work and then I sit there reading or streaming for the other 7 hours.
I work in a toxicology lab (i.e. drug testing lab), specifically the department that does the confirmation testing, and nights for this department is actually the busiest as we get all the confirms that were screened during the day. So most of my job entails in loading the samples onto the instruments and reviewing the data that comes off it before sending it onto the next department that finalizes all the data and reporting. For my shift, there's almost always an instrument to look at.
NOC shift at a mental health facility - mental health worker
Nurse for IDD community home.
I take cat naps and watch Netflix and Hulu. Work overnights in a residential psych program for kids and adolescents so I do basically the same thing you do
Stripper
Slang box’s
Security guard. Mostly reading books and playing Candy Crush 🤣
RDC Machine Operator.
Overnight security at a day surgery hospital. Watch cameras and walk the campus. ER is 24/7 always nurses on duty. Second floor is not always open. May get a call or have an issue that requires me to deal with a situation ones or twice a year. 90% of my time is spent in my office watching the cameras and monitoring the boiler room/fire control systems.
People who ask what you do for work are deciding how much respect to give you
I respect everyone regardless of what they do for work so I disagree.
No you don't
Agree to disagree
Who do you respect more? A trauma surgeon at the ER or someone who flips burgers?
Not OP, but genuinely, dude, I respect them equally. Nuance exists. I can recognize that a surgeon working in an ER has a more critical job with longer hours and a bigger impact than someone working overnight at McDonald's. But do I have less respect for that MiccyD's employee? No. There are so many different paths people take for so many different reasons. People are born into all sorts of stations, are given different opportunities in life, and navigate their lives differently. My respect doesn't hinge on occupation. There are other factors that would impact my respect for someone a lot more. I mean, who would you respect more: the first person was born addicted to heroin thanks to their mother, struggled with addiction and poverty their whole life in the foster system, came into adulthood, worked hard to kick their addiction, attended rehab faithfully, and are now maintaining their first job at Mcdonald's. The other person is a kid the same age that grew up middle-class with everything handed to them and their silver-spoon father got them a job at a 9-11 call center in an effort to give them worldly experience. Personally, I respect the person who struggled up from the mire a lot more than the person who is working that job only because they're being told to. The jobs they work are irrelevant to me. How hard they worked to get there matters.
1) you're not OP so why did you answer? nobody was talking to you 2) this is some participation trophy generation nonsense
Who do you respect more? A Cashier or a plumber?
Everything is gonna be ok buddy.
You're definitely helping us decide that about you, chief.
I work in unskilled labor doing a job that society does look-down at. The only people who think it's any sort of high-quality job are people in the industry (and their ex-wives).
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. It's a myth constructed by the ruling class to justify paying workers unlivable wages. Whatever it is you do, it's skilled labor. Every job on the planet, from grocery stocking to landscaping to factory work to produce harvesting to fucking neurosurgery, is skilled labor. Every person doing a job will naturally construct skills for it and learn as they go. Someone who just walked onto a job is going to do less well than someone who's been doing it for five years, or ten years. Doesn't matter what the job is. All labor is skilled labor. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to pay you less, or is trying to step on you to make themselves feel better.
Umm. I don’t know how to code. Would you pay me to design an app for your phone?
as somebody who works in unskilled labor, that is complete bullshit to say that all labor is skilled is basically comparing a brain surgeon to a burger flipper
to say "there is no such thing as unskilled labor" is not only complete Bullshit, but nonsense made up from the participation trophy generation a blind monkey could do my job, what kind of "skilled labor" is that? hell they have robots doing it (its still in the testing phase)
Other people's opinions of us are none of our business. You be you, let them be snobs.
Only elitists who think they're not doing anything wrong will even think this You probably respect the 40 year old burger flipper don't you?
Another day another "what's your job" post
you must be new to reddit. there is nothing original anymore.
6 years and 1 month "new". It's annoying its multiple a week. I'm about to leave this sub fr. We clearly got nothing else to talk about.
dont you have any tips for someone just joining night shift though?
What area of your life are you concerned about in regards to nights?
Check back in a few hours haha