Unhealthy Overtimes

Having a schedule of four-days-on-four-days-off is quite a challenge. Six months into my work and I've fairly managed to get used to it.

Okay, in case you didn't get it, here's how that works: four four days -- or ratherm 2 days and 2 nights -- I go to work, say Monday to Thursday. That is day on Monday and Tuesday, night on Wednesday and Thursday. Then the next four days I'm off, so that's Friday to Monday. Cycle continues: on from Tuesday to Friday, off from Saturday to Tuesday, on from Wednesday to Saturday, and so on.

The caveat for this is that within the four days we're off, one of those days -- usually the second or third day-off -- we're on standby. That means we have to be on-call twenty-four hours during that day and be ready to go to the office in case the need arises, such as when a colleague supposed to work that day day can't come due to illness, emergency, whatever.

Well, one of the worst-case scenarios happened to me: for two straight weeks, I had three overtimes; one before the first workweek, one, between the two, and one after the second week... It may not be much but since two of those are nightshifts, it's not really a pretty thing to do. When you cover a nightshift, you've actually lost two "days" -- the day before the nightshift and the day after -- since you need to sleep after the shift.

Not that I blame my coworkers that I cover for. Things happen. It's just that it occured to me three times in a row. It's not fun...

...it's bloody difficult!!! Your body clock can't adjust that well if you do that often. Just when you are normalizing your body clock -- that is, adjusting so that you will be awake during the day and sleeping at night again -- the manager calls you and you have to go to work for a nightshift cover. Not good. Bad. Very bad indeed...

Guess my body couldn't take any more of that punishment... The next work shift, I couldn't make it on my first day. Oh well, tough luck for them! Working for 3 days instead of four is a welcome break. Good thing also because I'm on vacation leave for two weeks after that. :)

Finally some good news for my body with a struggling body-clock! :))