Daytime is bedtime for night-shift workers

Dear Abby: I just read the letter from a fellow frustrated night-shifter, “Working a 40-Hour Week at Age 73” (Dec. 20). I have worked 12-hour shifts for many years to accommodate our family life. It is easier for me to be home in the morning to get the kids to school and be home when they get off the bus in the afternoon. I have the early evening free to get them to their activities, then go to work later.

I thoroughly agree that the rest of the world does not understand! I’ve had the strangest requests from people because I’m home during the day. My solution has been to turn off our home phone and sleep with my cellphone on (in case one of the kids gets sick at school or some other dire emergency). This year I made a laminated sign for my front door, asking for peace and quiet. It says, “Please do not ring my doorbell. Night-shift worker sleeping at this time.”

– Sleepless in Wisconsin

Dear Sleepless: Thanks for your letter. Your fellow night-shifters were in complete agreement with you. My newspaper readers comment:

Dear Abby: There’s nothing unusual about “Working’s” problem. I worked the graveyard shift for years at different jobs in different states, and it was exactly the same. In my case it was usually my mother, not my husband, who kept waking me up. Even worse, it wasn’t unusual for bosses to call and wake me.

What surprised me was the number of people who think that sleep is optional rather than necessary. They seemed to think that they sleep at night because there’s nothing else to do.

– Laura in Pollok, Texas

Dear Abby: Many people don’t understand night workers’ schedules. Relatives would announce that they were coming to visit during my working weekends despite the fact that I’d specifically explained my schedule. My husband would snipe at me in underhanded ways. When I finally confronted him, he admitted that he “subconsciously” felt that someone sleeping during the day was lazy.

Working nights is tough. The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study has discovered that night workers get less rest even if they get a good day’s sleep, that we make less melatonin and we die younger.