Why are they reversed? Well, I've started my overnight job at Target. I was offered the job, but couldn't get back to the HR director before I left for Massachusetts -- luckily (?), she held the job open for me. Anyway, as soon as I got back, I made an appointment, took a mandatory drug test (no needles, thank God!), passed, and started work on Monday evening with an orientation session. Four and a half hours of it, followed by some reading of stuff that was way over my head.
There were three new additions to the overnight "flow team" in my group, including me. The other two are both new moms. Good grief -- the one just gave birth by c-section only two months ago! But seriously, they both said that working nights would be ideal, because while they're working and earning some extra money, the babies are (should be) sleeping. When the babies are awake, mom will actually get to be home with them. My only question is: when the heck are you gonna sleep, mom?
See, the shift starts at 10:00 PM (2200 hrs.) and ends at 6:30 AM (0630). To my mind, the easiest way to cope with such hours is to reverse my notions of AM and PM -- in other words, just think of it as working from 10-6. So what if I'm sleeping while the sun's out? I can still get a good amount of sleep in there, and even have some free time to work on stuff for the youth group, or practice, or go to rehearsal.
Enter wrinkle number one: I've also gotten a temp job at Northside Wine & Spirits in Ithaca, working on elements of their website. Specifically, I'm taking pictures of various wines and digitally editing them so they're presentable (editing out the background, taking out lens flares, air bubbles, etc.) for display on the website. Click the little link -- it's a pretty impressive site! Anyway, I can only afford to give them about two to three hours a day, in the early afternoon. That way, I can get home from work, take a nap, go to work, take another nap, then go to work again. Isn't that great? Well, not ideal, but it's workable.
Enter wrinkle number two: the Target shift will soon change to 3-11 (0300-1100), so there goes that morning nap.
In addition, the whole reason for taking a night job was so I could work a good number of hours and still have time to be a member of Trombone Troupe and the Ithaca Concert Band (check this old entry for details -- paragraph seven!). Now, Troupe especially will present a real problem with the 3-11 shift. Here's how my schedule works now on Troupe days (times listed military-style because the whole AM/PM thing is getting annoying):
And that's the day. Not terrible. Naturally, when I don't have Troupe, I get a little extra sleep, which is nice. Now, here's how it'll look with the 0300-1100 shift:
So this way, I have to get all my sleep in one big whack. Not to mention the fact that I have no idea when I'm going to get meals in that mess. All I can say is that after stocking shelves and moving pallets all night, I'll be one worn-out cookie while I work at Northside. The plus is that the Northside gig is only temporary, so I should be okay. Guess we'll see.
Oh, and how is the job? Not bad, honestly. The people are really pretty cool, so it's a good atmosphere. Basically, Target gets a delivery truck in every night (although one night we had two... man, that was nuts!), and some of the delivery has to go into the back stockroom, and some goes out to the floor. So a team of people unload the truck onto pallets and divide everything up into the "backstock" line and the "push" line. Another team takes pallets of stuff out to the floor from the "push" line and "bowl it out" to its respective isles where other people unpack the boxes and stock the shelves. Meanwhile, the backroom crew stores away all the backstock pallets. Pretty simple. We all cover just about any job so we aren't always doing the same thing every night. So far, my favorite has been moving pallets (I always did think those pallet lifts are kinda neat!) and bowling out the boxes. That way, I'm doing one thing for a couple hours, then I switch over to stocking for another few hours. Changes of pace make the whole thing go quicker.
I can see this getting annoying, though. I've already had to stock more shampoo than I care to think about every night. It can get to be a tedious job, so I hope I don't get overly bored with it. The pay's pretty decent, and the people are nice, so I plan on sticking to it. I'll find a way to make everything work. And besides, who needs a social life? :-p
Sorry this one was so long. Just had a lot to talk about today! Ta-ta for the time being!
Oh, and in case you're scratching your head: "Ante Meridian" and "Post Meridian" are more commonly seen as "AM" and "PM." Just in case you didn't know...