The Night Shift
I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off working some overnight job somewhere. Yeah, it’s supposed to screw you up, shorten your life, blah blah blah but I don’t buy it. I do think that most people are day people but I think some of us are night people. Maybe not night people the way this guy thought of them, but night people in the sense that we’re more comfortable when it’s dark and quiet out. When you can hear the hum of the streetlights. When you can hear a train from over a mile away. When the endless onslaught of meaningless information slows down and you can, heaven forbid, think for a minute.
In my high school and college days I worked overnight shifts at two jobs. The first was at Dunkin Donuts as an assistant baker. The second was at a deli/convenience store when the owner briefly opened for 24 hours to squeeze a few more bucks out of the place. The deli job was relatively uneventful, often during the warmer months I’d get to just sit on the step outside the store for long stretches on the deserted street and just breathe the cooler, misty air and watch the other night denizens (ambulance drivers, cop cars, newspaper delivery trucks, bakery guys) go by.
Dunkin Donuts was a bit more happening. One baker in particular was interesting to work with as he used the overnight shift as an opportunity to rendezvous with a woman other than the one he was married to. He’d start his shift, work like a madman to get ahead on everything and then disappear for a couple hours while the rest of the crew caught up. He’d reappear, finish up his shift and then go home to his wife. Only one night it almost didn’t work out. Our baker showed up, started and disappeared per routine, only he didn’t reappear as quickly as he had in the past. I had fried off all the donuts that were already cut and given them to the finisher (the person who glazes, powders, and fills with jelly or cream as necessary). The muffins were out of the oven and cooling. We needed to crank out another 100 lbs of donuts for a busy Sunday morning. 4am. No baker. 5am No baker. The sun was rising. Customers were starting to filter in. Suddenly at 6am our hero bursts through the door and begins working feverishly to pound out the last run of donuts. Turns out he just nodded off post-hubba-hubba. We wound up working until 8am that morning (the shift was supposed to be over at 6) and nobody was too happy, least of all the customers who had to wait for their pre-church Boston Cream.
An advantage of the night shift for those of us who chose not to be unfaithful was that you could drink beer while you worked. We used to swap donuts for Rolling Rock from the Shop Rite across the street (also a 24 hour operation) and stow the brews in the frozen blueberries. Nothing chills a beer like frozen blueberries. Frozen blueberries also have a peculiar manner of bursting on one end and skittering across the surface of 375 degree oil when you toss them in fryers. Blueberry races were a fine way to kill some down time. You could also work on your ninja training with the fryers by using your fry sticks to swat bees out of the air into the oil where they too would explode and skitter across before sinking to the bottom of the muck.
The best part of that shift was heading home in the cool morning air. Sometimes I’d wait for the bus. Sometimes I’d walk the mile and a half all the way home, the clear morning air like a refreshing bath, the sounds of awakening birds distinct and vibrant and the streetlights flickering off in the dawn. I’d get home and dad would be in the kitchen frying his bacon and eggs. I’d mumble something, toss my glaze-and-flour-coated clothes down the basement stairs and shuffle off to bed though typically not before he reminded me to drag the garbage out before the sanitation trucks showed up.
The day people part of the day was starting.
In my high school and college days I worked overnight shifts at two jobs. The first was at Dunkin Donuts as an assistant baker. The second was at a deli/convenience store when the owner briefly opened for 24 hours to squeeze a few more bucks out of the place. The deli job was relatively uneventful, often during the warmer months I’d get to just sit on the step outside the store for long stretches on the deserted street and just breathe the cooler, misty air and watch the other night denizens (ambulance drivers, cop cars, newspaper delivery trucks, bakery guys) go by.
Dunkin Donuts was a bit more happening. One baker in particular was interesting to work with as he used the overnight shift as an opportunity to rendezvous with a woman other than the one he was married to. He’d start his shift, work like a madman to get ahead on everything and then disappear for a couple hours while the rest of the crew caught up. He’d reappear, finish up his shift and then go home to his wife. Only one night it almost didn’t work out. Our baker showed up, started and disappeared per routine, only he didn’t reappear as quickly as he had in the past. I had fried off all the donuts that were already cut and given them to the finisher (the person who glazes, powders, and fills with jelly or cream as necessary). The muffins were out of the oven and cooling. We needed to crank out another 100 lbs of donuts for a busy Sunday morning. 4am. No baker. 5am No baker. The sun was rising. Customers were starting to filter in. Suddenly at 6am our hero bursts through the door and begins working feverishly to pound out the last run of donuts. Turns out he just nodded off post-hubba-hubba. We wound up working until 8am that morning (the shift was supposed to be over at 6) and nobody was too happy, least of all the customers who had to wait for their pre-church Boston Cream.
An advantage of the night shift for those of us who chose not to be unfaithful was that you could drink beer while you worked. We used to swap donuts for Rolling Rock from the Shop Rite across the street (also a 24 hour operation) and stow the brews in the frozen blueberries. Nothing chills a beer like frozen blueberries. Frozen blueberries also have a peculiar manner of bursting on one end and skittering across the surface of 375 degree oil when you toss them in fryers. Blueberry races were a fine way to kill some down time. You could also work on your ninja training with the fryers by using your fry sticks to swat bees out of the air into the oil where they too would explode and skitter across before sinking to the bottom of the muck.
The best part of that shift was heading home in the cool morning air. Sometimes I’d wait for the bus. Sometimes I’d walk the mile and a half all the way home, the clear morning air like a refreshing bath, the sounds of awakening birds distinct and vibrant and the streetlights flickering off in the dawn. I’d get home and dad would be in the kitchen frying his bacon and eggs. I’d mumble something, toss my glaze-and-flour-coated clothes down the basement stairs and shuffle off to bed though typically not before he reminded me to drag the garbage out before the sanitation trucks showed up.
The day people part of the day was starting.
Comments
I worked evenings, 6pm - 2am for a while when they needed manager night coverage at my current place of employment. I thought I would love it since Daniel was still in Australia at the time and it would put me on his schedule so we could talk more. I still could not get used to it. The job I was covering is so unbelievably boring on the night shifts. It’s basically emergency calls only and maybe you get one a night from a customer with a T1 down in a facility only open 8am-5pm, who wants a dispatch to the roof of a building upstate with 3 feet of snow on it, oh and yea, there are no lights, oh and the guy with the keys to the building is an hour away but he will really get out of bed if you get us a tech. Sure, right, let me get a tech out right away. I like being busy at work, and the night shift is for those who like naps.
The city is truly a bit spooky downtown at 2am, and there was always construction closing down lanes of the Gowanus that would inevitably make it a longer commute home then taking the express bus on a Friday evening in the summer.
So ultimately, I can’t agree with you here. I am one of those day people.
I would like to have some blueberry races one day though! :)