talkmagic.co.uk

I am sitting almost totally alone in a large office starting my first week of late shifts in a new job. I have to do a 4.00pm to midnight shift every othyer week for a well known hotel company trying to detect fraudulent bookings.

Tonight started excitingly enough, chased a few baddies out on to the street but now it has gone quiet and I still have two and three quarter hours to go.

Is there anyone else out there in similar circumstances? How do you pass the duller parts of these sorts of shifts?

I have alot of shifts that finish at 9pm (and a few, when needed, finishing at 3am.)

Usually on the 9pm shifts it is very quiet and slow, so I normally pull out my phone and play one of the many games I have put on there, or read ebooks. (Or maybe even a real book if I brought one!)

But on the 3am shifts I am normally very busy working. There is never normally a free point.

This probably hasn't helped.

Hey, its just nice to know there is someone out there!!

All night rock radio is a sociology study..or so I've read. My suggestion is to take on-line university courses..they're a heck of a lot of concentrated work but this is done by many all-nighters. Usually the on-line help by your prof and other students is first class, plus you get a chance to move up.
Already got a degree or two..big deal!!!...then work on some specialist A.D.Q's.
My memories of England is that one can get a lot of financial help for school.
Most of the good all night jock stories we don't tell but I remember a cat who phoned the control room and was totally irate that the local garage(Cdn. Tire) would not believe him that the torpedoes fell off his spaceship every time he hit the high beams. In my most charming voice I sympathized with him and then asked him what he could do in second gear. There was a pause and with disgust he said,"You're really stupid"! He hung up not wanting to talk to an obvious nutter.
Cereally as they say at Kellogg's, use a space cadet shift as a chance to get out. I did and it paid off in bread and gave me more choice in controlling my environment. Now I can wake up at four in the morning and keep trying the simplest rope tricks until I get them.Hope it helps.ron0

Most of my shifts are from 5pm to 8am. (yep, 15 hours!)

Most times, I stop the boredom by:

Coming on forums.
Practising magic.
Making balloon models.
Playing computer games.
Reading.
Writing and rewriting scripts or just brainstorming ideas for shows.
I have spent hours deciding on which props I want to use, which may suit and keep for future, or which I just will never use.
Lastly, sometimes I do some work, though only about an hour or two max, most nights.

Since I am working for Tiscali in a 24 hour shift sked, I usually work from 9pm to 5am. You're not alone dude. HOwever, I've been doing this for years, so I'm really used to it already.

How do I pass the time? I am actually very busy. At slower nights, I browse the web endlessly. Trying all the broswer games available.

I just read. though i work a normal job its actually normally dead. i just take books with me and read, decks of cards, tricks to practice, my psp all helps!

I guess there are a lot of people out there who work some significantly worse hours than me. The thing is it is new to me and i am not so young that it comes easy to adapt to varied working hours.

I got home at half past midnight last night, took an hour to go to sleep and still woke up at 6.00pm and couldn't get back to sleep.

So, on my second late shift to add to my other woes I am knackered!!

What kind of "shift" do you do?

How do i "pass" the time?

This whole thread seems like an excuse for puns.

I used to work in a pub so I regularly worked late, there was a period of a few weeks when I only worked nights and because of that I didn't see daylight for a few days, that was weird, and there was another time when we were stuck in the pub because one of the firedoors didn't close properly so we couldn't set the alarm, after about an hour of trying to fix the door we succeded but the alarm still said firedoor 3 active, we had no idea which door it was after we realised it was a completely deffirent one we fixed it with a slight push, a good hour wasted trying to fix a perfectly good door