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Dolfan in NYC

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I've been overnights for about five years now, but yea I am also single with no kids. My shiftmates with families really struggle trying to balance family, work, and actually sleeping enough to function, its tough. Most don't make it more than six months. I sleep fine during the day and don't require a lot of sleep anyway, but even I feel it sometimes if I get too far out of whack (I switch my sleep schedule back and forth every week so on my days off I am awake "normal" hours, don't recommend it!). Anyway, I am agreeing that unless its absolutely necessary or if you are confident you can work out an uninterrupted sleep schedule, its probably not worth it.

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I worked overnights at least once a week in my previous career in radio.  But that was 20+ years ago and much easier to handle.  Nowadays, staying up all night one time would fuck me up for the rest of the week.

My two favorites stories about that particular gig:

It was an overnight talk show that the host (on a barter deal, so he was essentially doing a paid vanity interview show and making some money from commercials) would drop off reel to reel tapes every week.  They just retaped new shows over old like it was 70s and 80s territorial wrestling.  All I'd need to do is run the tape, stop it for breaks, run ads while cueing up the tape for the next segment, then start the next segment.  Well one time I dozed off and slept through a break.  So it went like this: "we'll be right back.   (10 seconds of silence) and we're back."  Luckily nobody was listening.

Same show: we had an ongoing issue where their constantly reused tape would sometimes run fine, then slow down to a crawl.  One time this happened, so I just stopped that episode (it was probably hour one of four) and ran the 4th hour.  The host, who must have been listening to his own boring-ass show that night, called me right away, pissed.  I explained the problem and he was still pissed.  He was a rich older guy who ran the show with his sons, who were equally pompous.  Well these dumbshits drove all the way from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the northwest Baltimore suburbs to prove me wrong and check on their shitty reel.  Easily a one hour drive, in the middle of the night.  So these dumbasses get there and check the tape, which slooooows tooooo aaaaaaa craaawl right before their eyes.  Dumbshit sons says: 'well, uh, how often do you lubricate these machines?!"  I told him to ask the head engineer, I have no idea.  They left with their tape and the program director (who came in for the morning show at 4am and got the whole story) chewed them out and demanded they give me cassettes from then on.  Good times.

This has been your episode of TS' Adventures in Radio.  Anyway, fuck overnight shifts.

Edited by Technico Support
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Hey everyone. My new neurologist is trying to cut down my medication. I saw her in May and we've started in bits and bats over the past couple of months. Kidney stones was one of my worst physical pains ever and this is up there. That bad. My whole body aches. I read some recent research about difficulties people can find aging with Cerebral Palsy:

https://newrepublic.com/article/164891/aging-with-cerebral-palsy

https://www.flintrehab.com/aging-with-cerebral-palsy/

Cerebral Palsy is a lifelong condition caused by brain damage. Who thought I'd have one to damage? ?. You need to laugh or you would cry. CP affects my brain and whole body. My health has deteriorated past year and a half. I also think I made a mistake switching antidepressants. I speak to said neurologist next week and I'm anxious for that. Only met her once but I couldn't gel to her like when I've seen other doctors for the first time. In light of this post, I've been watching the Bret Hart Cameo even more and the board helping to take my mind off things. Just have to grit the teeth, keep on going through this and the depression. Love, Paul xxx.

Edited by The Natural
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When I worked at the DA's office, we had overnight intake shifts from 12-8 am where you'd take calls from cops who arrested people and wanted to know if the DA was going to accept the charge.  You had your "mandatory" nights but you could give them out to other ADAs and they could make some sweet overtime.  Given the fact that I had 4 kids when I started I was working them intake shifts as much as I could, and I had a reputation if someone couldn't do it, I'd take it.  So I'd be working intake at least once a week.  There was also an unofficial rule that if you worked an intake, you had to work the next full work day, no going home early.  So, generally speaking, I was making decisions on other people's liberty with pretty much zero sleep, either at the arrest point or in court.  Looking back, that's absolutely insane.  I was generally pretty lenient as far as my plea offers went, but there were plenty whose recs were absolutely stiff and I can only imagine they'd be even worse (and worse to deal with) with zero sleep.  So, super insane.  Apparently now there's a dedicated intake staff at the DA's Office that only works the night shift, but those people aren't the trial lawyers that are eventually going to have to try the cases, so they generally rubber stamp whatever the dumb ass cops bring in. 

And really, the time away from the kiddos wasn't worth the pennies I made on the overtime, and it was probably severely detrimental to my physical and mental health.  Try not to work nights. 

Good Luck Natural.

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When I was very young, my dad worked a job that had him coming home for dinner then going back to work until late evening.  He told me a year or two ago that it was one of his bigger regrets.  We kids were so young that we don't even really remember this period, but still.....

When my kids were growing up, I made it a priority to not miss time with them.  I've been lucky to have jobs that didn't require me to punch a clock and let me come and go as needed, but for about two decades, I worked crazy schedules to keep up so I could leave work for dance recitals, away games, pickups from school.  I was a little relieved when my youngest graduated high school and the constant parade of extracurricular activities came to an end.

Of course, the kid promptly got a job coaching a high school volleyball team and talked me into being her assistant coach, so the half-days at work before the away game started up again a short time later.

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We had to put my Grandpa in a home during the summer because his Parkinson's got so bad that my Grandma couldn't take care of him anymore. From then until Christmas Day, he's had a UTI and the home had a COVID outbreak.

A few days ago, he fell and fractured his hip. He's been in the hospital since then, waiting on hip replacement surgery. They were getting ready to do it today, but when they put him on anesthesia, his bowels were impacted and leaked into his body. Now he has a 102 fever and bilateral pneumonia (tested negative for COVID a few days ago, but that was a few days ago...). He's having panic attacks every time my Mom leaves the room, and the doctors tell her that he's likely feeling like he's drowning in his own oxygen if that makes any sense at all. He knows something is wrong, but he doesn't KNOW something is wrong due to the memory loss from Parkinson's.

The worst part is that, due to COVID, he can only have two visitors. So if I want to go see him, or my cousin, or my Uncle, either my Mom or my Grandma has to leave the hospital and he freaks out whenever they do. And if he tests positive for COVID? Forget about it, nobody can be there, and he's going to have huge panic attacks, and that won't help his condition at all.

I don't have a good feeling about any of this.

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On 1/6/2022 at 4:55 PM, J.T. said:

@Johnny Sorrow@JLSigmanHang in there, you guys.

Thanks, man. To be honest, the fires haven't hit me personally yet. I know a lot of my customers are hurting, but that's the limit as to my personal attachments are to the fires, besides the horror of what happened. Well, maybe not totally.

The initial reports of the day of the fire were that it was started by downed power lines. The lines that were down at ground zero were communication lines, and they don't spark. After a few days, it appeared that photos and videos showed that there was smoke billowing from a property in the area with old barns and sheds. Property owned by The Twelve Tribes, a Christian Cult with a compound there. I didn't recognize the name until I googled it and saw this.

BRB-600x400.jpg

Holy Shit. I've known these folks and that bus since 1987. The 12 Tribes are a cult who prey upon fucked up kids at concerts, amongst many other venues. They started in the early 70's like most Jesus Freak cults did. But around 1987 they started appearing on Grateful Dead Tour, at the same time I did with my friends. They seemed like just another hard core hippie family who offered free health care, food, and a safe space for people having a bad trip, like the Hog Farmers. But their help was a cover to indoctrinate people. They also preached that Garcia was a deity, as was Dylan. And the women were second class citizens, there was a lot of crazy. They've spread out around the world with businesses and all kinds of crazy shit, but have never not been a source of embarrassment to Deadheads.  They still prey on kids at Festivals, Phish shows, etc. And they run a chain of Delis called "The Yellow Deli" and own a construction company, to be "legit."

In 1991 at a Dead show in Albany, a couple of us New Jerseyed our way onto the bus to get our pal Theo,( who is rich and was tripping happily with them), out of their clutches.

So, if this tragedy helps to bring down a cult that abuses kids, preaches slavery, KILLING of gay people, misogyny, and has been a blight on the Deadhead community for decades? Then at least something good will have come from it. I don't care if it was an accident from their fire pit. Fuck them.

Edited by Johnny Sorrow
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I worked nights for a week in my mid 20s and was fine with it. But I work with a guy who had this bizarre schedule, where he'd do these shifts: 

  • Sunday Night 10pm-8am
  • Monday off (sort of)
  • Tuesday Early 6am-3pm
  • Wednesday Early 6am-3pm
  • Thursday Night 10pm-7am
  • Friday Late 3pm-11pm
  • Saturday Early 6am-3pm (which would sometimes turn into a split shift that was 6am-10am, then 6pm-11pm)

And he did that for like two years before giving up the night shifts. And wondered why he was feeling ill and tired all the time, and gaining weight for no reason.

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Way too many days, hours and all that(but you do what you have to, I gather, even though it's unhealthy), but the schedule is just fucking idiotic, his brain must have been so messed up by the sleeping schedule.

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I was in the shower this morning before I remembered that Friday was my last day at my old job and I didn't have to get up early.  Lol, I haven't been jobless for even a day since my teens.  It's a weird feeling.

I do have several interviews this week (on top of two last week).  Not expecting to be unemployed very long.

Our dogs are thrilled they got longer walks this morning.  Sleeping in probably isn't an option with them around anyways.  They're more reliable than any alarm clock I've ever owned.

Edited by Tarheel Moneghetti
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For the first time in a couple months, I feel like myself again.

In July, I started a new position at my company.  It was a promotion and pay raise but also meant switching back to a manager that can be kinda challenging.  I was definitely stagnating in my old position but the manager was great and definitely cared about the people on his team.  Just a genuinely good guy.

I should mention that the job entailed doing stuff I'd never done before.  I was told to expect that it would be 6+ months before I'd be useful and that there was a learning curve.  No problem there.  

In September, we started a project to retire an old system and migrate all of its functions and code to an entirely different platform.  For reasons that are unclear to me, I was made the de facto lead in charge of that project.  Except I wasn't put in charge of estimates and, given my inexperience, didn't even know enough to know what I didn't know.

As time rolled on, the work was divided up between myself and two other developers with me being assigned the 1/3 of work that was easiest and the other 2 being assigned the tougher stuff.  We were all tasked with testing our own stuff.  And a fourth person was assigned vendor and client coordination.

Well, we fell behind and myself and another guy ended up taking on the vast majority of the work.  I did my 1/3 of the development work plus reworking a bit of the stuff from another person.  AND I did 100% of the testing for everything.  AND I ended up doing about half of the vendor and client coordination when the other person went on vacation.  It got assigned to me and then I was left in charge of it because I "had momentum".  Myself and the other guy did all of the deployments as well - him doing about 80%, me doing the other 20%.  

During the month of December, it was basically me and one other guy doing the work of four people - while getting grief for exceeding budgeted project hours and missing deadlines.  Lots and lots of stress and pressure.

While all that was going on, my wife got ill with kidney stones and was basically bedridden for a month.  She didn't pass it and had surgery to remove it - but they didn't find any stones.  She's back on her feet but still struggling a lot, not feeling good at all.  

And our two pets have serious health issues.  Our cat (10 years old) was very ill and stopped eating.  He was behaving nearly identically to a cat that was he had to put down a decade ago.  It came out of nowhere and I was very upset about it.  And our dog, my black lab constant companion who LOVES me (feeling is mutual), is nearing the end.  He's 12-1/2 and has bad breathing problems.  

So, between these four situations, I found myself pretty stressed in November and December.  I am never stressed.  I don't bring home work with me (though I work from home now, LOL).  Stuff just doesn't bother me.  But all this stuff did.  I found myself having trouble sleeping.  When I did get to sleep, the dog was waking me up a couple times a night.  He'd get nervous or scared about his breathing and wake me up to let me know.  I'd have to either take him outside and walk him around or just comfort him.  As you can imagine, this meant I wasn't getting much sleep.  Exhausted all the time.

So I started just trying to survive and get to my vacation.  Had 10 days off at the end of December.  People were asking me what I planned to do.  "Sleep", I would tell them.  "Haha, no seriously", they would respond.  "No, seriously, that's all I want to do".

And so I did - somewhat.  The dog still kept waking me up and I was so far behind on sleep that I just didn't get caught up.

Until Saturday.  The cat issue ended up being pancreatitis, fixed with a couple doses of medicine and different food.  He's back to being his normal jerk self.  After a couple of medicine adjustments, the dog is much more comfortable and breathing better.  He's not waking me up multiple times a night.  My wife is feeling a little better though she's still having back pain like she had with the kidney stones (doesn't have any though).  And me?  Well, Friday night, I got 9-1/2 hours of sleep.  Interrupted once by the dog because he need to go to the bathroom.  I woke up pain-free - a miracle for me after sleeping so long - and the fog of exhaustion had lifted.  Felt like a new man.  

So, yeah, for the first time since probably September or so, I feel like myself.  

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It doesn't really need to be said, but if you know a nurse, show them all the kindness you can. I think I mentioned before that my wife switched to being an acute dialysis nurse where she would travel to five hospitals in the area to run emergency dialysis on patients at hospitals. These are patients that more often than not don't need acute dialysis, but the patient's doctor would ask for it instead of just having the patient do outpatient dialysis at one of the facilities in the area. To make matters worse, some of these hospitals in the area only have two bays to run dialysis and they have doctors there who wind up wanting 10 or 12 patients to receive dialysis. Mind you, dialysis takes hours to do.

After a year my wife wound up getting a promotion and now manages the nurses running dialysis in the area. With doctors doing what I mentioned above and hospitals not doing enough to provide resources to dialysis nurses, her nurses started dropping like flies resulting in a completely depleted team. While doing payroll today, my wife ran over the amount of hours worked by five of her nurses over the last two weeks and they were at the lowest 120 and the highest was 180. 180 fucking hours of work. And it's not like my wife has stopped running treatments. She doesn't have to because she's a manager, but she does because the last things she wants are patients dying or her nurses dying because they worked more than 24 hours straight and then fall asleep at the wheel.

It's just a total shitshow. So if you know a nurse, even one whose intelligence may seem questionable because they don't want to get vaccinated, give them some grace because it's doubtful they're working the minimum of 80 hours and may be someone who worked 90 hours a week.

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I realized this morning that I don't want to ever become a grandfather.  My daughter and son-in-law came over to tell us that an offer they put in on a house had been accepted (they've had a couple near-misses with other homes) and, for a horrible second, I thought they were going to tell us they're preggers.

There's nothing really wrong with the kids starting a family.  They're in their mid 20's, both have good jobs and money in the bank, have a good relationship, etc.  I was kinda surprised I had such a reaction because I use to love kids.  After thinking about it, I realized that.... I have no hope for the future.  I just don't believe in having kids unless there's some sort of sign we can get through the pandemic and back to something resembling normal.  I don't want my grandkids to grow up in some sort of hellscape and hear stories about how kids used to be able to play ball and go to concerts or whatever.  I don't really want to see my kids grow up in whatever Frankenstein future their world is going to become.

I don't know what to do with this info.  Certainly am not going to tell my family or anyone I know that I'm probably going to secretly horrified when my children marry and start families.  Guess I'll go talk to a therapist.  Worth a try. 

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Cynicism is toxic, but I understand it. There isn't a week that goes by where I don't worry if I made a mistake by having my two daughters, especially the newborn that just turned 4 months old. At the same time, this world doesn't improve without bright, young minds who want positive change for the climate, human rights, etc. So I put my hopes in a younger generation to make this world a better place and I hope every day that this current generation doesn't make that an impossible task.

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Guest Jimbo_Tsuruta

It's perfectly normal to think the future could be doom and gloom, but people will always find ways of making chicken salad from chicken shit. We've had a few hundred thousand years practice. 

 

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I think what snapped me out of not wanting a kid is thinking back to the beginning of "Idiocracy".  Yeah, it's a comedy that's looking more realistic each year.  But the scene with well-meaning adults hesitant on having kids spoke to me.  So then it got me to think about passing generations and how much change has happened BECAUSE people's kids wanted to make a difference.  After thinking all that I feel ready to become a dad now but it's up to my wife to decide when she wants to give it a try.  For even if my kid still has to grow up in a fucked up world there's a slim chance that the world their kid grows up in might not be as bad.  At least that's what I hope.

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Going back a bit....

RE: Working overnights

I knew/know a lot of people who have worked overnights in tv (for morning shows) for years. They always have people saying to them, "You must get used to the schedule".  The reply I always heard was, "No. You just get used to being tired."

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@OctopusLet me chime on the overnight thing too. So over multiple kids I can say that I've found the first... year and a half or so of a kid's life far less engaging than everything that follows (this is one thing that parents don't tell you and generally refuse to admit but I'm going to shoot straight with you, pal). By 2-3 you want to be there as much as possible and especially so at 4-5, really until they become a pre-teen/teenager and would rather interact with things other than you, but there's a real sweet spot at 3 and a half to 5 or so where there's just such joy and innocence and they'll love just about any sort of playing you do with them. The flip side is the kid wants increasingly more attention and you have to interact more thoroughly, so you'll probably get more direct interaction with your wife over a 24 hour period in that first year and a half than in the time that will follow.

So probably not the world's best choice to do overnights, but if you're going to do them, I say do them now before the kid gets any bigger.

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Some dumbass co-worker came down with Covid and I work with him directly so they're letting me work the rest of the week but I have to get tested Sunday. Cross your fingers. He was coughing a bit last night and I told him to get tested, he said he'd been tested before... but didn't say whether he'd been vaccinated. ? Then again I didn't ask him either. 

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On 1/7/2022 at 5:01 PM, The Natural said:

 

To go with the depression I also have anxiety. Been feeling sick today as it was the appointment with the neurologist who never rung despite me and my sister sat round my mobile for two hours. As noted I couldn't warm to her or where she works. I've found the latter hard to contact and rude staff. We rang my doctors to let them know. I think when I speak to my GP next week, I'll ask her if I can go back to my previous antidepressant. I shouldn't have to rearrange that GP appointment because the neurologist didn't ring or wait till I get a new appointment with said neurologist before medicine changes. That's how I'm feeling right now with a slamming head and on very little sleep.

Edited by The Natural
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Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

So I'm the workforce manager at my job. Meaning that I'm responsible for helping cover staffing shortages and planning schedules and determining how many hours are available in the time off pool, et cetera, et cetera.

Usually, I'm used to being considered the villain because I'm the one who has to look at how much business we're expected to get during the day, balance it against the productivity of our employees, and say "we can allow N employees off before we have X amount of reduction in our service goals".

And of course, it's always my fault if an employee exceeds the thresholds, but I do try to be as fair as possible to the employees and give them as much time off as I can possibly allow while also ensuring that the people who contact us get what they need (and, as we're a public service, we do need to actually provide them service).

So it's a balancing act, and I'm not popular at work as a result because the supervisors always blame me when there isn't enough time to go around. But these last two years, phew. It's really been like walking a tightrope, because I often feel like I'm the only one sticking up for the employees.

Some backstory; we gave everyone that wanted to work from home a telework kit in March 2020. I've been arguing that those kits should be made permanent, and that all future hires should be given the option. Reason? The employees are happier, we've had far less risk of COVID exposure, their productivity has gone up, I've been able to offer them more time off from work, and even if we have issues with a handful of people getting sick, we've still been able to meet our service goals. It's a win/win.

But their supervisors want them back into the office. Why? "We're worried about their morale being at home." And I say "have you asked them?" "Well, no, we just think that them being at home all the time is bad for their morale, and they need to be around people more." I show them the list of how productivity has increased for practically our entire unit, some significantly, and if morale is an issue, it certainly isn't showing in productivity or unscheduled absences.

(Two certain signs of low employee morale? Sudden unscheduled absences and lowered productivity. I've been doing this job for 10+ years. I know the patterns of an unmotivated employee.)

What do I get back? "Well, we still think that they should have to come back in, at least two days a week."

So I suggest running a survey, get employee feedback on how they think the telework program is going, what they'd like to see improved or changed, if they miss the office.

Nope. "Their morale seems low. We don't need a survey for that."

I sit in anywhere between four to six meetings a day of this nonsense. Not a week. A DAY. And I have been for six months. Not once have I been offered any piece of evidence that employee morale is low, and every time I make suggestions on how to prove this, it gets shot down with "you don't know what you're talking about, they're our reps, we know them better than anyone". Do you?

This job is going to give me an ulcer.

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