But this morning was a little different and I’ll explain why.
You see, I knew my roster this week was a bit jumbled. I had a few early shifts, followed by some late shifts, and I was going to head on to days off after an early shift again.
Now when I rocked up at work this morning to discover that I was actually rostered to start at 12pm instead of 4:30am I was horrified! You mean I had dragged my body out of bed at 3:30am for nothing?
For the “normal employee” who I will refer to in this example as your typical ‘Nine-To-Fiver’, the idea of going into work twice in one day would be somewhat ludicrous. In fact I can hear them saying “… you’ve got to be kidding right?”
Now I would like to say that it was the company’s fault – they had changed my roster and nobody had rung me to tell me otherwise. But alas I couldn’t do this because it was in fact, totally my fault.
Ahh … sigh. I had actually misread my roster. I had always been rostered to start on a late shift but for some reason I actually thought I was on an early shift. A bit of a bugger really.
Anyway, as I trudged back to my car with my tail between my legs – I was actually quite excited at the thought of going home and tossing my uniform to the side, and jumping back into my nice comfy bed.
Now when I woke up again, this time at 8am, it kind of felt like deja vu because I knew that I had to go into work today, but it kind of felt like I already had!!
So I certainly have a very healthy respect for all of my fellow shift workers who have to work split shifts. Not only does it wipe out your entire day, but it certainly rates high up there as one of the hazards of working shift work. .