Who ever worked 9 to 5?

[randy]

23:30 to 08:00 Central here. Prior to this shift, it was 08:30 to 17:00 on Thursday & Friday, then 19:00 to 07:00 Saturday & Sunday. That schedule was... unpleasant.

Say what? They had you doing that kind of switching as a regular gig? That's crazy.

Heh. My schedule in Korea (manning a 24/7 watch center) was 3 Swings (1400-2200), 24 off (2200-2200), 3 Mids (2200-0600), 24 off (0600-0600), 3 Days (0600-1400) then 3 "days" off (72 hours, out at 1400 on day one, in at 1400 on day 3). Plus meetings (seemingly planned with malice aforethought by the Day Whores to catch the Trick Trash during a time off), training, exercises,etc.

I believe it was standard practice across much of the command world wide for S&W (Surveillance and Warning) operations.

Pulled it for all but about 2 weeks of the 365 days in country, and shifts happened to fall on every holiday that year. (Holiday- a day when the Day Whores don't come in (which is a GOOD thing), the BX and Post Office are closed, but I have to work).

Amazing what you can put up with in your 20's, single with no local family, and have an actual mission to perform.

[Greg]

Amazing what you can put up with in your 20's, single with no local family, and have an actual mission to perform.

That sounds obnoxious, but having an actual mission makes a lot of difference. For me when I was working nights doing the 24/7 coverage thing, it was "this one thing we're responsible for, if it's down we're losing $6,000 a minute". Wasn't the only thing our group had, either.

One of the odder fringe benefits- our company also had a 24/7 operations center in Brazil. For whatever reason most of the overnight workers there were women. And when they got bored, they weren't satisfied with websurfing and computer games like us American male nerds, they wanted to *talk* to people and be *appreciated*. So they'd call us up. That and practicing their English was a good career enhancer for them.