I’ve been in the tampon factory for nearly two weeks now, which is the longest I’ve ever spent working in a factory, and generally I’ve found it quite exhausting. The work itself isn’t that bad, although it’s surprising how tiring repetitive stuff can be (pick up boxes, push into shrink wrap, press buttons, repeat). The people there are also fine – not particularly stimulating but nice and friendly. The commute is about an hour door to door which isn’t bad considering I get two busses. What’s doing me in, it seems, is the shift pattern. Last week it was 6.00am to 2.00pm. This week it’s 2.00pm to 10.00pm.
There’s something particularly evil about 4.00am. It’s not really the morning, more the end of yesterday. Six is fine, five is do-able, but four is just plain wrong. For a start, if you need eight hours sleep, and I find I tend to when doing manual labouring jobs, you have to go to bed by 8.00pm the previous night, which is just stupid. Last week I was getting up at 4.00am, 4.30 if I pushed it. Of course the advantage was I was getting home at around 3.00pm but because of the early start I was knackered, and anyway I had to be asleep in a few hours..
Then, after a nice weekend, I’m into the evening shift leaving the house at 1.00pm and getting back around eleven. Now this should work, being during a normal part of the day. In fact is should be perfect for me as when I’m not working I like to get up late and stay up through to the small hours. This should be my perfect shift, but for some reason it’s not.
I was talking to Sam about this last night (it’s currently 2.00am Friday), having actually seen her for the first time since Sunday, and she agreed it’s a weird one. She once worked in a hotel on a 3-11pm shift and it messes with your head because it splits the day up in a really weird way. If you get up early then your morning is spent “getting ready for work” so you never get anything done in case you get distracted and end up being late. On the other hand it’s hard to have a lie in because you’re constantly worrying about sleeping in. Intending on getting up around 11am-ish I’ve been finding myself waking up at eight and dozing fitfully, checking the clock every half hour, which is not good after a late night.
And this is coming from the man with the most chaotic sleeping pattern ever. Of course if I were to do this job full time for a few years I’ve eventually get the hang of it, but at the moment these shift patterns are enough to make the job ever so slightly unbearable. Not only am I not getting stuff done on my myriad of web projects but I can’t even go to the pub during the week!
I think I was kinda spoiled by the street cleaning job with it being just down the road, starting at a reasonable time and finishing early. Being back indoors doing a tedious job has been something of a shock and I find myself wistfully looking down the road leading to the depot as my bus passes it. When the agency phoned to confirm me for next week at the factory (it’s an open ended job – I’m replacing a full-timer who turned out to be an illegal immigrant but I’m resisting going on the payroll) I asked about jobs nearer to my home with more sensible hours like, say, the council depot, and was told that while they’d keep me in mind the council jobs are usually last minute and very temporary. Fellow temp Andy called me last week because he was back there but unless I’m misreading his teen-txt-spk it was a gigantic fuck up and nothing like the last job we were on. No news on the Aston contract either, which I’m quite philosophical about. After the initial excitement I took a wait and see approach. I waited and saw nothing. This is the council after all and Birmingham council at that so if anything concrete is going to happen it’s going to take time.
So I’m currently in a job which is not that bad but where the shift patterns suck, I’m not in the outdoors and they want to keep me. Oh, and I can’t afford to take time off work for a few weeks (spent a bit too much on small press comics at the weekend…)