It is a wonderful Monday morning. Its 6:30AM in the morning,
I am sitting in my balcony of flat 302. There are some clouds moving around,
there is a lot of chirping of the birds, a pleasant breeze is moving around and
the temperature is wonderful 22 degrees. I got up at 4AM fresh midway of my 4
day long weekend. I had night shift last week and have same next week. It has been
almost 6 years in IT industry ,I have worked in shift majority of the time,
wanted to write this down since long, finally doing it.
When I joined Infosys as a fresher I had around 6 months
training in Mysore campus, and then I got allocated to the unit: IMS. It stands
for Infrastructure Management Services; it involves mainly supporting client infrastructure
and more importantly working in shifts. I started working ,initially found it tough working through the night as it was
something new, also had some back problems, but I went along my merry way.
The first thing about working in support domain and
consequently in shifts is accepting it. I never thought or asked why am I
working in shifts, I accepted the fact that I have to and found peace within. I
see a lot of freshers these days who don’t want to work in shifts, sometimes
you have no other option and to be happy you need to accept that you have to do
it, only then you would be able to do it happily.
Working in shift has a lot of advantages as well, we get
home pick and drop in cab free of cost, we get shift allowances and we also get
wonderful long weekends like the one I am currently enjoying. There are some
cons as well, like it leads to obesity if you don’t have proper diet and
exercises. Also your body cycle changes frequently and I would not recommend working
in shift all your life, I am planning to stop it once I get married towards end
of this year. However initial phase of the carrier, when you are young and
energetic you should do it if you do not have any other option.
I want to give some tips about working in night shifts
especially based on personal experience. First thing is don’t sleep in office
during shift, because if you have some sleep then you will not be able to sleep
properly when you go home, and consequently feel tired the next night. All this
affects your performance at work. So be awake all night, and make sure you eat at
least twice in the night. Make sure you eat something before you sleep, as it
is hard to sleep on empty stomach. Make sure you have curtains in your room, no
noise disturbances, and also if you want, wear an eye mask. Sleep for at least
8 hours and make sure you are fresh when you get up. Drink a lot of water throughout
day and night.
Working in night has never been a problem for me. I like it in
fact as there is comparatively less workload and we also got night shift
allowance, however I am experiencing some difficulty in changing of sleep times
after night shift to other shift currently. I was not doing night shift in
Amdocs since couple of years and doing it now so perhaps not used to this.
Hopefully I will adjust soon. Well its 6:45AM now and I have also booked a 9AM
show of the movie Terminator, one of the perks of working in shift, you get to
watch a movie on Monday morning, when majority of people drag themselves to
work!!!
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