Thursday, March 7, 2013

Why I should never work nights

The last job I had, I was a night janitor, or maybe what I really was, was a custodial crew member? 
I worked at the local university, just 2 blocks from where I live.  Being able to walk to work was very attractive to me, as did working at the same university that I want to start going to this September(totally would not have qualified for free tuition, since I technically didn't work for the university).  I asked for part time hours, for some reason that I'm not aware of, I got full time.  At the end of the interview, the supervisor told me to fill out a form and bring it back on a specific day.  When I did, I found out that they expected me to work that same night.  I had no idea before that, since no one had told me.  In hindsight, maybe I should have asked in the interview, but how hard would it have been for the supervisor to have told me?  Especially since I hadn't gotten any sleep that day?  Because of this, I kept falling asleep standing up, something my poor trainer noticed, and found very annoying.  Eventually, I got the hang of sleeping during the day and working at night....sort of.  Working nights is hard; there are many good reasons why so many people can keep it up for only so long.
Every shift started with a meeting, where we would all sit in the cafeteria and listen to our supervisor and his assistant, talk to us about what was going on.  Most of the time, it was how this guy who worked for the university inspected our zones (certain buildings that we were supposed to clean. My team had five different buildings, one of which had five floors, and an elevator that broke down twice while I worked there. First time it was out for a week), or in other words, went around with a white glove and magnifying glass, looked for dust and if he found any dust, showed the supervisor and gave him hell. That must be why just about every shift that I worked there (from the first week of October, right after the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, to the week before Christmas) started with what I think was meant to be an inspirational speech from our supervisor, but what everybody mistook for a guilt trip, because that's exactly what it sounded and felt like. Those speeches could be part of the reason why I felt like crying just about every shift, they could also be the reason why somebody quit or was fired about every other week. I know for sure that they're the reason why we were behind schedule almost every night of the week. They put us a good 10-30 minutes behind schedule, making all of us hate our supervisors a little bit more each night. The only good thing about them was the jokes that would get made by a few of the bolder people there (and of course were given dirty looks or were reprimanded). I hope this post made sense. It's late, and I'm tired. Should be in bed by now, but I really, really wanted to get this post done.