Darkness, quiet, alone. What’s it like to work at nights, when the rest of the world is asleep? This is a question that most will likely never ask, as it isn’t really in the realm of how most people live, and therefore take for granted. I will give you my experience, as someone who has mostly worked nights since I was 18, but this is just my perspective, and not everyone has the same experience.
Why Talk About It?
The thought hit me kinda hard a while ago, to perhaps create a post somewhere to talk about my experience. The trigger: I was on my way to work one day, when out in the distance I could hear yelling. Happy screaming. The kind of screaming that happens at festivals, because there was in fact a festival. The problem though, is that I, as an adult, don’t know what that is like.
As an adult, since I was 18, I have never been to a festival. Sure I have gone as a teenager or kid, left with adult supervision, never able to immerse myself in a way that I wanted as dictated by myself. So it is safe to say that for a third of my life now, I do not know what is like being an adult at a festival.
So this brought on more questions such as “what else have I not experienced, strictly due to me working on nights, and more specifically weekends on nights” and “what problems has this caused me, such that someone may want to avoid doing this?”
Why I Started Working Nights
I didn’t seek out night work—I sort of fell into it. At the end of high school, I was already working evening shifts and staying up until 4 a.m. wasn’t unusual for me. So when my employer needed someone to take on the night shift, I said yes. I was 18, already a night owl, and didn’t have a reason to say no. It didn’t feel like a big decision at the time, but it quietly shaped the next decade of my life.
Missing Life, One Shift at a Time
There are things you notice you’ve missed only when it’s too late—or when someone asks, and you have no answer. Family events like birthdays or holidays now come with a tradeoff: do I show up, exhausted and unable to connect, or do I rest so I can function later? This past Mother’s Day, I chose rest. I’m taking college classes now, and flipping my sleep even once makes me feel drained for days.
What makes it harder is that my family often forgets I work nights. It’s been nearly a decade—20% of their lives—and it still slips their minds. I don’t blame them. It’s just hard being the one who’s always out of sync.
Percentage of Night Shift Workers
There are various different fields of work which may demand some amount of night shift working. This can include goods transportation, warehouse work, food, and on occasion IT. According to the National Library of Medicine approximately 3.2% of workers work nights, which is to say a very few minority of work happens at night. In that study it mentions that 14.8% in total work a shift that is not a regular daytime shift (evening, nights, irregular, or rotating). That still leaves 85% of all work happening during the day. So for those of us who don’t, our schedules are often taken for granted.
Overall Experience
I would say that the overall experience seems fine, except that I don’t really have anything to compare it to. With that said, imagine this as your life. You wake up at 4:00 p.m., make coffee, and go to work. Once you get off at 4:00 a.m., you go home and do what? Play video games? Watch movies? You don’t call anyone, because most of the people you interact with won’t wake up for another 4 hours. But you do work with people who have a similar experience, so you make friends with some of those people. So now you have someone to hang out with, who you will also see at work on a daily basis. But your potential friend pool is severely limited as a result.
Okay so that is the normal day, but what about special occasions, such as holidays that are spent with the family. The problem with those is, well imagine (if you are part of the 85% who work a daytime schedule) that your entire family only ever wants to do something at 2:00 a.m., so you go there, but are extremely tired the entire time. In fact, a lot of the times you end up going there just to take a nap on the couch, which really doesn’t feel like spending time with them.
A Society That Forgets You
One of the hardest parts of night work is the constant reminder that the world doesn’t run on your time. You can’t just go out and run errands “after work,” because it’s 5 a.m. and everything is closed. Since COVID, this has only gotten worse—24-hour places like Walmart no longer stay open, cutting off even the few conveniences that used to exist. Society is designed for daytime people, and the rest of us are left to adjust, or go without.
Health, Identity, and Isolation
Physically, it’s hard to say how this has affected me. I don’t know what it’s like to live any other way. I’m not often tired—unless I try to live like a day person for a while, which I now try to avoid completely. Mentally, I am withdrawn and introspective, but I don’t know that it’s due to night shifts. I’ve always been this way. My hobbies—Linux, programming, computer hardware—are solitary and technical by nature, so I suspect I’d still be this person, just more available to hang out on a Saturday afternoon.
What I Miss
You can’t really miss what you don’t know you’re missing—but you can wonder. I wonder what it’s like to be an adult at a festival, or to wake up to sunlight and plans. I wonder what it’s like to say yes to random invites, or spend a lazy Sunday with friends who aren’t exhausted or at work. Maybe those things would’ve never mattered to me. Or maybe they would’ve changed me.
Easy Start, but Harder End
This may be more of an age related thing, rather than specifically tied to working at night, but is a regular part of my experience now. When I started working on nights, it was relatively easy to flip my sleep schedule over to the days for a day. This would allow me to do things relatively easily such as doing the registration on my car, or visiting family, or managing appointments with doctors. But now that I am almost 30, it’s not that simple. If I flip my schedule, it makes me exhausted for the rest of the week. This in turn has an effect on how often I want to do those things in a negative way. I don’t see my family as often, I miss every phone call to setup doctor visits, I don’t do things that are fun to do during the day.
It’s a bad daily experience.
Looking Ahead
I don’t see this as a life sentence. I’m currently going to college for a degree in Software Development Engineering. I probably should’ve started this 10 years ago, but fear of debt kept me back. Thankfully, my employer is paying for it now. That help gave me the freedom to finally move forward—something I could’ve done six years ago if I had the courage. I don’t need to escape—I just know this isn’t where I’m meant to stay.
If any part of this resonates with you, you’re not alone. But if you’re still thinking about whether to say yes to a night shift, think twice. The pay might be better. The quiet might be appealing. But the world doesn’t wait for you while you sleep.