The Grass is Greener in the Evening

It's funny how people get used to things. When I started my kitchen stewarding job last year, I wrote about being on the "inverted routine", and how it's sort of luxurious to be able to wake up whenever you feel like for work instead of forcing yourself up early in the mornings, etc etc.

Now, after a year of nothing else but evening/night shifts, the opposite actually feels luxurious! It actually feels exotic and privileged to me to be able to come home from work and have a relaxing evening off! And on the flipside, the few hours of free time that I have at the moment before work during the afternoons feel a bit pointless.

No matter how aware I am that this is just hedonic adaptation at work, it's still hard not to feel this way - that all these people working during the day and having evenings off are having an easy and relaxing time of it. And I should know better: I've spent 10 years working as a 9-5 office drone, as well as had past jobs which included very early rises, on "factory hours" such as 7-3.

Still, I've taken steps to try to get off night shift, at least for a couple of days per week. It's hard to organise an ongoing fixed roster which is anything like "normal" daytime business hours in hospitality, but at least this coming week I've got a couple of day shifts. And if they work out, they might become a permanent thing for a couple of months. There'll still be evening/night shifts on the weekend, but only daytime during the week.

This will be the ultimate test I suppose: having some of each in the same weekly routine. I'd like to think that being on day shift will be a huge relief, and feel very easy and relaxed to be on - mainly due to these exotic, rare and precious things called "free evenings"! But I'm pretty sure that it'll soon feel "normal", and like nothing special. And that I'll see the disadvantages of it as well as the advantages very quickly.