Three Major Ways My Rotating Work Schedule Destroyed My Life

January 6, 2022

Up until a few years ago, I guess I had been pretty lucky when it came to work schedules. For the most part, I'd always had a fairly regular one, and by the time I left my job of three years in April of 2019, I had become spoiled by my regular 3-on, 4-off schedule.

When I left that employer to pursue a slightly different career path and something I'd been wanting to do for a long time -- working in the ER -- I was no longer able to have such a straightforward schedule. Instead I would be rotating weekends, and my days off in between would be pretty random -- even more so as the pandemic and understaffing began to affect the way our schedules were made.

I didn't realize at first how negatively that type of schedule would affect me, but after two and a half years, I felt like it was slowly killing me; and so it became my top priority to find a job with a better schedule. It didn't matter if I was overqualified for the job or it wasn't exactly what I wanted, as long as I had a schedule that allowed me the time off to better enjoy my life outside of work.

Luckily for me, in the middle of this job search, I finally managed to strike a deal with someone else who had similar needs, and we entered into a schedule contract, without me having to go elsewhere. And so next week, after two years and eight months of exhausting, frustrating, seemingly never-ending horror, the era of rotating weekends and randomized days off will finally be at an end.

Employers don't care how the schedule affects you, so I've learned it's up to me to understand what type of schedule works for me, and make sure I'm able to have that. As an introvert who requires a lot of time at home and away from other people to recharge, I know now that rotating schedules simply don't work for me.

My employer is definitely more lenient to employees who are in school, have a second job, or have children; but for me, a single, child-free person with only one job and no school commitments, asking for a better schedule for silly reasons -- like self-care, work/life balance, and better sleep -- didn't get me very far. (Luckily, somebody who's starting school this month needed a schedule agreement as well; if it hadn't been for that, I probably wouldn't have gotten it.)

Now, I hope I can truly begin living my life again, since I'll actually have time and (hopefully) motivation to do it. To celebrate, I thought I'd write a piece about the ways my life has been ruined by the schedule I currently work. It sounds dramatic, but truly, when you work the schedule I have since May 2019, it has a heavy impact on your life even outside of work. These are the three major ways it's made life so much more difficult for me.

1. Days Off That Weren't Grouped Together

I only work 36 hours a week -- three 12-hour shifts. Most people's response to that is, "Oh, that must be nice!" or "At least you get four days off every week!" or "You don't even work 40 hours, why are you complaining?"

But here's the thing. Those four days off aren't in a row, and that makes them far less effective. And when you're required to work every other weekend, things can get complicated. (Warning: there might be math involved in the next few paragraphs.)

A work week is from Sunday through Saturday. You have to work three shifts during that week, and there are only so many days to choose from. If it isn't your scheduled weekend to work, you can't sign up for it, so that brings it down from 7 days to 5. Since the previous weekend was your scheduled weekend, that means you just worked the last two days of the previous week, so you have to be careful about how many you work in a row. Maybe you want Sunday off now that you've worked the weekend (Friday and Saturday), but because people have already signed up for all the Wednesday shifts, you have to select Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for your 3 remaining shifts. Remember, Friday is a "weekend" shift, so that's not an option. You can't work Sunday and Monday because that would put you at 4 in a row, and you aren't able to schedule more than 3 consecutive shifts, even though it would give you two days off in a row instead of just one. So now you're working 2, off 1, working 2, off 1, working 1.

Not only does this make the process of making your schedule frustrating and confusing, but having only one day off at a time is almost pointless, especially when your shifts are 12+ hours long (not including commute time). That one day is spent catching up on sleep, and if you're lucky you might have enough time to do laundry or dishes. Even two days off isn't enough; then you have one day you sleep through and one full day to do housework. What a great life, right?

When you work 12-hour shifts, you need at least three off, but preferably four off in a row in order to actually enjoy life. At least for me, personally, it takes until the third day before I truly feel like I have any freedom.

As a highly introverted person, I need those longer stretches of time off to recharge. I need days where I don't have to leave my house or change out of pajamas. But my job is one where I work directly with people for twelve straight hours, which can be mentally exhausting for me. In addition to that, I have chronic insomnia, and often have a lengthy commute, so my shifts can be physically exhausting as well due to lack of adequate sleep.

Four days off in one week means nothing if they're broken up with other work days that prevent me from having those truly restful stretches.

And although you're not allowed to schedule yourself for more than three in a row, when they balance the schedule, they're able to move you wherever they need you, which means they can make you work more than three in a row. You just can't volunteer to do it.

There have been many times where I ended up scheduled for 4 on, 1 off, and 2 more on. That's six 12-hour shifts in a 7-day period, yet it only counts as 3 "in a week" because of the way the weeks are split up. For instance, let's say I worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The first three are in the first week of the pay period, but Sunday begins week 2. Then let's say I had Monday off but my other two shifts for week 2 are on Tuesday and Wednesday because there were no available shifts on Thursday, and Friday and Saturday are out of the question because they're the weekend. There are no other choices for me besides Tuesday and Wednesday, even though I only had one day off after working four in a row. And there you have it: six 12-hour shifts (that's 72 hours) in a 7-day period.

But because they didn't all take place in the same "week," there were no overtime benefits, despite being literally twice the amount of hours I'm supposed to work in one week.

Sure, I might have up to five or even six days off in a row on the rare occasion, but it isn't enough to make up for the trauma of working that many hours over the seven days before it.

2. A Complete Lack of Organization

I tend to get very absentminded when I'm stressed and burned out from work, so unless I can set reminders in my phone or get into the habit of doing something on the same day every week, I will often just forget to do it entirely. Especially when I only have one day off and twelve things to fit into it. There are many things that I've been "meaning to do" for a very long time, but I simply never get around to them because of the lack of organization in my life.

An example I often use is my concept of "Reset Hour," which I'm thinking of renaming because it (ideally) takes much longer than an hour. Maybe "Reset Night" or "Weekly Reset." But anyway, this is something I came up with when I was in a hotel room in Las Vegas for my birthday. The idea is basically to combine meditation with a self-care or spa day, and allow myself to quiet all my thoughts in a way that's completely separate from going to bed with the intention of sleeping. With my phone in do-not-disturb mode so no one can interrupt me, I start with a candlelit shower (or bubble bath if in a hotel) and soft music to set the mood, then put on a cozy bathrobe, turn the lights down, lie down with a sheet mask on my face and listen to ASMR, allowing my brain to shut out all other thoughts. When I'm ready, I might turn the lights back up but continue lounging and reading a book for however long I want to ease myself back into regular life.

When I came back from Vegas, I said that I wanted to do this once a week from then on to help me escape work stress and maintain self-care. It's now been six months and I've done this a total of... twice? Maybe three times?

See, "once a week" is impossible for me to maintain when I'm working random days. In order for me to do something regularly, I basically have to choose a time or day to do it, and always do it at the same time or day. For instance, I could commit to doing Reset Hour every Monday and know that it will be done once a week as planned. But when there's a 50/50 chance that I'll be working on any given Monday, I can't do that. Any day that I chose, I wouldn't be guaranteed to have off every week.

There actually was a time, up until last summer, when I tried really hard to never work Sundays. And I was usually successful. Unless it was a scheduled holiday, that was the one day of the week that I was almost guaranteed to have off. And until that went away, I seemed to be doing better with my rotating shifts, because at least I had that one day to cling to, a day that I knew I could have for myself. Sunday was my day.

But there came a point, due to understaffing, when self-scheduling was pretty much thrown out the window. We were still required to submit our schedules, but when they were officially posted, they looked quite different from what we had requested. Almost every single month I was "balanced" to days that I had not requested to work. At that point, I began being put on Sundays against my will. In fact, there have been months where I worked every Sunday. And honestly, that seemed to be the thing that pushed me over the edge. Without even that one day to call my own, I could no longer deal with this kind of schedule.

Reset Hour, washing my hair, going to the gym, cleaning my apartment, exfoliating my face, other forms of self-care... these are all things that I'd love to do on a scheduled basis to make it harder for me to neglect them. But when I can't schedule them, because I never know what days I'll be free, I neglect them almost every single time (or in the case of washing my hair and cleaning the apartment, I put them off until I no longer can).

Having this set schedule will make it so much easier for me to keep on top of things and live a more organized, healthy life.

Additionally, whenever an event pops up that I'm interested in going to, I will only have to look at what day of the week it takes place on to know if I can attend without issue. Instead of "My schedule for that week isn't made yet, I'll get back to you when I know if I have to work or not"... I can now say, "Oh, it's on a Monday? I don't work Mondays, so yeah, I can make it."

3. Almost Impossible to Socialize

When you work 12-hour shifts and night shift, it's already hard enough to see your friends, most of whom work normal, 8-hour, Monday-Friday schedules. But throw in a completely randomized schedule that includes working weekends more often than not (ever since they started balancing my schedule every month, even the every-second-weekend deal was no longer set in stone), and it gets even harder.

Now that we're all vaccinated, I'd like to actually see my friends sometimes. Maybe even go on dates once in a while, since I very recently decided I might be interested in doing that again. You know, see people besides coworkers and patients -- people I actually want to see.

I always said that I didn't really care which days of the week I worked, as long as they were the same days every week, and all three of my shifts were in a row. Even if that meant having to work every single weekend, I would have done it. In fact, I was kind of expecting that to be the case when I finally got a weekend agreement.

But somehow, I lucked out and I will have weekends off instead -- as well as two weekdays. This will make it infinitely easier to get together with my local friends who have weekends off, reinstate the tradition of Sunday lunches with one friend in particular, have virtual movie dates with my friend in Detroit, and maybe even meet new people. Of the newer friends I've met over the past few months, most of them share at least one day off with me, if not the whole weekend. Or, something that can be even more important, they have the next day off, so we can hang out in evening without me having to wake up too early after a night shift, or them having to go to bed too early to be up the next morning.

Having an actual set schedule and knowing in advance what days I'll be working is such an enormous change from the haphazard way I was living before, and honestly I don't even have the words to tell you how relieved and grateful I am. This entire blog post dedicated to the topic is 2,858 words long, according to Microsoft Works, and even that is not enough.

I sincerely hope I'm not wrong about how much easier things will get after being on a set schedule for a few weeks. I do expect it will take me some time to adjust and settle into a new routine, and I might want to spend my first few weekends off doing nothing but recovering from the years-long ordeal that was my previous schedule; but I am already making lists of the tasks I want to do once a week so I can assign a day to them, as well as making a list of household projects (such as organizing my closet, finally finishing my coat cabinet, etc.) that I want to tackle now that I'll have four days off every week indefinitely.

Time will tell, but I have a good feeling about the way my life will improve now that my work schedule won't feel like it takes over my entire life. I think back to how it was last time I had a similar 3-on, 4-off schedule, and I'm excited for things to be that way again.

If you are an introvert like me -- or even if you aren't -- I urge you to consider the things I listed above before accepting a job offer or even going into a field similar to mine. It might not be enough to discourage you from the job, and that's okay if you think it will work for you. But I think it's important to be informed beforehand, and this seems to be a topic that doesn't get enough coverage. In addition to simply celebrating that this less-than-ideal situation is finally ending for me, another reason I wrote this is to tell you the things most people don't tell you about going into a field like mine. There are many, many things you should be warned about before entering a high-stress, frontline healthcare position, but this always seems to be left out. I'm not saying you shouldn't take a job you want just because of this, but it's just one more thing to think about when considering options. Remember, always do what's best for you.

tags: work life, self-care