Hard week

[wbute]

Yep I have done the day night rollover in the past. I knocked off on my last night shift and then drove 250 km home. Usually had about 20 minutes sleep on the side of the road. On a few occasions I did a full days work on my farm when I got home. That made it about 30 hours awake. I am now doing 6 days on and 6 days off. Much easier.

[Taily]

Yep I have done the day night rollover in the past. I knocked off on my last night shift and then drove 250 km home. Usually had about 20 minutes sleep on the side of the road. On a few occasions I did a full days work on my farm when I got home. That made it about 30 hours awake. I am now doing 6 days on and 6 days off. Much easier.

That is the issue I've found since joining an EMS - what to do with the 'grey' day - either stay awake or crash for a couple of hours first. My roster starts the two weeks with a couple of 6am starts, then rolling through various start times to 1600 by the second last shift, finishing with either a 2000 start (till 0600) or a 2200 which finishes at 0800. Then two days off. We get sometimes one RDO in the middle or a single RDO at the end so that the roster can be rotated to allow a weekend off every couple of months. It works OK, with no minimum rest turn arounds (8 hours from finish time to start time) which are now prevalent in the industry I work in nowadays.

One previous employer of mine thought nothing of flouting rostering rules when it suited them to do so (4x16 hour shifts with 8 hours in between them, usually one or two of them at some cruddy motel in another state), but hey - prang one of their mega expensive toys because you were dead tired and it wasn't their fault because their FRMS said it was OK! Glad I'm well away from that part of the industry now, don't miss it one bit....

[jason.ruff]

Ps I HAD TO COVER FOR ANOTHER GUY SO AM IN MY 5TH WEEK OF NIGHTS, ONE WEEK TO GO.