THE TOP 2 REASONS NOT TO WORK SHIFT WORK
(ESPECIALLY AT REMOTE LOCATIONS)

Can’t buy me love, no! Everybody tells me so.

(“Can’t Buy Me Love,” by the Beatles, 1965)

This segment was written “with a little help from my friends.” Unless otherwise noted, the following enumerated list of the negative aspects associated with shift work is based upon anecdotal contributions to this segment and years of personal observation.

1) Shift work is tough on long relationships.

Parallel universes cannot be maintained for the duration of a lifetime without creativity, resourcefulness, a great sense of humor, and the everlasting memory of what caused the spark that ignited the relationship in the first place.

Depending upon your age, you will either learn or remember what it is like when your mother-in-law comes to visit for a couple of weeks. The household is changed in small but definite ways.

For example, you may find it necessary to search for groceries, dishes, or toiletry items that were helpfully stored in places that don’t match your personal organizational system. The groceries, dishes, and toiletry items are, however, put in places that make perfect, logical sense to your mother-in-law. Her plan in life is not to antagonize you.

Likewise, the Shift Worker Partner returns to the household on a regularly intermittent schedule and follows routines and procedures that make sense to him or her. Over time the household operates one way when the Shift Work Partner is at home and another way when the Shift Work Partner is gone.

The incremental changes Your Mentor is referring to go way beyond whether or not the toilet seat cover remains up or down. Control freaks need to take heed and steer clear of this lifestyle! And all parties involved need to maintain a sense of humor and not sweat small stuff.

The Shift Worker Partner is also accustomed to having meals on demand supplied at a mess hall and a custodial service on site to clean up the barracks. Back at the homestead, the Shift Worker Partner may seem to have forgotten how to assist with food prep or clean up. Hence, these topics are given an inordinate percentage of one-on-one face time when face time is already limited.

Furthermore, the Non-Shift-Worker Partner in the relationship is assumed to be sufficiently resourceful to maintain the household and fill his/her time with volunteer work, a paying job, or creative outlet during the Shift Worker Partner’s regular absences.

Over the years, the Non-Shift Worker Partner will learn how to fix everything that breaks or will know who to call upon for needed repairs. Over the years, the Non-Shift Worker Partner will spend as much time with another organization as s/he will spend with the Shift Worker Partner. This outcome can contribute to the phenomenon described as “growing apart” sooner rather than later; worse, the Non-Shift Worker Partner may find someone s/he has more in common with.

The bottom line is that there is a high incidence rate of divorce for shift workers that work in remote locations and there’s no need for a University of Michigan study to prove it. Being aware of the special challenges shift work at remote locations presents and dealing with them proactively may help.

2) Shift work is especially tough on families with kids.
Period. Bold. Underscored.

The strain that shift work puts on a family is considerably less for shift workers that are able to sleep in their own homes each night.

In that case, the ideal house architecture would include a long hallway that leads to bedroom built with noise reduction features so that the sleepy Shift Worker Parent could recharge the batteries any time of the day while other family members could live a normal life. Simply knowing the Shift Worker Parent could participate in family events were it not for the need to sleep somehow helps maintain household harmony. Just "being there" snoring away is helpful.

The situation is more difficult for families with Shift Worker Parents that work at remote locations.

Your Mentor once facilitated a panel discussion that focused upon the impact of shift work in remote locations to relationships between Shift Worker Parents, Kids of Shift Workers, and Spouses of Shift Workers (the Non-Shift Worker Parent). Unfortunately, none of the groups of participants included members of the same family. Still, even in its limited format, the forum shed some light on the common challenges shared by households with routinely absent parents:

There is a direct relationship between the strain remote-location shift work puts on a family to the duration of the shift.

A “one week on, one week off” shift schedule (aka, “1 and 1”) is less stressing to a family than a “2 and 2” which is less stressing to a family than a “3 and 3” and so on.

Heck, your teenage daughter will go from the elated state of meeting the love-of-her-life new boyfriend who understands her like no one else in the world ever could through to breaking up with him over a two-week interval and you will have missed the entire encounter.

Skype and Face Time and whatever the newest visual contact media is by the time you read this will always be a poor substitute for actually ‘being there’ during the ‘crisis.’

The (remote location) Shift Worker Parent does not want to be “the heavy” or “the law” given the limited time s/he has with the kids. And the Non Shift Worker Parent in the household naturally wants to have a little break from having to be “the heavy” or “the law” for the kids 24/7.

Some shift work families do make an attempt to keep the non-present Shift Worker Parent involved with everyday parenting. However, “Just wait until (insert Shift Worker Parent’s name here) gets home!” is not an effective alternative to the dilemma.

Kids of Shift Workers reported that being aware the Home Do-List for the returning Shift Worker Parent included dispensing threatened justice for an infraction that occurred weeks earlier was confusing with regard to being glad whether or not the Shift Worker Parent was coming back home.

A common complaint from Spouses of Shift Workers and Kids of Shift Workers was that the Shift Worker Parent was not “mentally present” even when physically present.

PTOA Readers learned in an earlier segment that one common feature of an industrial complex is working in unison toward the same defined goal. Also, everybody working at the complex is an adult.

The transition into the mayhem of a typically overbooked household wherein the banter of the day matches the emotional maturity of the kids is a far less predictable atmosphere to the Shift Worker who simply craves a little rest and recuperation in a non-confrontational atmosphere... an atmosphere that preferably would include a repeated family homecoming ritual wherein all family members (including teenagers) incessantly chant mantras of appreciation for all the sacrifices s/he is making for the family.

Instead of diving into the mix, the Shift Worker may prefer fantasizing about driving off solo in a motor home and leaving all responsibilities and accountabilities behind.

The priority of “mentally being there” is worth it. Kids grow up and eventually mature.

The quiet Beatle George Harrison once expounded “All Things Must Pass;” and that includes the emotional teenage years and, eventually, the Shift Worker Parent. When the time comes, it will be the Kids of Shift Workers…not the shift co-workers…taking care of the now feeble Shift Worker Parent.

 

Take Home Message: Shift Work, especially in remote locations, is hard on partnerships and families. Communication is the key to keeping the home fires burning in a good way. Making that once monthly Friday Night Date a standing appointment with the couple’s counselor wouldn’t be a bad idea. Making monthly family meetings a top priority at regular intervals would help the Shift Worker Parent share family activities and challenges.

Photo credit:  http://vanessajunkin.wordpress.com

 

©2014 PTOA Orientation Segment 7

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