Ahhhhhhh….
Graveyard is finally here. I must say that so far (2 days) it is wonderful. I don’t mind the other shifts, but I always look forward to graveyard. My wife doesn’t, but I certainly do.
I have sleeping problems. Graveyard is nice because I am able to sleep without a ton of drugs to help. I took Ambien while I was on swing shift, but that stopped working after about a week. Prior to that, I was taking something else, and that stopped working as well. It’s weird, because I found myself SO tired, but completely unable to actually sleep. I could lay in bed for hours and hours, not moving, not tossing or turning, just awake. You can imagine, it was maddening. Some of my co-workers were incredulous at my predicament, because they were able to go home and be asleep 15 minutes after they walked through their front door. You always take for granted the things that come easy.
Compared to other shifts, graveyard is heaven. We have to do extra rounds throughout the night to check on the inmates, but even that isn’t a big deal. All inmate issues are dealt with on other shifts, so unless someone is going to get into a fight or is deathly ill, it waits until morning. That isn’t to say that we aren’t asked to do things, it’s just that we don’t do it.
Graveyard is sleep time for the inmates, and if it wasn’t important enough to get taken care of during the day prior, then it can usually wait another shift.
We do actually do some work though. We release inmates if their time is up. We book in an exceptional amount of people during graveyard. If an inmate has charges in another county, we get them ready for transport, and we get all of the transports ready for prison. We serve breakfast in the morning. But I do have to admit, even with the work we do on graveyard, it is exponentially less than the other shifts.
Of course, just like anything else, not everyone likes what I like. (stupid people) There are people who HATE this shift. Normally this is directly tied to sleep; I can understand that frustration. My wife hates graveyard too. She feels like she is able to see me less, but she forgets about swing shift, where I would stay up until 3, or 4, or 5, and then sleep until 1pm. Then I would leave for work at 4. Now, at least I only sleep until 3. I take a couple of hours to “warm up to the world”, but she still gets more hours per day with me than she did on swings.
Oh, well. She only has to put up with it for three months and then I will go to day shift. Day shift, HUMBUG! Every one’s awake, court, radio traffic up the wazoo, attorney visits, and all of the other lovely things that come with day shift. Up at 7, home by 4, sleep by 2 (hopefully). The three month countdown begins now.
The only thing that I have found that I don’t like, is that I post less. On swing shift, I would post when I was awake at night. It was easier to post when there was nothing else to do, so I found myself posting more regularly. Now, I am afraid that my writing will suffer due to my new found ability to sleep. I guess, we will just have to wait and see.
