Transitioning from graveyard shift to normal shift (job, moving, office)

[jf2737]

If anybody has worked 11pm-7am for awhile then switched to a normal shift 7-3, 8-4 etc, how long did it take for your body to adjust to being a normal human being again?

I've been working 11-7 for almost 4 years now and I'm moving soon so more than likely I'll have normal hours. Which is fine with me because the overnights really screw up my sleep patterns on my days off.

[brightdoglover]

Depends on your natural body clock. I've worked third shift for years and am exhausted often but if off or on vacation, I normally go to sleep around 3 a.m. Working "normal" hours is awful for me. I simply cannot get up in the morning and function and can't fall asleep until about 3 or 4 a.m. no matter what. That is my natural rhythm and I fall into it quite quickly if not working. If your natural rhythm is to get up early and work at 7 or 8 in the morning, you probably will fall into it quickly (and likely third shift was very difficult). My ideal work time is second shift but that's not available at my current job.
On the single day off between night shifts, I sleep about 24 hours with heavy dreaming. That cannot be a healthy thing. Best wishes on normality.

[gweilo845]

I worked night shift for about 9 years as a manager at Target stores. It sounds like you are not naturally a night person, so it shouldn't take much to tranisition to first shift. Most of my crews were not true "night owls", they were more like the above poster and would get tired by 3 or 4 AM. I tried getting upper management to do staggered shifts, but they never listened -- though they always criticized why our productivity nosedived during the last couple of hours of the shift.

I got a little lucky going away from night shift because I found an office job that was 11 am - 7 pm and I lived about a mile away, so I didn't need to get up until 9 or 10 in the morning. My body was burnt out on night shift anyway - it was a major reason I left. During the winter in Minnesota, there would be times where I saw the sun maybe a hour a day. I was just rundown and tired all of the time.