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In season in the Mid-atlantic, everyday booked (charter boat), start around 4AM - leave about 5AM - get back around 6PM - finish up around 8PM. So 16 hours.
Overnighters, leave the same time but stay on through the night. Back at dock the next day by noon. So about 32 hours. Yes, we take turns trying to sleep after dark but you don't really sleep.
International boat deliveries. Jamaica to panama would be 2 days plus 2 nights chugging plus a few hours running. So 50plus hours. Yes, we would try 4 or 6 hour shifts after dark but you never really sleep. Many times your sleeping shift is really just a helper shift as a second set of eyes and keeping the one awake, awake! Some rest!
Old retail job in another life was 9 to 9 for a couple days of the week!
My last week of college I worked a 16 hour front desk / night security shift. Literally the shift ended 4 hours before graduation haha.
I was an RA for 2 years in college. Last week of the spring semester one of the residence halls that was still open needed someone to work the front desk from 4 pm to 8 pm then needed someone to work night security from 8 pm to 8 am. I volunteered because well it was an easy way to make a hundred dollars. By 8 am I was dragging haha. Made it back to my dorm room, laid down and barely woke up in time to get to the arena on campus to get in line for graduation. It was HOT and humid that day. Combine that with wearing a black grad robe and having had 3 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours I was not happy at all. In all of my grad photos with my family and friends I look soooooo pissed haha.
The longest shift I ever worked was around 18 hours on a weekend processing tobacco (supervisor). After I did my flavoring formulas for an hour, I did a full shift until the weeks' tobacco ran out, and then the whole processing floor had to be cleaned top to bottom. I always helped because it made the time go (somewhat) faster. The people working for me got OT; I did not. BTW, we worked this kind of schedule every Friday into Saturday; standing on concrete for that amount of time really messed up my feet (especially with wearing steel-toed shoes).
After 9-11, my late H worked over 48 hours straight as a broadcast technician for a public TV station.
My regular shift (7am to 4 pm)was about to end when we got an emergency call for no heat in a barracks with about 300 soldiers in it. We worked until 11am the following morning to rebuild the boiler and get it going.
That's the only time I've worked that long in one stretch. I've done a couple of doubles (16 hours) over the years, and working 12 or 14 hours to wrap up an emergency call isn't unusual, particularly in the winter.
Once a hotel that was a new customer of the company I was working for was bought from Mövenpick by Best Western. I had set up the new Novell 6.5 enviroment and at 5am started to Switch / Transfer data. At 10pm I thought I was totally done. I had a couple of beers and was about to go to bed. Then the interfaces to the Hotel Managment Software started to fail due to a certificate issue. Tried all I and Google could think of and at about 2am I gave up and reinstalled and started all over again. By midday the following day it was mostly working.
So about 32 hours. At the end I was so tired I could barly speak.
Got to the hospital to pre-round at 4am.
Started taking call at 7am. Call ended at 7am the next morning. Then rounded, did clinic or elective cases till 5pm or so.
This happened often during med school and residency. 30-38 hours on.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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As a system administrator, we did a major conversion overnight (back in the 1980) and I worked 6am until 11am the next day, a total of 29 hours. As management, I didn't get overtime but I did get the rest of the 2nd day off with pay. I looked at it as a rare opportunity to get paid for sleeping.
I have worked a 16-hour shift many years ago. Members called out, and I needed the hours.
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