When I learned
that I was about to switch from working the overnight shift to the evening
shift, I suddenly became incredibly restless working those long, early morning
hours. The worst time was after 3 a.m. after all the cleaning was finished and
no customers would come in until 6 a.m.
During my time
working overnights, I tried to combat these restless feelings in a number of
ways:
- I
replaced the liquid hand-soap in the store’s public bathroom with
non-water-soluble lube. In retrospect, this was stupid. While most
customers ended up rubbing the non-washable goo on their pants, some
decided to wipe is all over the walls of the video booths; which I then
had to attempt to clean.
- I
cranked up the classic rock station. The original attempt was to energize
me while I was cleaning and to help keep me awake, but it was never as
successful as I had hoped. Most of the time, the station played incredibly
lame, slow classic rock songs like the Who’s Behind Blue Eyes. In the rare
cases when the station played something good, I would finish cleaning
quickly, raring to go, only to realize that I still had to sit around for
another four hours.
- I
rented movies and watched them when no one was in the store. This actually
worked out great for a while. The American Film Institute had recently
released their list of the 100 Greatest American Films and I was having a
blast catching up the classics that I hadn’t seen before. (Also, 4 a.m. is
the perfect time to watch Woody Allen.) Unfortunately, one night when I
wasn’t working, my coworker covering the overnight shift was doing the
same thing, but ended up getting his rented copy of Liar Liar stuck in the
VCR. The owner was furious, removed the TV/VCR combo we were only supposed
to use to check if tapes were defective and refused to give the tape back.
I decided that watching movies at work is awesome, but it’s not awesome
enough to warrant a $150 Blockbuster fee.
- I
read lots of long, difficult books. You’d be amazed at what you can get
through when it’s the middle of the night, you have to stay awake and have
absolutely nothing else to keep you occupied. Also, sleep deprivation can
help you develop some really elaborate theories about abstract works of
literature like Naked Lunch and Ulysses.
- I
experimented with drinking at work.
This was
probably the worst idea I tried while working overnights. I drank vodka with
cranberry juice (as an attempt to mask the smell of alcohol) and quickly lost
track of how drunk I was getting. The first few hours went by really quickly
and were a blast. I got chatty with all the customers and everything was
really, really funny. But by 2 a.m., when the customers stopped coming in and
it was time to start cleaning, I was afraid to try getting up off the stool.
Worse yet, I was starting to nod off, but wasn’t sure I could walk without
stumbling.
The shift
sucked. I didn’t finish cleaning until 6:30 a.m. and had a huge headache. The
experience taught me that work is not the best place to drink, particularly
when you’re the only person working for an eight-hour stretch.
At one point, I
considered taking some of the “sativa” we sold in an attempt to pass the hours,
but the horror stories that were told to me convinced me not to try it. Waking
up, face flat on a glass display case, drenched with my own saliva doesn’t
sound like a good time to me.
I was left with
nothing but caffeine and gumption to pass the time.
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