bjack on 2/7/2015 at 00:08
Do any of you have jobs that require you to work at weird times? For example, I had a 6:30 AM conference call M-F for 2 years straight. It was bad for the USA, it was bad for the UK, and not so hot for India either. Global computing can be a bitch kitty. Any tales of pain to share? Tales of goodness are also welcome. :D
SlyFoxx on 2/7/2015 at 00:44
I was in radio for many years. I worked every shift in the book from time to time. Overnights sucked. Holidays? Not in radio. Often it was 6 days a week.
smallfry on 2/7/2015 at 03:12
I worked one summer at Kodak where they made, processed, stored, and shipped film emulsion. It was two days of 6am - 6pm, followed by two days of 6pm - 6am. Then three days off until it started all over again. To make matters worse, since light would ruin the emulsion, it was almost pitch dark and 45 degrees F everywhere except the cafeteria. It sucked!
demagogue on 2/7/2015 at 06:41
I think it's likely that Japan and Aus have it the absolute worst. For the US, you basically swap am for pm, UK is about as awful, South Asia means staying late, and nothing but ocean for the half day in front of you.
Yakoob on 2/7/2015 at 21:33
I used to live in North Ireland and India while working for a US company remotely and that wasn't too bad! We'd skype weekly, so my morning was their evening, worked out really well actually.
Hmm dont think I had any jobs that had crazy nightshift hours, expect a few occasional movie shots that (of course) went into the 14-16hr range slipping into late night, or that one time I pulled an allnighter to unhack a client's website.
EDIT: Oh, when i was marketing my first game I'd wake up super early so I could push press-releases or tweets in time to hit people getting in the offices on east coast. Luckily we got automated scheduling features for that nowadays!
heywood on 2/7/2015 at 22:50
Quote Posted by demagogue
I think it's likely that Japan and Aus have it the absolute worst. For the US, you basically swap am for pm, UK is about as awful, South Asia means staying late, and nothing but ocean for the half day in front of you.
I've worked in Japan, Aus, and UK. Of the three, Japan was the worst experience from a time zone POV because it was 13 hours different from the eastern US which was where my family and company is based. Conference calls and VTCs back to the US were always starting at 9PM and we'd be stuck in a cramped conference room until midnight without having a chance to get food. Australia was better in one sense because my business calls were mostly to Norway and the UK and most would start at 5PM or 6PM, which was no bother. But the job had me flying to the UK constantly and that became a drag. While in the UK, I don't recall ever having to work weird hours which was nice. Now I'm in the US and on the phone a lot with France, which is no trouble either. My wife used to have be in the office at 4AM once or twice a week to VTC with their fab in the Philippines. That probably sucked as much as my VTC from Japan.
faetal on 3/7/2015 at 08:38
I don't have this problem - closest I've come was working in systems analysis with our IT support in India, which meant that we had a window from 2pm until 9pm to get our change requests sorted, which realistically ended up being 2pm to 5pm given that most of us have lives.
That said, I do have a cool little blues tune about time zones coming into existence in my head right now.
demagogue on 3/7/2015 at 08:51
My baby done left me
for another hemisphere
Now when I gets online,
I don't know if she's afk or if she's here.
Oh I got the time zone blues
Baby, don't you know it, the time zone blues
Bests I can do is wait for this here bubble turns green
'Fore I gets on my can and taps my screen...
I got the time zone blues
faetal on 3/7/2015 at 10:27
♫ Woke up this morning....in another man's night ♬
bjack on 3/7/2015 at 17:51
Me like! :cheeky:
Working on the left coast, I always felt bad for the UK people during our conference calls. Yes, my meetings were at 6:30 AM, but it was getting to the end of the day for them. Some meetings became working sessions and the UK guy would have to stay after 5 PM. He once missed his bus in a area that is far from everything. If you know Nottingham at all, he was out in Ruddington Business Park (not sure of the name or spelling…maybe only one "d") Anyway, its miles from the village of Ruddington and at least a 1/2 hour from downtown Nottingham. Lucky for him, he hitched a ride with a fellow worker that stayed late. Funny thing in the UK, most every would go home exactly at 5 PM. They also showed up at 8 PM on the dot. It seemed nearly 3/4 of the people used the bus. In the US, we'd have people coming and going at all hours. Out of 4000, maybe 2 or 3 would take the bus.
Our Indian workers had it the worst. Most of our meetings with them were around 9 PM their time. At least when they were on call, midnight problems would be daytime for them.
I'm now semi-retired and happy not to deal with these times anymore. 2 AM calls tend to make one's hair turn grey quickly.
