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Early Shifts

They say working in the airport is all fun and games, that you have discounts everywhere and it's like a dream come true.
I'm not gonna lie to you, airport food is crap; nothing is cheap; there's only discounts in a few selected places. This is why you need to work on improving your friendship skills and make the wheels turn or you will never get free food or just a simple free White Chocolate Mocha from Starbucks.


For the past two weeks, I've been meaning to post the previous post, it was sitting on my drafts since October 8 but I never had the chance to do it. Why's that, you ask? Well, allow me to tell you a bit of how my last couple weeks were.

The earliest shift one can get at JD starts at 4am. It's all okay when you're doing it for the first time, but then you have another one of them the next day, and then another one of the day after that... You get what I am saying.
By the time I started uni, I was doing 5 shifts a week and then had lectures in my two days off. *scoffs* I only asked for 3 days of work so I could have 4 days off; two for uni and two for myself. So there I was, doing early shifts 5 days a week. It turned out to be alright. That first week I only screwed up my sleep once because my flatmates woke me up, I managed to stay awake the rest of the day so it was alright in the end. But from that day on, I started going to sleep at a specific time; 7pm. This way I was guaranteeing myself at least 6 hours of sleep each night. Which is more than fine, it allows me to stay up during the day and only after that go to sleep.

A word of advice? Aim for 7 hours of sleep. Go to sleep earlier, but not too early. Yes, you are missing out on the day but you will not be dying by the end of the day.

I worked Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday during that week. Now this week I worked Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Only four days I know. But by the end of Tuesday I felt like I couldn't take it anymore. I woke up late for work. My body was too tired so I don't even remember turning off the alarm... It just happened.

Now back to keeping the schedule; I decided that it would be more beneficial to keep the schedule, so even on the days that I did not have work at 4am, I was waking up around 2:30 or 3am. So I basically did two weeks in a row of waking up early and going to sleep around 7pm.

On that Tuesday I felt like my body had reached it's limit. I had a nap when I came home. I went to sleep and then I just woke up around 2:30. My body thought it was time to wake up. I forced myself to sleep but again woke up around 4am...

The early shifts are only worse than the lates for one reason, if you do too many of them you will eventually not be able to wake up for them anymore. No matter how much you try to tell yourself to sleep, you just will find something that will distract you even for a bit and make you go to sleep later than you thought. For me it was a bath bomb. It got me too relaxed that I slept too well that night.

In JD, the early shift revolves around cleaning, getting delivery and processing it. It's not that bad, but it can be hard. Specially when you go and get delivery at 5 freaking 30 in the morning. Carrying the totes full of footwear (what the hell is in the Rebook shoes that makes them so heavy???), accessories and textiles is draining, specially when it is always you who goes to get it, get them through security and then help put them on the skate board and the other wheely thing whose name I do not know.
And then imagine, after that you don't have that many people that can make you feel awake because all of the people who joke around and make the environment uplifting are all suspended *sigh*

Could it be worse?
Yes.
Am I still gonna complain?
Definitely.

But this is what has been going on lately. Between going to class, thinking about what I am going to do for my uni work and going to the airport, I only have time to whisper around that I am tired and actually going to sleep.

I will try to post something more interesting soon.

'In a bit.



Comments

  1. God, that sounds terrible :( I hope it gets better! Good luck with that, keep us updated <3

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you honey, I am doing better this week so don't worry about me!

      Delete

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