Work schedule advice needed.
So I've got a tough scheduling decision to make at work, and I'd appreciate any and all advice.
I should preface all this by saying that I absolutely recognize this as the First World problem that it is, and I'm fully aware of how lucky I am to have a job at all in this economy, let alone a job that I love and that pays me well.
A little backstory: the job I have now hired me part-time (three shifts/week guaranteed) but said I could sign up for as many additional shifts as I wanted. This has turned out not to be as easy as it sounded at the time; any shifts over three/week are counted as "extra" for the purposes of the staffing office, and if there aren't enough patients to justify having all the scheduled nurses there, the "extra" nurse has to accept being put on call.
When on call, I have to be able to get to the hospital within a half an hour, which puts a bit of kibosh on doing anything else except sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. I also only get paid half my usual salary for those hours. So all the extra shifts I was supposed to be able to pick up in order to make the pay cut not hurt so much just haven't materialized; I've only been working this new job for five weeks, and I've been on call once a week for the last three. My bank account doesn't approve.
So I emailed my nurse manager and asked her if she had any other positions available where I'd get four shifts/week guaranteed. She replied immediately and said that she had both a day shift (working 7 am - 3:30 pm) and an evening shift (working 3 pm - 11:30 pm) available, with somewhat more urgency to hire an evening shift person to replace a nurse who's leaving.
Now I have to pick which shift I want (and can I get a big WOO WOO for no more nights!), and I'm vacillating like a Newton's cradle. There are definite benefits and drawbacks to each possibility, and I can't figure out which has more of one than the other. In general I make these kinds of decisions more by gut instinct than any kind of intellectualizing, but my gut is being uncharacteristically quiet about this.
A big pro of the day shift is that it's, well, normal. I'd be at work when the rest of the world is at work, and home and free to make plans when the rest of the world is, too. I'd have every night to spend with unsound and the kitties, and time for plans with friends, instead of the way it's been since we got to California, which is that I've been away three or four nights a week and then asleep all day the following day. Disruptive to say the least. Even though I'll still have to work every other weekend, I'll have all sorts of free time to spend.
Working days would also get me more interaction with the docs and midwives (who are largely asleep at home at night until they're needed) and would open up the opportunity to precept more nursing students, which I haven't done since Boston and really miss. My nurse manager says that she gets requests for preceptors all the time.
My whole career as a nurse, I've been working odd hours--the 12-hour shifts that left me no time to do anything but go to bed before going back to the hospital the next morning, or working nights and then being asleep all day. This would be an opportunity to live like a normal person, albeit a normal person who has to get up really, really early in the morning to get to work.
And that brings us to the day shift cons: getting up that early runs very, very counter to my normal circadian rhythms, which have never involved going to bed early and waking up with the sun. When the alarm goes off at 5:00 am, I feel like I want to die. I did it for a long time when I worked in Boston, and it never felt good or got any easier.
The other price of working normal hours and living like a normal person is a distinctly financial one--when working nights, I get compensated at a higher rate in recompense for having an incredibly disruptive schedule, a not-insubstantial 15% added on to my salary. Working days would mean no differential--the pay cut I took when leaving my previous job would be greater, and would hurt more. (I've done the math, and it turns out I'd end up taking home only a few hundred dollars less every two weeks. The difference is that at my last job, I was putting away a good chunk of change pre-tax into a 403(b) each paycheck; because neither company I can use for retirement investing at my current job offers a socially-responsible investment option[1], I haven't yet figured out how to work around that and haven't been putting any money aside for retirement at this job. Once I do figure it out, that'll take a piece out of my takehome pay, as will union dues once our contract negotiations are successful and we have a current contract.)
Another little con: parking isn't subsidized, so if I wanted to avoid the incredibly unreliable, always-late bus to work, I'd have to pay $18 for the day to park.
This brings us to the evening shift. The most compelling pros for evenings: never, ever having to hear the alarm go off at 5:00 am, but also being able to go to sleep in my own bed every night. There is still a shift differential, so financially speaking it would be a bit better than days. Parking is subsidized to the cost of a couple of dollars for the shift, freeing me from the tyranny of MUNI[2]. I'd get a nice combination of contact with the docs and midwives in the afternoon but also some time without them as it gets later in the shift and they go home.
There's some career advancement involved in working evenings, too; the nurse I'd be replacing is one of nurses on evenings who rotates as the charge nurse, and taking over her position would mean taking over that part of it, too. It seems more than a little absurd to me that a place I've worked for five weeks wants to give me the keys to the castle, and to be completely frank the idea scares the crap out of me, but it would look great on my resumé and would give me a new set of skills. It's about time for me to develop that part of my nursing career.
Cons: potentially, evenings are the world's most disruptive schedule. Although working one evening wouldn't have any effect on the following day's plans the way that working nights takes a chunk out of both the night worked and the following day, evenings would still mean four days each week where I was non-negotiably busy and unavailable for plans right at the time when the rest of the world is neither working nor sleeping. There would be ways to work around it and see people anyway sometimes (getting up early and making plans for brunch or lunch, etc.) but in general it would involve being at work during prime socializing hours more days of the week than not, and potentially missing out on things like during-the-week dinners, concerts, etc.
Now, it's not as though I'm this big social butterfly, and most of my evenings are spent quietly at home enjoying my apartment, my kitties, and my boyfriend, so I'm sure that the three days of the week that I wouldn't be working would probably be enough to get all my socializing done without missing too too much. Even if I was working the weekend, I'd have Friday night available for all sorts of fun stuff and still be able to recuperate before going to work Saturday afternoon. But my biggest concern along these lines is if at any point unsound has a 9-5 job, especially one with any kind of lengthy commute involved, he'd be leaving for work in the morning before I'd have to get up, and by the time I got home at night he'd already be in bed asleep. If I worked three evening shifts in a row, that would be three days where we would barely lay eyes on each other at all. I disapprove of this idea most emphatically. Even when I was working 12-hour night shifts, we had a few hours to spend together between me waking up in the afternoon and heading back to work that evening.
I'd also be unlikely to get any nursing students to precept on the evening shift, but that might be OK because I'd have my hands full learning how to be in charge.
So, yeah. While writing this all out was cathartic, it hasn't given me any clearer an idea of what I want to do. Insights, input, perspectives I haven't considered, etc., are all more than welcome! Thanks in advance.
[1] Anyone without a 401(k) or 403(b) option at work who's nonetheless successfully figured out how to invest for retirement in a socially responsible way, please shoot some links my way!
[2] Seriously, I thought the T buses were bad. I had no idea how good I had it riding the #1 back and forth to work.
I should preface all this by saying that I absolutely recognize this as the First World problem that it is, and I'm fully aware of how lucky I am to have a job at all in this economy, let alone a job that I love and that pays me well.
A little backstory: the job I have now hired me part-time (three shifts/week guaranteed) but said I could sign up for as many additional shifts as I wanted. This has turned out not to be as easy as it sounded at the time; any shifts over three/week are counted as "extra" for the purposes of the staffing office, and if there aren't enough patients to justify having all the scheduled nurses there, the "extra" nurse has to accept being put on call.
When on call, I have to be able to get to the hospital within a half an hour, which puts a bit of kibosh on doing anything else except sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. I also only get paid half my usual salary for those hours. So all the extra shifts I was supposed to be able to pick up in order to make the pay cut not hurt so much just haven't materialized; I've only been working this new job for five weeks, and I've been on call once a week for the last three. My bank account doesn't approve.
So I emailed my nurse manager and asked her if she had any other positions available where I'd get four shifts/week guaranteed. She replied immediately and said that she had both a day shift (working 7 am - 3:30 pm) and an evening shift (working 3 pm - 11:30 pm) available, with somewhat more urgency to hire an evening shift person to replace a nurse who's leaving.
Now I have to pick which shift I want (and can I get a big WOO WOO for no more nights!), and I'm vacillating like a Newton's cradle. There are definite benefits and drawbacks to each possibility, and I can't figure out which has more of one than the other. In general I make these kinds of decisions more by gut instinct than any kind of intellectualizing, but my gut is being uncharacteristically quiet about this.
A big pro of the day shift is that it's, well, normal. I'd be at work when the rest of the world is at work, and home and free to make plans when the rest of the world is, too. I'd have every night to spend with unsound and the kitties, and time for plans with friends, instead of the way it's been since we got to California, which is that I've been away three or four nights a week and then asleep all day the following day. Disruptive to say the least. Even though I'll still have to work every other weekend, I'll have all sorts of free time to spend.
Working days would also get me more interaction with the docs and midwives (who are largely asleep at home at night until they're needed) and would open up the opportunity to precept more nursing students, which I haven't done since Boston and really miss. My nurse manager says that she gets requests for preceptors all the time.
My whole career as a nurse, I've been working odd hours--the 12-hour shifts that left me no time to do anything but go to bed before going back to the hospital the next morning, or working nights and then being asleep all day. This would be an opportunity to live like a normal person, albeit a normal person who has to get up really, really early in the morning to get to work.
And that brings us to the day shift cons: getting up that early runs very, very counter to my normal circadian rhythms, which have never involved going to bed early and waking up with the sun. When the alarm goes off at 5:00 am, I feel like I want to die. I did it for a long time when I worked in Boston, and it never felt good or got any easier.
The other price of working normal hours and living like a normal person is a distinctly financial one--when working nights, I get compensated at a higher rate in recompense for having an incredibly disruptive schedule, a not-insubstantial 15% added on to my salary. Working days would mean no differential--the pay cut I took when leaving my previous job would be greater, and would hurt more. (I've done the math, and it turns out I'd end up taking home only a few hundred dollars less every two weeks. The difference is that at my last job, I was putting away a good chunk of change pre-tax into a 403(b) each paycheck; because neither company I can use for retirement investing at my current job offers a socially-responsible investment option[1], I haven't yet figured out how to work around that and haven't been putting any money aside for retirement at this job. Once I do figure it out, that'll take a piece out of my takehome pay, as will union dues once our contract negotiations are successful and we have a current contract.)
Another little con: parking isn't subsidized, so if I wanted to avoid the incredibly unreliable, always-late bus to work, I'd have to pay $18 for the day to park.
This brings us to the evening shift. The most compelling pros for evenings: never, ever having to hear the alarm go off at 5:00 am, but also being able to go to sleep in my own bed every night. There is still a shift differential, so financially speaking it would be a bit better than days. Parking is subsidized to the cost of a couple of dollars for the shift, freeing me from the tyranny of MUNI[2]. I'd get a nice combination of contact with the docs and midwives in the afternoon but also some time without them as it gets later in the shift and they go home.
There's some career advancement involved in working evenings, too; the nurse I'd be replacing is one of nurses on evenings who rotates as the charge nurse, and taking over her position would mean taking over that part of it, too. It seems more than a little absurd to me that a place I've worked for five weeks wants to give me the keys to the castle, and to be completely frank the idea scares the crap out of me, but it would look great on my resumé and would give me a new set of skills. It's about time for me to develop that part of my nursing career.
Cons: potentially, evenings are the world's most disruptive schedule. Although working one evening wouldn't have any effect on the following day's plans the way that working nights takes a chunk out of both the night worked and the following day, evenings would still mean four days each week where I was non-negotiably busy and unavailable for plans right at the time when the rest of the world is neither working nor sleeping. There would be ways to work around it and see people anyway sometimes (getting up early and making plans for brunch or lunch, etc.) but in general it would involve being at work during prime socializing hours more days of the week than not, and potentially missing out on things like during-the-week dinners, concerts, etc.
Now, it's not as though I'm this big social butterfly, and most of my evenings are spent quietly at home enjoying my apartment, my kitties, and my boyfriend, so I'm sure that the three days of the week that I wouldn't be working would probably be enough to get all my socializing done without missing too too much. Even if I was working the weekend, I'd have Friday night available for all sorts of fun stuff and still be able to recuperate before going to work Saturday afternoon. But my biggest concern along these lines is if at any point unsound has a 9-5 job, especially one with any kind of lengthy commute involved, he'd be leaving for work in the morning before I'd have to get up, and by the time I got home at night he'd already be in bed asleep. If I worked three evening shifts in a row, that would be three days where we would barely lay eyes on each other at all. I disapprove of this idea most emphatically. Even when I was working 12-hour night shifts, we had a few hours to spend together between me waking up in the afternoon and heading back to work that evening.
I'd also be unlikely to get any nursing students to precept on the evening shift, but that might be OK because I'd have my hands full learning how to be in charge.
So, yeah. While writing this all out was cathartic, it hasn't given me any clearer an idea of what I want to do. Insights, input, perspectives I haven't considered, etc., are all more than welcome! Thanks in advance.
[1] Anyone without a 401(k) or 403(b) option at work who's nonetheless successfully figured out how to invest for retirement in a socially responsible way, please shoot some links my way!
[2] Seriously, I thought the T buses were bad. I had no idea how good I had it riding the #1 back and forth to work.