The Night Shift.

“It’s hard for anyone to understand, until they’ve actually done it”, Ms.Doty, a mailwoman, tells me as she adjusts her coffee in the cardboard carrier on the counter between us. Looking into her deeply lined and somewhat puffy bloodshot eyes, it rings true that she definitely knows what she is talking about. We are discussing of course, the common thread of life between us, the nigh shift.

Roughly a month ago, to a mixture of relief and anguish, I accepted a job at the local 24-hour convenience store in my small town. I’d had worked as a cashier at a different supermarket in the same village throughout high school, I knew the town, I knew the people, but most of all I knew the work. Being in my mid twenties, and no longer a shy 15 year old with no work experience, i’d honestly had no intentions of returning to the retail, or customer service field of occupation. However, life being the strange, random, and sometimes difficult enigma that it is, had certain situations that transpired and led me back to the employment of which all my employment had begun. Complaints aside, I was happy to have found any kind of work at all, with the holidays approaching and the economy it is, of course. There was one slight aspect that differentiated this job from all others i’ve known, that being I was hired to work the third shift, 11 pm to 7 am, entirely overnight.

Since starting the job my life has changed dramatically simply because of the change of schedule. While others go about they’re daily routines, I spend my actual days in bed, resting for the next shift.

It occurred to me how strange it is that I literally have no involvement with the world while the sun is up. The news describes growing tensions in the middle east, global warming, and the latest fashion fads, while running concurrently to everyone else as they progress though they’re lives. These things have stopped meaning much to me, I am not present, and very rarely even aware of them at this point. Aside from removing the newspapers from the stores display, current events have ceased to make an appearance or impact in my life. I live under the harsh fluorescent lighting, and watch as the moon makes its journey across the sky, and its eventual descent, signalling the end of my shift, and essentially, my ‘day’.

My customers are few and far between during my nocturnal lifestyle. The ones that do come all seem to be focused strictly on going somewhere other than here, and I think occasionally, some other time than here. We exchange the expected pleasantries, as I help them refuel on either gasoline or caffeine, and they return to the night . Usually glossy eyed and visibly tired, though sometimes entirely inebriated, they lack the motivation to uphold the social norms and conversation that most would see during a morning or afternoon while shopping.

Sometimes things seem almost dreamlike as the night turns into the gray of dusk, and the sleeping world begins to wake again. With my only companions being the occasional customer already mentioned, and the dimming streetlights of the parking lot, my mind often runs on surreal tangents. This could be partly due to my diet of nicotine and caffeine, but it makes me feel as if i’m living in some sort of lucid dream. A dream where I start to question if the world is actually existing outside of my small store, or if i’m just drifting through some strange subconscious reaction of my brain and the people i’m seeing are just thought tangents personalized. At this point though, its hard to tell, 3 or 4 hour snatches of sleep have left me with that surreal feeling, as I prepare for another long night alone, aiding my fellow nocturnal travelers on they’re own journeys, and I wonder if my time spent essentially sleep walking, is aiding my own journey, and where it might be taking me.