Rostering

Our rosters go in the wrong direction.


Let me explain that.


Those of us who do full-time work are on a rotating roster. We need to cover 12 hours from 0700 to 1900 every weekday, and the roster ensures that we can do that. We each work 7:30 hours, with an hour for lunch.


Mornings and I have never been on particularly good terms - I have a naturally late sleep cycle. Left to my own devices I will tend to wake up at around 0900 - 0930 and go to sleep after midnight. That's the cycle that I will naturally fall towards.


So this week I am on the 0700 - 1530 shift, and it sucks. Since I work in Civic I refuse to pay for parking and so catch the bus of a morning. A bus goes past my stop at 0621, which means that I need to leave the house at 0615 at the latest, which in turn means that I need to set my alarm to have me up and in the shower by 0530.


Next week my shift will start at 0730. The week after that, 0800. Then 0830, then 0900, then 1000. And the week after that I'm back on the 0700 shift.


And this is the bit that I say goes in the wrong direction. It allows my sleep cycle to slip later and later over the course of six weeks, which is something that it will do naturally. Then suddenly it has to jump back three hours. This is incredibly disruptive to my sleep cycle.


It would be far better for me to slowly work back earlier and earlier over the course of week. Then when the three-hour jump occurs, it's in a direction that doesn't matter.