My job is a normal hours sort of thing with occasional out of hours cover. Worst case, I can be at work for half seven until four, then out all night on standby until 8am the following day.

If that happens, we get the next day to sleep but I’ll normally wake up before midday.

How to you get your body clock back on track?

It’s normally the day after the day after that it hits me.

The ex used to and never managed it.. My experience is jet lag and just forcing yourself onto the right time again works for me. I can have a snooze in the day but try and stay up late into the evening to avoid waking up early. In some ways dropping 6hrs sleep is better than getting out of sync

Yeah, if you’re m goes ng to snooze, it has to be finished by about 3pm or I can’t sleep that night.

Similar here, its rare but I’ll sometimes do my standard 07:30-17:10 day, followed with or without a short break, into an emergency callout overnight, which will either be a 3hr quick fix or an all nighter to 4 or 5am.

Like you, I’ll normally sleep til 11 or 12 if I make the effort to block the light out of the room, (I’m a very light sleeper) and will just feel a bit more tired than usual the following evening.

If I want the overtime from midnight I would be expected to come in for part of my shift, but legally I get 11hr rest between shifts, as I’m paid a retainer to be on call this 11hrs can be interrupted (for a normal worker it must be contiguous) so if I got home for five hours before getting called back into work, I only have to delay the start of my next shift enough to get the final four hours rest so I can claim the overtime. I think perhaps getting back into work the following day (when safe) helps reset your clock especially if you get home at the normal time and back into routine, but I only do it as its paid!

That’s the other hard part. Getting your head around company rules about how much work needs how much rest and when you’re expected to go back in.

Had similar situations.

I’ve never managed to come out of it as fresh as roses. I find it’s best to sleep as little as possible when coming off shift/standby, get an early night and hopefully the next day you are okay.

But you are right, the day after does seem to hit hard.

Worst case for me is work all day, call outs all night then another full day of work. Its very rare that I don’t get any sleep at all but it has happened! Towards the end of the second day I get dangerously tired but there are certainly no issues getting to sleep that night and as long as you get to bed early enough you seem to be alright to last the rest of the week, so perhaps don’t go to bed but have an early night instead? Or, more reasonably, have an hour or so sleep then get up, potter about, go riding then a very early night!

afkt, I have been in that situation, I try to avoid it now, imagine the fallout if you are driving home having worked 36hrs straight and you end up on a death by careless charge or similar.

And pity the manager who didn’t think to highlight it when doing the timesheets.

I might not always take the full break but I won’t go back in without a good few hours sleep and time for a meal/shower etc. Its bad enough doing 24hrs straight but slotting a non-emergency/scheduled shift in afterwards is a big risk.

Imagine the field day the Daily Scum would have with you and your employer if they picked it up.

I finally, this new EU ruling about mobile workers and travel time being work time…I’ve not looked into it but that could mean if you travel to site unpaid, it still counts so you actually need to be at home for the whole rest period, not commuting to or from site.

Travel to site is paid so that’s not a worry. However, what we do is physical/practical so driving home could actually be the least risky part of what we do. Having said that, when you know you’ve finished and you sit in the car, you feel the adrenaline leave you almost instantly. The mundane drive home becomes bloody hard work.

I don’t 🙁

With a 7 month old running around the house it doesn’t really work. The basic plan, such as it is is to just monster through till the evening then flake out at about 8pm.

Only issue is i do wed/thurs/fri/sun on call.

bloody hard work

Hopefully not literally!

Go careful out there.

I’m on call with my primary employment and also on call as a retained firefighter so sleeping patterns can get really messed up sometimes.

Most recent occasion was coming into work around 4am to do a server upgrade, just about to slope off early and book off call at 3:30pm when my pager went off and I was out at a big moor fire until around 3am the following morning and then back into work at 8:30.

The basic plan, such as it is is to just monster through till the evening then flake out at about 8pm.

I’d agree with that. I tend to just keep going and then just grab some extra sleep at the earliest opportunity. If I sleep too long during the day I find it can make things worse – better to have a couple of early nights / late starts to compensate.