Night Shi(f)t

Ouch, ouch and ouch! Just read this and cringed on behalf of my compatriots in the media and BPO sectors. Having been there and done that for nearly seven years, I know how these ungodly timings can play havoc with your system. At least in the newspaper, it was slighhhhhtly better. We got to go home "relatively early", say by 2 am or so. But my BPO stint was living hell. For three-odd months, a colleague and I were forced to do complete all-nighters every alternate week. Come in to work at 10.30 pm and leave by 7 am. I could never manage to make up for the lack of sleep even in the daytime. The doorbell or the phone would keep ringing: someone trying to sell me a credit card or a loan, the dhobi, the cook, the postman, or the landlord's nosy watchman wanting to know why my flatmate had been dropped home late at night by "a-guy-who-did-not-really-look-like-her-brother-and-was-he-really-her-cousin-as-she-claims..."
As a result of all the sleep debt which kept accumulating, I began to look and sound like something out of The Living Dead. Meanwhile, the health of my colleague took a major beating. When the doctor gave him an ultimatum to do something about the crazy timings, we both figured enough was enough.
At that time, we did not do too much work for the US. The bulk of our work came from Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and India. The rationale for introducing night shifts in our department was the "off-chance" that someone in the Far East may decide to send in something very early. My colleague and I systematically tabulated the volume of work that came in during the night in those three months. We found that most of the work which came in later in the evening was something that could be dealt with by the earlier shift which left at 11.30, or even if work landed at night, it was something that could wait till the next morning when the 8 'o' clock shift came in. And if it was that urgent, we could always put in an extra hour or two.
Armed with this excel sheet, we went to our boss and argued that we were ready to come in earlier and stay on till 2.30 am, but if the all-nighters continued, she would have the distinction of having two corpses as her employees. She was not too keen, nevertheless relented half-heartedly. And things marginally improved thereon.
I am back in a newspaper now. This time round, I have shamelessly laid down terms that I will not RPT not work night shifts. I realise that I may be committing professional harakiri because the bulk of the work happens at night. And this being a small centre, they will be more than happy to hand it over to me. And yes, sometimes when I wake up in the morning and look at the paper, I cringe at something which I know had it been done by me, would have turned out better.
But I remind myself that I was the one who chose to put family ahead of everything else. And in the end, that is what is most important to me in the long term.