From: mzraly@ra.cs.umb.edu (Michael S. Zraly)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: 3rd shift and the real world
Date: 18 Aug 92 17:57:12 GMT
Organization: UMass/Boston Dept. of Math & CS

reykja@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Reykja Sigurdsson) writes:
>
>Working third shift brings its very own set of peeves...

Yup.

>1) The garbage truck comes in the middle of day 

So does the landlord.  He knocks on the door at 9am.  My wife and I
both went to bed at 7:30am, falling asleep around 8.   BANG BANG BANG
BANG!  "Uh, I'll get it."  Put on the robe, out of the bedroom, open
the door a little.  Squint in the too-fucking-bright light o'day.
"Who's't?" (thick Italian-American accent)  "It's Salvie"  "Yeah"
"Uh,... were you just taking a shower about half an hour ago?"  Think
to myself, no, dipshit, I was finally falling asleep despite the noise
of the people next door making breakfast and using their god-fucking-
damned garbage disposal in the kitchen adjacent to our bedroom.  Say
"no, why?"  "Well we gotta leak in the floor of the apartment
downstairs.  Can I take a look?"  "Uh, sure"  YAWN.  So he comes in and
into the bathroom he goes.  "Yeah, you gotta make sure the shower
curtain is closed all the way, or the water goes down here" he says,
pointing to the break in the caulking around the tub he was supposed to
fix six months ago, and through which water leaks down to the apartment
below us and roaches climb up into our apartment.  "Right."  "I'll come
back maybe tomorrow, I gotta re-caulk that." "Right."  I'll believe it
when I see it.  He leaves.  I can't fall back asleep...

>2) People insist on driving around during the day. WHY they can not 
>perform these tasks at NIGHT is something I can not understand!! 

Because fuck-all is open at night -- just the all-night drugstore and
the all-night supermarket and the Dunkin Donuts.  No gas stations, no
banks (just ATM's), no post offices, no libraries or bookstores...

>3) People come up and ring the doorbell and yell loudly "your ding-dong 
>don't work!" (It was a kid. I told him that since my ding-dong doesn't 
>work, perhaps he should play with his ding-a-ling instead of my ding-dong.!)

... or they ring the LoudAndObnoxiousBuzzer(tm) to see if you will grant them
entry into the apartment building.  There are several different versions of the
ensuing intercom-transmitted conversation:

#1 - "Is Julio there?"
     "Julio doesn't live here anymore"
     "Oh..."

#2 - "Hi I from Continental Cablevision and..."
     "Sorry we don't watch enough TV to justify the expense."

#3 - "Package for <name of any other apartment building resident>, will you
      sign?"
     "Uh"

Worse still is hearing the buzzers ring att every appartment in turn as some
whore-to-door salesperson tries to gain entry.  At first the sound is faint,
as she (invariably its a woman) rings the first floor apartments.  Slowly
louder as she rings the other second floor apartments.  Longgggggg presses
on the buzzer.  Finally ours.  When they ring every damned buzzer, we know
not to answer.

Of course the Jehovah's Witlesses, who have a temple a few blocks away, seem
to pass through this first defense without needing to buzz anybody.  BAM BAM
BAM BAM.  I open the door and there are two women, evidently in their 60's or
70's, with a handful of Watchtower magazines visible.  "Hello, we're with the
Jehovah's Witnesses and we would like you to have a free copy of our
magazine..."  "I've seen that magazine before, and I think it's full of shit.
Good morning"  SLAM!  But how did they get in?

>4) People call on the phone during the day. Again, what is wrong with 
>calling AT NIGHT?!

... and if you have an answering machine, they don't leave a message.
Nothing, *NOTHING* pisses me off more than waking up to the ring of the
phone, listening to the answering machine pick it up, and hearing that
lovely dialtone message.

Then there are the people who call us from the West coast (I live in
Massachusetts): they call just before we're leaving for work, or while
we're asleep.  They *know* we work Tuesday night through Saturday night
(a peeve in itself), but they still call.  And we wait until one of our
nights off to call them back, to avoid limiting the length of
conversation.  But they keep calling all week.  Shall we call them when
we get home at 7 in the morning, EST -- 4am, Pacific?  We don't.  We
should.

I think they do this so that we'll be the ones to foot the long-distance
charges.

!peeve: we avoid all manner of telemarketers by sleeping through the day.

>5) I say there should be a concerted effort on the part of *TheDayPeople*
>to be sensitive to the *NightPeople*!!

Nah, just kill them all.  Or segregate communities into DayPeople communities
and NightPeople communities.  And you'd better have a damned good reason for
entering a NightPeople community during the day, boychik: we shoot to kill.
Well actually we shoot to maim but we're not used to the sunlight so we squint
a lot and that throws our aim off.

>-a tired and entirely worn-out 3rd shift worker

A fellow vampire,
  Mike


-- 
Mike Zraly		C is for cookie; that's good enough for me
mzraly@cs.umb.edu		-- Cookie Monster