I’ve worked 2nd (afternoon), swing (evening), and 3rd (overnight) shifts for the majority of my life. I recently moved into a training position where I’m Monday through Friday, 8am to ~5:30pm (I get OT while I’m cleaning up and writing reports).
As much as the 2nd/swing/3rd shifts screw with your life in other ways, the difficulty in scheduling any kind of life services outside of working hours is maddening. Doctor’s appointment? Nope. DMV? Maybe Saturday, if you’re lucky. Chaperone your kids field trip? Hahahhah no.
I don’t want to burn sick time for a doctor’s appointment (I need to save those for when my kid is actually sick), and I sure as hell don’t want to use up a “vacation” day for it. How tf are you supposed to get anything done?
I spend all my sick days and a non-negligible number of vacation days on the kind of chores you can only get done during work hours. Back when we had “Work From Home”, I would also squeeze these tasks in during my lunch break.
Well, good luck with that. My retired mother-in-law helps a lot with my son when he’s ill. And we can juggle my son between our individual sick-day allotments such that I haven’t run out yet. But yeah, eventually they’re all just “hours to spend that my boss won’t gripe at me for when I use them”. That’s meant dipping into vacation days when I needed to justify not being on the clock.