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?
For me its the other way around. I worked 3 different shifts, including weekends, all the holidays and my shifts would be so random up to 6 workdays in a row with one or two days off in between. Most weekends I’ve worked, and my friends were available only on the weekends, so I missed on many stuff. My sleep schedule was non existant and I’ve felt constantly tired - i couldn’t recover after those night shifts with 2 days off. I wouldn’t get to spend time with my gf, even though it’s daily routine - cooking food, watching series before bed, etc, cause most time when she was free i would be either sleeping or working.
Getting the stuff done, your appointments is nice, especially in the mornings when you got evening shift later, there are definitely upsides to working in shifts. But definitely not for everyone, the random sleep patterns caught up to me and since then I’m working in office hours, feeling much better even though the pay is less.
I guess where are working matters a lot. My current workplace let me leave earlier if I need to, or WFH, there’s no pressure in time-keeping and I love that. So many places feel like you’re working in ER, but you’re just making someone rich :D. Also the city I am living in is a 600k European city, where distances are smaller, most drive <1h here to work. But I would move to smaller town for sure of we had children.
I don’t want to get into American vs European labor laws, but I’m getting 4week/year PTO as much sick days as I meed (with reduced pay) and child care days off, meaning 1 day off/2 months whenever you want.
Sensible employer, decent sized town, and good enough country.