Men of the Night Shift

In 2013 I worked nights

Frivolity on the nightshift, 2014. Photo courtesy of Jenquest

In 2013, I returned to the UK from 10 years living abroad. I swiftly signed on, and, when asked what work I was seeking, told the job centre that I was a translator. They offered me work as an interpreter. I tried to explain that this was a different profession, to which my advisor smiled and said, ‘Now we are really getting into the fine details.’

I took the first job which was offered to me.

It didn’t take long; in those days, aged 31, my CV just about made sense as ‘man back from his Wanderjahre seeking normality.’ And I knew languages, which in the UK always opens up the possibility of badly-paid work. London, only ten years ago, had a different feel than today; more hard-edged, less daft, more of a city serious about its business.

The job was in far out West London – in Perivale, to be precise, an area whose chief claim to fame seems to have been as the location for an episode of Doctor Who. The walk from the office was more 1980s dystopia, genuinely grim, real homeless men in coats warming their hands over burning trashcans vibes. You half expected to see a rat turning on a spit.

And then there was the office itself; a warehouse, basically, full of film reels, with a small office space, full of red furniture, attached, where at any given time two of an eight-person staff were expected to monitor the phone lines and deliver products. Because that was why the job had been offered so swiftly – it was on a shift pattern, with two days on and then two night shifts.

Although the product, namely digital films, was being sent all over the world, the idea was that there would always be someone present in the office to deal with any issues. I was then, with basic administrative tasks, a receptionist. In practice, that meant that hours would pass in the night with a single phone call from Korea and sometimes not even that.

Amusingly, the film company had a separate office in Italy, meaning that my Italian-speaking colleagues role in that capacity was exclusively to pick up the phone and say ‘Please call the Italian office’. It was a tribute to Italian garrulousness that it still sometimes came to a chat beyond that. How are you in London? What does your life look like?

The other main part of the office was the key-making team, generally young men in their 20s and 30s. Unlike my lot, the ‘Content Delivery Manager’ team, they were busy. They were good people; I particularly remember my colleagues Pete and Shaq, respectively a young quasi Hungarian hipster and a laconic Bengali, the latter with a newborn daughter. His justification for having reproduced was that he had suffered in life and didn’t see why others shouldn’t too.

Pete and Shaq of them would work collaboratively throughout the night to an exceptional soundtrack. It is not an exaggeration to say that most of the fresher ends of my music taste date back to those nights – Empire of the Sun, Clark, Bibio and Todd Terje. Future Islands’ ‘Singles’ was a big record and we played it incessantly to the point where Pete would survey us all as to our favourite track¹.

But for the CDM team it was a test of endurance of a different kind. Round about midnight, or even earlier, work would dry up. We’d check off a few forms, update the odd spreadsheets, take a call or fix an issue, and even a major problem would soon be brought to its maximum point of resolution for the night.

And then we’d be done, with long dark hours of basement night ahead. After that, I’d often work on a translation, or fiddle with my (available-here) novel, or apply for jobs – being paid to apply! – or even, if eyes permitted, watch a film. That was particularly popular on weekend shifts, where interruptions really would be at a minimum; I remember watching ‘Silent Running’ at about 2AM one Saturday, and I can say that a largely empty warehouse in the night may be the perfect location to watch Bruce Dern on a space station slowly losing touch with reality.

It also meant sleep. And this felt complex ethically; it still felt like some kind of line was being crossed to be paid to sleep, even if the alternative was fighting to remain awake to do nothing. That latter may have been my attitude in the early part of the job, but it soon proved unsustainable, and my shift partner and I would work out a rota to cover the computers while the other slept. We would bunker down in the little back office on a bed of coats. Occasionally our shift partner would log us in to show our activity; one night I realized that I had been logged as taking a six-hour ‘comfort break’, which required a brief explanation to my bosses².

To their credit, the keys’ team rarely begrudged us our renumerated slumber, recognizing that the lack of activity was taking its toll on us too. Our lives were ebbing away. And even the sleep we did have was often interrupted suddenly by the bloodcurdling sound of a phone call – very often the same South Korean cinema manager, wanting to know when this or that film might be delivered, and remarkably patient with the voice on the end of the line, freshly awoken and confused.

The days were different. There was a full office then, and staff birthdays, and meetings, and colleagues in the staff kitchen. My day would often end or begin with greeting them there as they arrived for work. If I was in on the day, I always took my lunch break, and there was definitely cheap food to be found at Perivale; I remember getting a decent lunchtime pizza for £2.50. (A lesson of my life: You almost never forget good-value meals). I’ve always been free of the British presenteeism which sees it as a moral duty at lunchtime to eat a sandwich at your desk wearing a pained expression, and besides, 12 hours at a stretch in an office was long enough. One Saturday, I did a run for fish and chips, and we ate them in the TV corner, almost cosy, the continental staff intrigued by the fats and pies.

Want to keep me from having to go back to nights? Buy me a Ko-Fi!

Still, call volumes were being logged in the system, and these paid nights could not last long. About five months into my time there it was announced that we were having a ‘redundancy conversation’ and that the team would be halved. The volume of work would be unchanged, just with less people doing it, and with a pay rise of just a grand. First we had to agree who was staying – and I knew from the first moment that I would be one of the ones doing so, as five months seemed too soon to quit, whereas others had done enough service for an exit which could be explained on a CV. I kept my counsel but then, seeing the job in day times becoming increasingly busy, drafted a letter on behalf of the remaining CDM team appealing for a pay rise. Our other demand was to cut our notice period down from two to one months, which showed how we were thinking.

I resigned just before my 32nd birthday; I used up all my holiday and threw in an extra unpaid day to get out quicker. Much as I liked the team – and they remained, at least for a while, friends – I could see no future for myself there. I had learnt very little, except for a one-day training course in Excel, and that Italians answer the phone with ‘Pronto.’

Meaning it was with some relief that I handed in my key fob and walked back through the industrial estate to Perivale station for the last time. Over the night shifts, my hair had begun to go grey; even to this day, the job remains my longest stretch in paid full-time work. Funny what they pay you for.

1. For the record, I’d like to confirm this record is still a banger.

2. The Chinese language, I believe, refers to this as a ‘paid shit’. Clearly I had taken this, at least in official terms, to an extreme.