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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

Many night shift jobs already pay a shift differential. Many employees seek out those shifts. Why would we, as a society, want to prevent these seemingly mutually beneficial arrangements? Don’t like shift work? Don’t take a job that requires it, but don’t ban others who do prefer it from taking it because you don’t like it.

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I don't want to be manslaughtered by this person on my morning commute, simple. When the courts and insurance companies shift, we will make your side on these things moot.

You have much greater odds of killing yourself or a pedestrian within a mile of your home because you weren't paying attention than being hit by a tired driver.

Because its a shitty deal, like cigaretts are? You get social alienated, your health suffers and if you calculate the health-risk cost vs the more earned money during lifetime, it turns out nightshift workers actually earn less.

Its a "use-equipment-at-all-costs" method praying on the social weak and un-educated.

It turns out that people need healthcare and fire/police coverage around the clock. A lot of retail and grocery restocking is done overnight when the stores are empty for customer safety and convenience. A lot of goods are moved, loaded, and unloaded at night so they can arrive fresh to market or to move overnight for the next business day.

By no means is this only "run this large piece of capital equipment most efficiently".

For the same reason we, as a society, place wage floors, etc.

The crime committed when two people form a lopsided employment relationship isn’t really against either of them (because clearly each is deriving sufficient utility); it’s against us.

We don’t want to be employed in this manner so we prevent the existence of these things.

Who is we? Some people prefer to work at different times. Maybe they like having sunlight in their free time instead of their work time.

“We” is a generalized aggregate of society weighted by political power.

Some people also prefer to work for less than minimum wage because they are on the wrong side of an information asymmetry. And yet they cannot. Because they have not sinned against themselves or their employer but against us.

I agree. Some workschedules are quite toxic, and (perhaps biased as someone sensitive to circadian rhythm disturbances) would prefer not to see this normalized as it is today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_work#/media/File:Child_L...

I don't want that to come back either.

> Maybe they like having sunlight in their free time instead of their work time.

With a real night shift (3rd shift) your body would strongly want to sleep through all the good sunlight anyways. And if you do stay up for it, well good luck enjoying any part of the day.

Anyways to some it all up, maybe PP should check out https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674238091

> Some workschedules are quite toxic

I'd say our default 9-5 workschedule is toxic.

Have you done shift work?

I worked 3rd (11-7) and then 2nd (3-11) shifts a couple years ago. You don't end up 'having sunlight in...free time instead of work time' unless you are sacrificing sleep for it on 3rd shift.

I had a short commute and was able to get reasonable sleep most of the time, in about a year I made 1 driving decision I'd call 'bad', and that was just pulling out somewhat aggressively in front of light traffic (I started taking a route that didn't have that decision after that).

Growing up, my Dad had a few years working odd shifts. 3rd shift was the hardest on him physically as he had a really hard time sleeping during daylight hours. 2nd shift was the one that made him demand a return to 1st shift.

There was about 18 months where I lived in the same house as him and literally never saw him. He would leave before I returned from school and arrive home after we were asleep. In the mornings, we'd be off to school again before he woke up. Combined with him having to work 3 of 4 weekends a month, it was hard on all of us. He did what he needed to provide for us and I am grateful but I'm more grateful that he's enjoying a decent retirement today.

Yeah, I was able to sleep pretty well and don't have kids. There were definitely people on 3rd so that they could see/help with their kids more.

I switched to 2nd because the sleep schedule isn't offset during off time, but it would be a lot harder if that meant not seeing your family much of the time.

Speaking of dads and third shift, I'm fully convinced that working 3rd shift for as many years as he did contributed too him developing diabetes.

Night shift work in factories is also accompanied by unrealistic expectations. It's expected to work as efficient as during daylight shifts and personally I wasn't able to achieve that. A couple of people did that, but I don't think that anything of this is healthy or good for the worker.

Sleeping during the morning isn't that great, you need really good blinds and sometimes ear protection because it's loud out there.

If we were build to work during the night, we would have headlights instead of eyes was a pretty good union slogan during my time.

I'm happy I moved on but would think it would be better for everyone to not work during the night as during the day.

I have done shift work, and disliked it. Sunlight makes it harder to sleep, unless you have shutters. You are tend to miss out on social interaction.

I'm having a hard time figuring out if you are being sarcastic or not.

Why? I have no problem with the non-sarcastic interpretation of the comment you're referring to.

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