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Life on the night shift

BY DENISE M. BONILLA | Newsday Staff Writer

It's 11 p.m. and Maria Smith is a picture of fluidity in motion. The nurse moves deftly from one emergency room to another, the naked eye capturing her form in a blurry snapshot of white lab coat and teal scrubs.

Smith's colleague at Nassau University Medical Center, nurse Lydia Qualls, is equally animated, answering the phone one minute, grabbing supplies off shelves the next. Her energy is fueled by a 20-ounce cup of coffee, which she gulps down like a runner snatching cups of water along a marathon route.

A digital clock above the Surgical ER doorway ticks away seconds in bright green numbers, reminding the nurses with each flashing digit that they've been on the go already for five hours.

"I've been doing this for so long, I don't know if I can go back to days," Smith, 52, says of her 12-hour shift, which begins as most of the East Meadow hospital's employees are heading home for dinner. "It would take a while for me to get used to going back to that lifestyle."

The "lifestyle" that Smith refers to is called daily life for most people. Smith is one of the country's nearly 8 million evening and night shift workers -- the invisible workforce that among other things cleans our buildings, sorts our mail and stocks our shelves while we lie snug in our beds. Besides adjusting to a schedule that is opposite of those around them, night shift workers face health problems and family pressures that often exceed those of their daytime colleagues.

Although its parameters often change, the night shift -- also known as the late, third, graveyard and lobster shift -- is generally considered to be when the employee's largest amount of hours are worked between 12 a.m. and 8 a.m. Workers on the night shift have grown in numbers in the past 20 years, fueled by an increasingly global 24/7 economy. What used to be a largely blue-collar workforce made up of nurses, police, security guards and bakers has expanded into the fields of technology and finance. Today, night work stretches across job and class lines, with truck drivers roaming the interstates during the same early morning hours that IT workers are updating computer servers.

Long Island is no exception. Workers take on the night shift out of convenience, preference or necessity. In fact, workers like Smith say that to afford living in this region, a night job is an economic reality. Smith's husband works days, and she moved to nights more than 20 years ago when she had children. "Living in Nassau County, you need two incomes," Smith said. "If one of you has to work during the day and you want to pay the bills, what do you do?"

Daunting daily challenges

It's 1 a.m. and that means hungry crowds at A & S Bagel Co. in Franklin Square. Anthony Scolieri, one of the business' owners, is running around in a white apron and clear plastic gloves, alternately taking orders, directing workers and stacking slices of cold cuts on top of bagel slices.

He's been doing it for 14 years, coming in around 7 or 8 p.m. and staying sometimes until 6 a.m., seven days a week. Twice a week Scolieri, 31, goes from the bagel shop to a three-hour marketing class at Nassau Community College. "I feel like I have lifelong jet lag," he said, with a wry smile. But the shift allows him to spend time with his two young boys at home.

Scolieri's wife of eight years, Marie, 35, who has put her psychology career on hold to help raise the children, said the schedule is a challenge for the family. "I can't even explain how rough it is," she said.

At dinnertime, she eats one meal with her sons then cooks two meals for her husband -- one for before work, one for when he comes home. Even what she cooks is influenced by his hours. "A steak is not going to taste the same eight hours later," she said. "Everything is just different. Our whole family life is different."

And the differing schedules sometimes put a strain on their relationship, she said. "He may come home at 5 a.m. and want to talk," she said. "But I'm exhausted and want to chop his head off."

Harriet Presser, University of Maryland sociology professor and author of "Working in a 24/7 Economy: Challenges for American Families," said the divorce rate is as much as six times higher for those in late-shift jobs.

In low-income, single-parent households, Presser also found that late-shift work often leaves children without chaperones. Even in two-parent homes, child care is an issue. "She goes to work during the day, and he comes home from work and goes to sleep," she said. "A lot of children are unsupervised."

There's no catching up

It's 2 a.m. and assistant manager Ana Velasquez slouches behind the counter at the 7-Eleven in Mineola. A customer approaches and she offers the teenager a wary look over the rims of the glasses sitting on the edge of her nose. He's trying to buy cigarettes, but his ID shows he is only 17, so she turns him away. Just a half-hour earlier, she said, another teen tried to shoplift beer. They are two of the reasons that Velasquez, 48, of Mineola, said she hates having to work the late shift.

"There's too many crazy people stealing," she said. "Drunk people come in cursing. I don't have the patience." But she said that she needs the income to help support her family and is required to work evening and night shifts.

Those on the graveyard shift sacrifice many things, such as being on sports teams or attending night functions. But ask them what pains them the most to surrender, and the answer comes without hesitation: sleep.

"We're all always so tired that sleep is the first thing you talk about when you come to work," Qualls, 49, of Nassau University Medical Center, said. "We say, 'I slept two hours, what'd you sleep?' 'I got four hours.' I don't think anyone else comes to work comparing their sleep schedules like we do."