2024/20 SHIFT WORK

After ballet class we sometimes turn left instead of right and dip on over to 7-Eleven for a Slurpee before heading home. Beth wondered aloud how they came up with the name 7-Eleven. Having spent a pivotal portion of my life behind the counter at 7-Eleven stores, I explained:

“Years ago, before you were born, stores actually closed at night. People went to bed and slept when it was dark and then moat of the community woke up and lived life during the day, then went to bed again when it was night. When I was really little  stores opened around 10 am and closed in the early evening. A couple big stores in the city stayed open till 9 pm on Thursday nights, but generally things closed up and people went home in the evening. Then some enterprising person decided that people might need groceries earlier or later than those hours, so they created 7-Eleven. They opened at 7 am and closed at 11 pm. Eventually those stores decided to stay open all night. They could have changed their name to 24 Hour Store or Always Open, but people already knew them as 7-Eleven.”

Before the pandemic shifted us back to some stores closing at night, many grocery stores were open 24 hours. Walmart was always open, so if you were in need of a piece of posterboard at midnight for that assignment due in the morning… no problem. Stores being open all night fed into the dysfunction of people like me who lack impulse control. It’s probably healthier for us to have limits set around us.

I worked on the large coke oven batteries at Clairton Works US Steel

When I was newly married, and attending BYU, I worked at 7-Eleven on 9^th East in Provo and at the Orem store. I was familiar with shift work by then, having worked rotating shifts at the steel mill in Clairton PA the summer before. The problem with rotating shift work is that it wreaks havoc on your mind, body and relationships. The summer we were married Dave worked normal 9-6 hours at a law firm in Pittsburgh. I worked 8-4 one week, then 4-12 the next, then midnight to 8 am the next. My days off were Tuesday and Wednesdays. Dave’s were typical weekends. It’s a good thing we were passionately in love and knew this pattern would end. 

When we returned to school in Provo I took overnight shifts at 7-Eleven so I could do classes during the day. It was brutal. For a while Dave came and studied in the back room all night because he worried about me being alone in those ungodly hours. We stayed awake by eating withered hot dogs and Slurpees. I suppose this was the beginning of my demise.

This morning, after a sleepless night and with the sweet and unusual gift of nothing compelling me to get out of bed, I rolled over and fluffed the down pillow under my head. That old feeling, so blessedly familiar in those days, slipped into my psyche. Those rare days when I actually got to sleep when others were rising… how I loved them! There is such comfort in thinking its ok to go back to sleep once in a while. I remember that very same emotion, a sort of exhausted giddiness, when the baby was finally sleeping after a long night, and it was legitimately OK to lay your weary body down and rest. So often these days we are shamed into thinking we are inferior if our bodies are not in synch with everyone else’s. What’s with that? 

Some of us have personalities, chemistry or life situations that plant us in the swing shift, or even the night shift. Some of us are given rotating shifts that we are constantly having to adjust to. It’s all ok. It has to be. 

On blessedly low impact days I can hear my mother whispering, like she did when I was sick or injured, “It’s ok Doll, just roll over and go back to sleep.”

How I loved her voice.