Space Trek: The Second Shift
For over 25 of my working years, I was on second shift. So I have a great deal of empathy for those who work on the off shifts. The off shifts generally outperform day shift, even though day shift has all of the extra management and technical "help" running around. Maybe that is the problem.
But I always figured that day shift people were low energy and bitchy because they stayed up too late watching TV and not knowing when to go to bed.
Day shift folk tend to think of themselves as better than the rest. They typically do have the most experience and technical knowledge. But being the superior group that they are, they often tend to leave the more distasteful aspects of the job to second shift. They see second shift as a service to them.
Sometimes it was hard to even get a cursory report from the day shift elite as to what was even going on. At times I would be shunned, like they didn't want to give me any advantages, as we were used to kicking their ass all over the place in output.
Personally, I always wanted everyone to be the best they can be. Anything else, such as intentionally hiding information, is evil.
Your experiences shape your opinions. My worldview makes me see things differently, or some would say weirdly, which is probably evident.
I have considered the difference in shifts, even while watching space operas.
There is no day or night at the final frontier. Yet, man cannot stay awake 24/7. So clearly there must be an off shift running those massive interplanetary space ships going all over the galaxy and beyond.
Is there a second shift working these space hulks? Obviously yes; but they don't bother telling you about it, since they are all about day shift. Fortunately for you, I am here to enlighten you on all that.
One of the main reasons you never hear about the second shift on a starship is because not much happens. Why? Not because the belligerent alien races are sleeping too, but because those baddies know not to screw around with those radical second shift crews.
While the nervous Captain on day shift will try to pal up with their creeps in the neighborhood, the second shift ensign will put an atomic torpedo up their exhaust port at the smallest provocation.
Second shift officers are used to having to deal with everything on their own. Senior officers are all over the place early in second shift to when they want to complain about the smallest detail on the previous second shift. Conversely, when there's a problem on an off shift, it's tough to get anyone from first shift to answer their freaking communicator after they go home. Day shift thinks that second shift is just a party shift, just because on a Friday they may hail a pizza merchant vessel for their lunch.
The floors on those starships really shine on the inside, but did you ever see any cleaning going on during the show? Doubt it. They are too good on day shift to allow a sanitation techie to get in their way. But on the off shifts they have to put up with mop handles accidently hitting self-destruct sequence buttons, or 409 getting into the drive turbines.
Second shift always gets the greenest cadets. Then when they are trained up to do a decent job, they want to go to day shift, or at least third shift. That is why you never see people on the sci-fi shows cussing after they push a wrong button, even though push them at crazy fast speeds while hardly looking at them. It's not like at the checkout counter when the clerk has to ask for help from the manager to clear out their faux pas.
You never see day shift spacemen arguing that they were never trained properly on firing weapons or operating anything after they monkeyed it all up.
All this about second shift, but what about third shift? Third shift is populated by a zombie race that does not understand the concept of day or night. They are immune to alien assimilation, because the aliens cannot distinguish the third shifters from themselves.
Third shift's whole purpose is to do everything possible to make life better for day shift. You know, reload all the torpedo bays, change the batteries on the shuttles, etc., etc.. Third shift has to fine tune the engines and finish patching up damage from enemy lasers, etc. All this so day shift can spend the next day tearing stuff up and getting the last bit of power possible from the engines, bringing the whole ship on the brink of destruction.
"I'm giving you all she's got! She's gonna blow, Captain!"
"Second shift will have to clean it up."
Maybe you don't see anything about those on the off shifts, because there is no such thing. They are just a figment of an alternate parallel universe, apart from the normal day shift space-time continuum.
Laundered Funds
One of the companies I worked at had its own in-house laundry. I would get a garment out of there each day to wear over my street clothes.
On one occasion, which was payday, I mistakenly left my paycheck envelope in the pocket of my smock when I turned it back into the laundry.
The next day I was called into the office. The production manager was angry because his other supervisors were all complaining that I made a lot more money than they did.
Sadly, people tend to get into trouble to the extent of what the fallout of their action is, and not to the extent of what they actually did. So therefore, it was like I was revealing to the whole Company what my rate of pay was, not that I merely left my unopened pay envelope in the laundry.
My response to him was that my privacy was violated since the envelope was unopened. All they had to do was to return it to me unopened but they did not. Now I was being badgered because of it. So instead he ended up apologizing to me over the whole thing and told me not to worry about it.