Which shift is better? Right now workers at the piling stations (at least in the Drayton district) work 12 hour shifts, changing over at 8 AM/PM. Sometimes you just have no choice on the shift you’re assigned but if you do have an option, which one is better? It’s a toss up question depending on your preferences. There is no difference in activity level across shifts. They can pull as many sugar beets out of the ground at 3 AM as they can at 3 PM.

The good parts about working day shift are that your sleep cycle is not disrupted, you’re not as cold when working and you could get more hours than the night shift if the temps are dropping too much at night. The bad parts are that you can’t do regular daytime things (shopping, post office, etc) unless the station is down for a weather day. You might also be shut down for high temps.

The night shift allows you to do normal stuff during the day, but at the cost of some of your sleep hours. Your sleep pattern is definitely disrupted so that might not be as big a factor early in the harvest. It will definitely be colder at night but that could be an advantage if it’s too hot to pile beets during the day. If you have a ‘leaky’ RV then you could be warmer sleeping during the day. Night shift also gets the first shift of the main harvest, starting at 12:01 AM on October 1st.

Did you notice that I didn’t even talk about television watching? The night shift will miss out on all the prime time TV but I don’t think most people at the harvest are overly concerned about that.

Some of the permanent company employees working 12 hour shifts switch over at 12:00 AM/PM. Personally, I think that would be a much better option for all employees. Maybe they’ll implement it at some point in the future.