Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 6, 1993 TAG: 9306080320
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Doors at the airport terminal are locked. The tower has been closed since shortly after midnight, when the last flight of the day arrived. And there won't be any takeoffs until dawn.
One green light rivets your vision to the center of the airport parking lot.
It's coming from the parking attendant's booth. It's still open, where Hall is as lonely as the famous Maytag repairman.
He's worked this shift for APCOA, operator of the airport parking concession, for two months and admits it get boring.
"Round 3 a.m. there just isn't anything left to do."
Working days would be nice. At 52, even with more than 25 years in night security, Hall dares to dream --of sleeping at night.
"I don't care what anyone tells you," he said,"it's just hard to sleep during the day."
For most of the workforce, the night shift is a parallel universe. But to many area companies, it's a backbone of productivity. Virtually any company of substantial size now needs to operate around the clock. At night they can concentrate on producing goods and backroom services, leaving customer service issues to those who work during the day.
Drive around the Roanoke Valley after dark. Industrial corridors along Williamson and Plantation roads yield examples prime examples of the night shift: Elizabeth Arden Co.'s cosmetics factory, where ITT Corp. makes its famous night-vision devices, Dominion Bank's operations center, Double Envelope Corp's printing and manufacturing plant.
Parking lots are packed with cars. Buildings are lit up like Manhattan on New Year's Eve.
In the middle of the night. A few hours before dawn.
Those who work this shift -- traditionally 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. are of a different breed from the daylight counterparts.
Most on the red-eye shift don't just like working nights.
They love it.
It's a lifestyle, they admit, that others would never understand without working in their shoes.
Dress codes are relaxed; they wear shorts and T-shirts to work. They do lunch around 3 a.m. When they get off around 7 a.m., then settle down to eat dinner -- usually leftovers from what they families ate the night before -- while watching "Good Morning America."
And sleep? It's virtually nonexistent. A couple hours when they first get home. A couple hours before they go in again.
When trying to explain their way of life, they speak in phrases only other night people comprehend.
"Our day is your night. And our night is your day," explained Bill Stevens, a WROV-FM overnight disc jockey, laughing at how absurdly philosophical his own words sounded.
"See, our Monday is really Sunday," said Warren Casey, manager of distribution operations at Roanoke's main post office on Rutherford Avenue.
Each night, while the mailmen sleep, there's a legion of postal workers on duty. Most come to work at 11 p.m. and must be finished sorting the more than 1.4 million pieces of mail they handle each night before the letter carriers start arriving, some as early as 5 a.m.
That's something most people don't think of when they gripe that postal service is slow when they come in to buy stamps or mail packages, Casey pointed out.
"The counters out front may close on holidays," he said. "But we're here each and every night, 365 nights a year.
"That's a lot of service for just 29 cents," he added.
While he's worked for the post office for some 20 years, Casey admits he likes the night shift -- or tour one, as postal workers call it -- the best.
It has its disadvantages, too: "You can really gain a lot of weight on this shift. A candy bar here, a candy bar there," said Casey.
They don't have a lot of food options. By the time the night shift breaks for lunch; the salad bars at Wendy's or Kroger were dismantled hours ago.
Some advantages: "When my daughter had to go to the orthodontist at 1:30 in the afternoon, I was there ready to take her," said Casey.
But it's the employees that he works with who make the night shift worth working. Casey thinks "people who work these strange hours are, on the average, better-than-average employees."
Like Paul Hypes. He's worked nights for the post office for more than 24 years. As he sorts mail into boxes, Paul never stops smiling.
"I really enjoy it," he said. "I actually get to see more of my family than if I worked days."
Not that working at the post office doesn't have its downside.
"Mother's Day -- Lord have mercy," he declared.
Those who work at night are generally hard working, diligent and independent.
"But then, we really don't need a manager," said Michael Kasey, who for 12 years has made doughnuts in the middle of the night at Krispy Kreme Doughnut Co.'s bakery on Melrose Avenue. "We know what has to be done and we do it."
Casey of the post office and Kasey of Krispy Kreme have a fair amount in common. Both are married to women who work during the day. Both have four children.
But while Casey leaves the post office in the morning, he heads home and cuts the grass.
And when Kasey leaves Krispy Kreme, he starts his second job -- cleaning banks for Service Master. Then he heads home to get the kids -- aged 15 months to 18 years -- off to school and day care.
"I've got my hands full," he joked, with three glazed doughnuts in each hand.
The reason for running a night shift at Krispy Kreme is more obvious than it might be for other businesses. Drivers working out of the Roanoke bakery deliver to retailers within a 100 mile radius of Roanoke. That means they start loading up trucks at 1 a.m. every night except Wednesdays and Sundays.
There's also a late shift at Hayes Seay Mattern & Mattern Inc. The Roanoke engineering firm found out 15 years ago that it was more cost effective to staff a night shift than to purchase enough computer equipment for all its employees to work the same hours.
That was back when computers were much more expensive. Now that computer prices are considerably lower, the firm plans to phase out its late shift, beginning in August.
"Back then, the best way to get our money out of the equipment was to run it 16 hours a day," said Jenny Boyd, manager of computer aided design. `It worked. We got a lot of production out of fewer computers. It's more than paid for itself."
But staffing those late shifts wasn't all that easy. Turnover for the second shift -- which runs from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. -- has been high. Boyd said the situation has gotten better over the year as night workers are transferred to the day shift.
"If we're not able to transfer them to days after two years, they're pretty unhappy," she said.
"One advantage is that we aren't sitting around waiting to work," explained Robert Powell, a design technician. Powell plots changes on blueprints that are marked by architects and engineers who work during the day.
But the disadvantage is "we rarely get to talk to the architects and engineers," he said. He's one of the few that cite less supervision as a disadvantage of working at night.
Stevens at WROV-FM agrees that when you work nights, you have to work harder to communicate with those who don't.
"When I have a question or want to fill someone in on something, I have to write a note," he said.
It's a common misperceptions about the night shift is that it's difficult to find people to work the late hours, local employers said.
"With the economy the way it is, we've got people lined up to work here," said Casey of the post office. Small wonder. He estimates the average employee running a letter sorting machine makes about $34,000 a year.
The post office, though, is just about the only employer to offer extra pay to those who work at night -- 10 percent more, or an average $2 an hour.
But Casey points out that as uncomplicated as that job might look from the outside, as a manual operation, it requires a great deal of dexterity.
At the post office, letters flash by workers who key in zip code information that routes each letter to its proper destination.
And at midnight on a Friday at Krispy Kreme, a never-ending stream of glazed doughnuts race past Michael Kasey and Rhonda Sawyer.
It's a whole lot like the classic episode of "I Love Lucy," where Lucy and Ethel work in a candy factory and can't package the stuff fast enough to match the conveyor belt's pace. The Roanoke Krispy Kreme bakery makes 5,000 dozen doughnuts a day.
"We get that a lot," said Sawyer, never taking her eyes off the doughnuts. The job pays more than minimum wage, she says, and though her shift is unsupervised, nobody ever has to worry about people goofing off.
"That's because we get to go home when we get the job done."
\ WHAT NIGHT WORKERS KNOW\ \ Although the dining room is closed, the drive-in window at Hardee's is open all night.
\ Gary's Little Chef on Williamson Road doesn't deliver, but it's open all night and the food ain't that bad.
\ You get more annoyed by traffic during the day. When the night shift drives to and from work, there aren't any other cars on the road.
\ Orville Redenbacher's Light Microwave Popcorn is an acceptable lunch at 3 a.m.
\ The odds are far better for calling in to win things on radio stations. And they'll probably be happy to play your requests.
\ If you think day care is a problem, try finding someone to watch your kids sleep five nights a week.
\ The best part about taking a vacation is sleeping at night like everybody else.
by CNB