Early Retirement Extreme Forums

old friend of mine used to be a proofreader for a law firm

I think my brother has the job you are looking for.

Years ago he started working at a help desk. The calls were constant, no downtime at all. He works at a company that handles IT support for other companies. He got word through the grape vine that one of their clients was changing their contract to require 24/7 support, but the client's office hours were 8-5. He suspected they might not need much support at night, so he requested to change departments to the one that handles support for that company. He then requested to change his hours to third shift.

Sure enough he was right. He would get a few phone calls in the first hour or two, then no phone calls for the rest of the night. So he just brought in his tablet and watched movies all night. Management is fine with it because the company is still fulfilling its 24/7 support contractual obligation.

Now, you may think this is horrible because he works third shift and only gets paid 15/hr. However, it gets better. The pandemic hit and they sent all the employees home. They track his hours by seeing when he logs in and logs out of the voice app. So he setup the computer in his bedroom. He logs in at night, takes a few phone calls, then goes to sleep for about 7 hours. If on the rare chance a phone call comes in, the headset ringer is turned all the way up and is loud enough to wake him up. He has an alarm at the end of his shift, in the morning, when he wakes up and logs off from work and goes about his day. He is effectively retired, but still "working".

Oh...I just thought of another example. Years ago my dad worked as a firefighter in a small town. The pay was not good, but he worked at night and they had bunks, showers, and a kitchen there. On a good night, which was probably 90% of the time, he would go into work and go to sleep, wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and come back home.

On a bad night though he would go into work, go to sleep, get woken up by a blaring alarm at 1 am, put his boots on and run to the fire truck while half asleep, rush to the fire, run into a burning building looking for survivors, and then fight the fire and do cleanup the rest of the night. I'm not sure how healthy it is to do this, of course, so maybe not the best option. I have also heard this is very different in a city vs a small town as they stay much busier.

A lot of firefighters in CA work 2 or 3 days shifts and then are off for the rest of the week. It sounds like a sweet gig...

except for the dangers of running into something that's on fire, fighting a losing battle against a CA that naturally wants to burn each year, and the cancer risks of breathing all that stuff.

I'll tell you what, I've felt like I've gotten fair value out of my property tax fire safety dollars these last four years.

My new role seems like it's one of these jobs that has ample downtime. Basically I work an 8 hour shift that I have to be physically in the office for but on a typical day there is probably 5-6 hours of downtime. It seems like maybe once a week I might have a slightly busier day if there is lots of stuff going on. I've yet to figure out what I'm going to do with all that time. The issue is that the kind of focus needed to actually learn something by reading is quite difficult when working in a crowded environment with frequent interruptions (e.g. I can't just put headphones in and block out everything around me since I'm supposed to be monitoring those things in case an issue arises).

For everyone who is idolizing rotating shifts, I would caution that feeling jet-lagged and sleep-deprived all the time as a result of irregular sleep schedules is not only miserable, but also a known carcinogen. I would take a pay cut to be able to work a consistent schedule, but unfortunately in the military I just have to do the job I'm assigned. There's a reason sleep deprivation and manipulation of circadian rhythms are classified as torture techniques.