What the Night Shift Knows

At 3 a.m. the city belongs to a different population: bakers, nurses, security guards, the men who restock grocery shelves, the women who clean office towers after the bankers go home. They pass one another on empty buses and nod. They know things the day shift does not.

They know which gas station has decent coffee after midnight and which convenience store clerk will let you use the bathroom. They know the exact minute the streetlights switch off. They know that the hour before dawn is the loneliest of the day and also, strangely, the most companionable.

Roughly one in six American workers works outside standard daytime hours. Research links night work to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and depression. The people I spoke with know this. Most of them would still not trade.

“Nobody watches you at night,” said a warehouse picker named Luis, who has worked graveyard for eleven years. “You do the job, you go home. The sun comes up while you're driving. That part, I'd miss.”