#night workers

Isac Friedlander, 3 A.M., 1934. Etching, plate.

On this Christmas Eve, when a number of us will be out later at night than ordinarily, remember those who work in the night for our safety and comfort. Remember police and fire fighters; doctors and nurses in hospitals, especially emergency rooms; cooks and bakers preparing for tomorrow's meals; pilots and drivers and all those who keep things running; and those who pray for others as their ministry. From the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer service of Compline, "Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen."

This is a very brief story this week, only a little longer than a drabble, on the subject of those workers with the thankless task of keeping the lights on and the buses running during the night. I often wonder how they put up with the rest of us 9-5 working slobs, so protective of our weekends while they slave away ensuring we even have weekends:

The Nocturnals

  We’re a different breed on the night watch. We rise with the night and fall with the dawn. We take our positions at the treadstone as the normal ones slump off to bed or play. We keep the world at a slow trot for these people’s benefit, for their convenience. We’re the invisible, the little pixies at the corner of your drunken eye. We took these jobs because they were there, because no one else would.

We’re the security guards who watch your precious wares through the dark, the ones at reception with one eye on the locked doors and the other on the home shopping channel. We’re the bus drivers who take you home after an all-night bender, ignoring your bleary blatherings and insults and your horrifying attempts at singing. We’re the ones with the mops and the screwdrivers fixing up your office for the morning, so that when you take your desks you can imagine the office-cleaning fairy swept up your workspace. We’re everywhere and nowhere. That’s our purpose.

We crash in the daytime, maybe shop for groceries in the evening when our batteries have recharged. Weekends are nothing to us, we’re the ones who make weekends possible for everyone else. Why do we do it? The reasons are as variable as they are for you normal folk. Some need the money, some need escape, some have debts, some have family, some have plans, and some do it simply because they have nothing in the day they want to see. It’s not as if anyone asks. We’re needed, we applied, and someone’s got to do it, that’s all that’s important.

You have this romanticism about the city, that it’s eternal and never sleeps because it’s infused with some sort of spirit. A spontaneous eruption of creativity, a machine that ticks by itself. We’re the ones who say otherwise. The city always runs because we run it. It never sleeps because we’re there clapping its ears at all hours. Without us, your city is a town like any other. You function, you commute, you play and consume, all thanks to us. We’re the night shift and we make your existence possible.