Third shift (also known as graveyard shift), is the work shift that runs overnight into the morning. The exact hours will vary, but in general a third shift worker will go into work in the very late evening, and get off sometime around sunrise.

I work third shift myself (and have for years). It changes your life in so many ways. I sit behind my quiet desk at work, answering the occasional phone call, and dealing with the few customers who may show up in my hotel in the middle of the night (not many, since I work at a rather fancy hotel). Most of that time I am alone. I have found that my eyes have become much less accustomed to changes in light and dark. You would probably think they would be more used to the dark, right? Wrong. I am rarely ever in darkness at all. I have to sleep during the daytime, and I spend my nights under artificial light. This has made me very sensitive to bright lights, and low levels of light (I am no longer used to either one).

After working third shift for a long period of time you will begin to sleep less and less. I myself am down to about four hours a day. My reasoning for why goes something like this. If you wake up at 4 am, you will go back to sleep right, of course you will. But I sleep during the daytime. If I wake up at noon (which I often do), I think to myself, "Wow, I still have almost the entire day left". This may not be the true culprit, but many people do seem to develop reduced sleep patterns when they work on the third shift.

The third shift is best for people who are single, since you will not be coming home to sleep in your lovers bed every night, and even when you can, you will find yourself unable to sleep (because you should be awake, and you have gotten used to sleeping alone). On the other side of the same coin, the third shift is great for people who want to have active social lives. You can literally party all night long on your days off, with out disrupting your sleep pattern, or even getting tired. You can't stay out as late on your work days, but it sure beats the social life killing 3PM-11PM shift (also known as second shift).

Many people eventually tire of working this shift, and seek employment during regular hours. Actually, more like most people tire of this shift, as third shift almost always has the highest turnover at any place of business (even though it often pays more). But it is difficult to search for a new job while working a third shift job, after all, you have to look for jobs during the day (which is when you should be sleeping). This sometimes makes it difficult to get out of the third shift lifestyle (at least it has been hard for me).

In addition to the Graveyard Shift, it is also sometimes called the Night Shift, a nickname it sometimes shares with second shift. Note that I cannot fall into the regular third shift pattern because I am a swing shifter, which means they toss me all around the time clock, and where I work, you can literally see me at any time of the day, because we never close, not even on Christmas Day.

Third shift will screw with your sense of perception. The thing of it is, someone will ask you for the date, and you might not be sure if it is still today, or if today has become yesterday and tomorrow has become today. As passport noted, you will often be around artificial lighting. You put up a fight with your own body, (it gets especially hard around 4:00 am) because humans are not nocturnal creatures. We were meant to sleep at night. And working third shift pits us against this natural urge.

There is an old saying, the freaks come out at night. At my job, I have seen this proven true. People come around, either going to parties, coming from parties, or in between parties, wanting beer, and big fat cigars which I know they are just going to take the tobacco out of and fill with marajuana.

Third shift is frequently performed by nurses, law enforcement officials, truck drivers, and other people who work places that stay open 24 hours.

Third shift damages your days off, (maybe it's extra hard on me because I swing the clock, I can't say) because even if you are off a day, you have to sleep for half of it!

I agree with passport, third shift is great if you are single. I am, plus I have no social life, so I can get on okay swingshifting for now, I just stay kind of tired when I work a lot of third.

There is also the increased danger of being robbed or something on third shift, because of the dark and lonely hours. This has never really bothered me, I go outside and change the trash and all, and I'm not worried about getting hit in the head, but that's not to say it couldn't happen.

Third shift is an intriguing beast. What I say here is naturally in regards to my own experiences with such work, but I imagine that most of it can be extended to other workplaces. I won't bore you with the specifics of my present career, suffice it to say there are lots of scary sounding chemicals, large and expensive machinery, and lots of scary yellow lights that make blue things look black.

Rather, I would like to address third shift and the effect it has on employee motivation. While this will not be true everywhere, third shift can be quite dull. A lack of higher-ups to create work which needs doing leads to, well, a lack of work which needs doing. At my job, I moved from second shift, which was arguably the busiest at this particular business, to thirds. When, all of a sudden, there is comparatively little to be done, you can easily find yourself filling time through mindless busywork or less. This is very habit forming. I would say that during a slow night, I spend upwards of half my shift searching for things to do and, when that fails, browsing the net (which is consequently what lead me to E2, but that is neither here nor now). Since this is the rule and not the exception, when a busy night comes around, you are no more inclined to put in a hard day's night than on a slow night. And so, work does not get done.

Lack of work begets lack of motivation. Lack of motivation begets lack of work. It's a vicious cycle.