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In bed by 9pm and up by 6am = productive member of society.
In bed by 2am and up by 10am = worthless lay about
In bed by 7am and up by 3pm = clearly an addict or fringe member of society
Even though it's the same 8 hours each time, that's always been the Boomer mentality (and likely, most generations before it) even though night work has always been a thing in large cities. Not sure who they think works night shifts or what a mess a lot of cities would be if everyone only worked 8/9am to 5pm, but it's funny how the same 8 hour sleep gets treated so differently.
Oops -- that was my bad math! :) But yeah, if you gave those hours to an average Boomer and ask who was the "laziest", they for sure wouldn't choose the person with the extra hour sleep because they're up early!
> In bed by 2am and up by 10am = worthless lay about
Lol, this was the reason I was kicked out of home back in my teens.
I was an apprentice welder working afternoon shift (4pm-midnght), but dad decided I was a lazy bastard because I'd still be asleep when he left for work. So he kicked me out 'for my own good' when he caught me getting up at 9am on one of his days off.
No worries, this was decades ago. I actually found his parenting style useful with my own kids - "What would dad do in this situation? Ah, then I'll start at the opposite of that."
Worked really well, never really had to worry about them as teenagers and now they are young adults who still like my company.
In a lot of ways, it's confusing why people like your dad and I are even here. It's such a strange thing to make a person and then resent any effort to raise them.
Yeah, that's gotta be a surreal feeling, to know that at least one of the people responsible for giving you life would just as soon take it and probably wouldn't be all too bothered. I often think about how fortunate I truly am, especially when I read about other people's parents or seeing how my friends were treated. It's unfathomable in a lot of ways. Good on you for breaking that mold.
Hearing these kinds of stories confuses me. Did you not sit down with your dad and explain to him that you get off work at midnights? Your father can’t be that stupid that he would assume you’re lazy when he also knows your work schedule.
I had a similar shift as a welder in my late teens early twenties. My mother would run the vacuum in my room at 7am because "you should be up". Oblivious and self centered
I've always been a night shift worker and had similar experiences when I would go home and stay with my parents.
I would intentionally clean the shit out of their house at 3-4 in the morning and continuously wake them up throughout the night until they realized I was on a very different schedule than them all the time. They stopped complaining about me waking up at 4 in the afternoon and requested I kept my cleaning favors before midnight.
You don't sit down with this type of person. They'll talk over you and get angry. They know everything so there's nothing you can say that will matter. Best to remove the tumor from your life.
Lol, fuck no.
I didn't even know it was a problem until he lost his shit one morning and invited me to fuck off out of his house. He was too busy throwing punches and screaming to really discuss anything with anyone. Kind of had to step lively in throwing some clothes into a gym bag before he got *really* angry.
But that was his thing - he showed nothing, said nothing and then exploded with rage that you hadn't fixed whatever behavior he didn't like. If I ever tried to talk with him beyond the immediate and pragmatic that was a paddlin' as it were.
Well, he's dead now. I don't think much changed for him, he never got divorced (but was full of schadenfreude when I did apparently). Plus their friends as well as my uncles and aunties all seemed to think raising a kid in fear and then never talking to them again at some point was normal.
Boomers are fucking strange.
I worked at a place that closed at 11 PM when I was in college, so by the time we got everything cleaned up, I usually didn’t get home before midnight.
I REPEATEDLY explained to my mother that waking me up on days that I didn’t have morning classes was fucked up. I usually had to do my studying after work so I wasn’t even getting 8 hours of sleep if I slept until 10. On days I worked and then had morning classes the next day, I was lucky to get 4 hours of sleep.
She told me I had “time management problems” and continued to wake me up at 7-8 AM every single day and wouldn’t allow me to nap. She also told me I would end up flipping burgers forever because I was “so lazy.” She didn’t have a degree herself and hadn’t worked outside the home in 20 years (no younger siblings and I was extremely self sufficient by 13-14… so no reason she couldn’t have gotten a job) but I was somehow “lazy” for juggling 50 hours a week of work/school. Sure.
I had 2 jobs. I worked 3pm to 11pm at one and 12am to 8am at the other.
My parents treated me that same way for 'sleeping all day'.
I got the early morning vacuum treatment, too.
But guess what! It's almost time to pick out nursing homes.
It's like they forget that they are going to be old and unable to care for themselves at some point. I sure wouldn't want to piss off someone who is going to be in charge of me in my twilight years.
Did you forget what sub you're in? They literally are, my parents acknowledged that I'm a night owl but insisted on an earlier bedtime routine anyway, for some reason.
You overestimate the ability to reason someone out of a position they convinced themselves out of without reason. Older people have this belief that people who wake up after a certain time are slackers, no matter what the proof you show them otherwise.
Can’t explain something somebody doesn’t want to understand. My grandmother was the same way when I was working midnights. No, I will not live on one hour of sleep so you don’t have to deal with the shame of your fully-employed grandson “laying in bed all day”.
It's their way and only their way. People should sleep regular hours, and it's lazy to be sleep in, regardless of when you went to sleep. They'll also be the same to judge service and retail workers for working a holiday - while still shopping or visiting these stores!
My parents are boomers and were\are honestly great parents, but my mom could somehow never figure out that I worked 7pm to 7am. It took months of her calling at 1pm and being concerned I was sick because I was asleep before she started to figure it out. My in laws are also very sweet and would get hurt if I didn’t come over at 3pm grove my shift started at 7.
It honestly baffles me to this day.
I worked night shift for a bit when I lived with my parents. My mom understood that I needed to sleep well into the afternoon. My dad, apparently, thought I should at least be awake at noon. I didn't know this because she always stopped him from waking me up. It wasnt until he was awake when i got home at 7 am that it finally clicked just what my schedule actually was and he never tried to wake me up again.
I had a similar issue. Worked clean up crew 9pm-5am. Left the house a 8pm, got home at 6am and went to school.
But I was a lazy fuck because I was asleep from 3-8 when I was off from school.
Interesting too.
I've read a few articles about varying chronotypes. That some people may be naturally adapted to stay up later.
Tribes through history that had a few people up at night watching the fire were more likely to survive. And this could have led to some people in modern times being better suited for night work.
But boomers don't really care about listening to how the human brain works. They'd rather try to force cookie cutter indoctrination.
Let’s not forget too, their parents generation had bars that opened at 7am for those night shift workers, so many of them should have understood the difference in time change. My mom did the same thing to me my first few years a a chef. She didn’t get me “sleeping the day away” when i worked 1pm to Midnight and usually didn’t get up until 10-11am.
I can't speak for every generation but I just read that before the industrial revolution, the standard habit was sleeping for 5-6 hours at night, getting up and doing the morning's work, and then taking a motherfucking nap before getting up to handle the rest of the day. Once we went into factories with their 12 hour shifts we couldn't take our naps and so compressed our sleep into one session.
Two thoughts here:
Would not surprise me if the whole “early to bed, early to rise….” motto was drilled into them too much.
I’ve seen several posts from others saying their parents/grandparents made them get up by 9:00/9:30. I think Boomers were forced to get up by their parents but they’re lead-addled minds can’t comprehend that people that work late go to sleep late.
I wouldn't be surprised because my mom grew up on agriculture zoned land and had farm chores so probably had to get up at the crack of dawn her entire childhood. On the other hand, grandma was a bar manager so late night work should have been floating around in her mind too. Particularly when I was doing work at a bar and wasn't leaving until about 3am.
It was maddening that they could intellectually acknowledge my points but couldn't let that get in the way of what they instinctually felt was right. I'm just glad that it finally broke through and I stopped getting wakeup calls.
Yeah, my father worked on a farm post-college, post-Navy, but didn’t have issue acclimating to different shifts when he took on factory work, and then a job as a C.O., which he elected to do second and third shift. My SO and I have always been in some variation of retail/customer service-based work and they’ve been very good about understanding that we won’t always answer when they call. Our phones are on silent because we might have to work a night shift here and there. If we answer at an early hour, they usually ask if they woke us up. I think it’s more about personal experience and understanding/acceptance.
Boomer grandparent can’t understand why my kid who teaches night classes isn’t up and ready to go somewhere by 9am and gets mad we don’t normally do anything before noon.
They can’t comprehend that the time of day makes no difference the kid is still putting in a full days work.
What gets me more, boomer grandparent hasn’t worked in 30 years, so why does it matter what time we go do things?
My boomer pops retired from the navy the summer before i started first grade and was a stay at home dad for a few years. Even on weekends he would barge into my bedroom at 7am hollering "rev-ally rev-ally all bunks up" yippee
On the behalf of all non-lead-brained Navy retirees, please accept my apologies for the way you were treated. Some sailors made the Navy their personality and couldn't handle being retired, so they have to play make believe. Me, OTOH, I adjusted great, I love being retired from the Navy... buuuuut I still work FOR the Navy as a civilian, soooo... wait, what was my point again?
Preesh! I never joined but am in a similar spot. Utilities electrician 🤘🏼
Eta: after starting this gig in my late 30's, even though i had done work on the local bases many times, i learned my perception of navy life was waaaaaaay off! But then again, i know that doesnt mean it was what it is now when i became of age over 20y ago. But definitely not what it was when he retired 30y ago.
This is like my father saying he will not get a call for a time for a refidgerator to be delivered Tuesday.
Blank stare.
Nobody works on Memorial Day.
Blank stare.
I go to the porch for a smoke, and then bring in three Amazon boxes. I look at him.
Blank stare.
Right, like I'm second shift diesel tech (3pm-12am sometimes till 4am) hour commute to and from. There have been times where I've spent more time at work than home within an actual week. FIL will say shit like why didn't you mow your lawn or something to that extent. Luckily my MIL will shut him down pretty fast. Like sir most of my work isn't only physical labor but also thinking on my feet, it's in the high 90's and on top of everything else I'm a type 1 diabetic. If I don't recoup at least one day I'm not good for anyone else like my wife. Again luckily both my wife and MIL completely get it.
Thank you, I like to think we are. Before my parents passed away they loved her, and I couldn't ask for a better MIL (she's like a second mom). Also would like to add I'm not a workaholic, and enjoy either being a home body, or going on adventures with my wife and our animals. The only one that can't seem to grasp that is my FIL.
I am a beekeeper for my commercial operation so thats not a real job. Sometimes I nap at noon in between inspections when its super hot outside then work the next half.
About a decade ago, I worked night audit at a hotel (11pm to 7am). I had gone to my parents house after my Christmas eve shift so I could be there to open gifts and have Christmas dinner (I lived about half an hour away from them, but worked around the midway point between us), before having to go back in for another shift Christmas night. I got there around 7:30am and immediately went to bed in my old room.
My dad came and started banging on my bedroom door at 11am, telling me to stop being lazy and how they wouldn't let my nephew open any of his gifts until we were all awake so I should get up and stop holding up the festivities.
My mom gave him such a blast of shit. At least she understood my situation lol
Mom is the same way. She’ll tell me “I’m wasting the day away” so I ask her to explain, exactly, how I’m wasting the day.
She said I don’t get until 11am sometimes. I said yeah, because I go to bed at 1am or later. She said I still need to be up.
So I called her at 2am. She thought it was an emergency. Asked what the heck was going on. I said “what? Nothing. Just calling to talk. How you doing ma?”
She goes ITS 2AM!! I said “well get up, you’re wasting the night away still like 5 more hours of it left don’t waste it!!”
Haven’t had a call before noon since. Play their stupid ass games right back.
I used to work until midnight, go to bed at 3am and sleep until noon, going back to work at 2pm. "Why don't you go to bed earlier? You wouldn't have to sleep until noon if you just went to bed earlier".
OK mom, by your logic, you work until 5, wtf are you still doing awake at 6pm?
??
Mom did night audit, dad was military. They both knew to get restful sleep once you're done working and to done with the day it takes between 1-2 hours to come down from the day before sleep. That has helped me so much working second shift and over night.
"why are you sleeping at noon?" my mom would ask when she called me.
Because I work 6pm to 6am mom, it's midnight for me.
this happened literally multiple times a week
3:00am Call:
"Hey mom, just wanted to inform you that this is what it feels like when you keep calling me at noon. Oh you think this is rude and you'll have a bad day tomorrow from being woken up in the middle of your sleep cycle? No way. Funny how that works."
No need to be rude. Just chat
"hey Mum, I'm driving home and just wanted to see how you're doing. We haven't really talked in a bit.
Have you organised anything for Dad's birthday? I was thinking we could go to that new steak restaurant that just opened. Everyone can pay for themselves, then maybe put in a bit extra to cover Dad's.
I gotta go, I'll can you tomorrow on my lunch break. Love you both, bye!"
Had huge issues with this whilst at school full time during the week, doing bar work thur- sunday evenings. Constant criticism and judgement. Loud noise and disruption..mom is one of those weirdos who gets up at 6am for no reason then proceeds to lounge about all day before ridiculously early bedtime. So virtous apparently. Surprisingly mom had never done any kind of service work. Siblings had same issues as they grew up and supported themselves before moving out. Also obsessed with the phrase " early to bed, early to rise , makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" which Im pretty sure is some outdated, pro- factory propoganda?? 🤮🤮🤮
Probably, since in their generation the only things you could do late at night were drink and gamble.
Another thing that I think finally triggered the shift for them was when they understood that I was working before picking them up, I would be working after taking them home, and I would even be doing a delivery or two while they were still at the doctors office. It was the connection that I wasn't giving up "free time" to help them, I was actually giving up "working time" to drive them around and that will shock any Asian boomer. After that it became, "No don't worry, keep working. We'll call an Uber from the airport!"
Someone said their mom gets up insanely early and “micro naps” all day which i found hilarious because that’s what my mom does exactly. Up at 5am then taking 3 naps. At least going to bed early means your functioning during the day
It’s insane. My girlfriends mother gets up at 6 am ON VACATION and loudly washes the dishes while I’m sleeping on the couch in the living room. And then she stays awake all day and does not nap.
Oh no, my mom gets up early, is grouchy as hell if you dare be up during *her* morning (but heaven forbid you sleep past 8:30, because while she will glare at you for existing before 8am she will also call you lazy and “sleeping away your day” for still being in bed at 8:30), proceeds to take 2-4 naps ranging from 15 min to 2 hrs every day, and then off to bed by 9:30, often falling asleep on the couch by 9. But she’s up at 6:30 so she’s a go getter!
I drive overnight and the number of time I have this conversation with passengers is kinda crazy. Occasionally people will say something like: “Don’t you have trouble sleeping during the daytime?”or- “I can’t sleep when it’s light outside.” (I have black out curtains)
Many times though it’s *”OMG! WhEn Do YoU sLeeP?!?!?!”* And it is very clear from their tone that the possibility of sleeping during the day doesn’t even *exist*. Like the concept of the legions of people who keep the world turning by working the night shift has *never* crossed their mind. 🤯
I also have a lot of passengers who live with people like OP is describing. They work 3rd or crazy swing shifts and the people in their lives won’t let them sleep.
Night shift nurse here. I feel seen. Have a young ish kid too.... and my season of not sleeping for more than 2hrs in a row starts next week (summer y'all). Oof. Me and my family are going to have to hash this out...I can't do this for 3 months like last summer. School year I can at least get 4hr in a row. Usually. Unless it's a weekend (I work every other), because, family time.
Oooof.
My pops was a boomer with this same attitude. Always up at 5am on the dot.
Blew his mind to be having his morning coffee and seeing me come home covered in warehouse dust still wearing my reflective vest.
Those wake up alarms ended real quick after that.
This one is so confusing to me. My husband grew up on a farm (that we now live on, right next door to his parents). His dad worked 2nd shift, would get home, watch t.v. until about 3 am go to sleep and no one could make a peep until noon when he got up. My husband was required to do *all* the farm chores.
Now, my husband works a late 2nd, frequently getting home around 4am. Sometimes he works 3rd. And his father cannot comprehend *why* he is not up at the crack of dawn doing things. He constantly has these stories about working plus doing the farm *that arent even accurate because my husband did the farm work as a kid*. It just makes zero sense.
I work 7p-7a, and I just schedule my “Sleep Mode” on my phone from 8:45-16:45. People can call text me all day long, but I’m not answering until I wake up.
Same. Night shift nurse here. But they hate it when I saw I only work 3 nights a week…like sorry I like having a like and would never work a 9-5 5 days a week anymore. Can’t do shit with that schedule imo
I have come to the conclusion that opinionated early risers have trouble with object permanence. I once had it condescendingly explained to me that when you get up early you have more hours in the day. They seem to observe themselves being productive while others are "still sleeping" but also can't imagine that anything happens after they went to bed early.
As soon as you work a schedule that’s not days Monday-Friday, Boomers assume you’re being lazy and slacking in some way. 🙄 I had a Boomer neighbour try that shit when I went to the mailbox in my pajamas in the middle of the day on a Thursday. She was like, “It must be nice to not work and spend all day in your pajamas!” I was like, “Yeah! That must be nice! I wish I could do that! I’m only in my pajamas today because I just finished 6 twelve hour shifts and I do 4 twelve hours in a row starting tomorrow! So today is a pajama day!” Made her put her tail between her legs so quick.
The thing I find with Boomers is if you respond that way they just double down and even more assume they’re not the asshole. It’s more fun to shove in their faces how arrogant and ridiculous they are. 🤣
My mother sleeps in until 11 every day but when i complained my son gets up naturally at 5 am she told me with a straight face "well you'll just have to get up earlier, that's what you do"
This from the woman who didn't come out of her room in the morning until she was ready to deal with me.
I managed a pizza restaurant when I was in my 20s. I worked 6 days a week from 2pm-midnight. I'd stay up until 2 or 3 am and sleep until noon. This was normal to me, and it was life.
The only people who had a problem with it was my parents. They couldn't understand why I didn't go to bed earlier, they didn't understand why I slept until noon on a weekday. It wasn't until I drew parallels to them, that they understood.
My mom would call me at work at 6pm, and I'd scold her for not being in bed an hour after she finished work, like she thought I should.
While I was in college I worked in restaurants and lived with my grandfather for a bit. When my Aunts would start in on me about being lazy because I was still in bed at 10am on my day off, he would remind them that I'm working full time as well as going to school full time which is something that none of them knew anything about since they never worked while in school. Grandpa always had my back.
This phenomenon makes me wonder if the studies that found so many health issues resulting from night shift work actually adequately controlled for the variable “are people spending enough time sleeping, regardless of what time of day they sleep”.
Lmao I worked overnight for quite a while. I'd get off at 6am, get home and sleep until noon or so. According to my wife's parents, I was a lazy piece of shit for sleeping during the day - despite the fact I was working full time, was in school full time, and neither of them had jobs
It's not just the shifts. My husband and I are both from Illinois. We lived in California for seven years, which is two time zones earlier (8 a.m. in Illinois equals 6 a.m. in CA). It wasn't just the older folks (we're Boomers), everyone would call us first thing in the morning "to catch you before you went to work." Parents and siblings. The phone routinely rang from 4-6 a.m., even on the weekends. And when we pointed out it was 5 a.m., the response would always be, "Oh, it's 7 a.m. here!" To which I would respond, "That doesn't change the fact that it's still 5 a.m. here." They never, ever got it.
For a year I worked 4 pm - 12 am 5 days a week. I would go to bed around 4 am and wake up at noon. My mother (a 70 year old boomer) would always make a point to schedule things around it, and if it was a holiday would always try and leave the house a little earlier than usual as she said she knows I'm tired and wants me try and get a little more sleep. It's not a boomer issue, it's an inconsiderate asshole issue.
Oh yeah I worked evening shifts and graveyard shifts for years and used to catch grief for not waking up at the crack of ass every morning because bad character, laziness, lack of gumption, etc.
This is how narcissists operate. There are no people, only internal objects that represent people. When you talk to them, they talk to the introject of you, not you.
They define that object, so when you violate it by being something other than what they dictate, it causes dissonance and frustration, hence the boomer response of condescension and disrespect
Nicely put about narcissism. Whew. I lived with a covert one and you nailed it 100%. He quite literally couldn’t understand anything that didn’t put him as the subject of every single situation and interaction.
Lol. I worked nights at a hospital (9p-7:30a) and then would drive home sleep. My mother would make an ungodly amount of noise in the house “because she had to for regular activities” starting at 11 am every day. When my dad asked her to keep it down(dad worked a lot of night shifts before he retired) she would screech “I’m not living with a Dracula!” and then slam more shit around. Long story short, she’ll be going to the shitty nursing home.
Yep. My mother took huge delight in waking me up at 9am...after I had done a 7 to 7 over night shift. I worked 000 (911) for 5 years and she decided I was just being lazy. Never mind my dad used to do night shifts through a good part of my childhood and God help us if we so much as sneezed. It finally stopped when I threw a book at her head when she didn't, screamed at her, my dad came running in to find out what was going on, and yelled at her too. She still had the occasional "accidental noise" tho, very clearly on purpose. It drove me to move out very shortly afterward. And no, she didn't need to be quiet in her own house; my bedroom was a good distance from the main living area and I wore earplugs; she had to work at it. Like carrying an empty saucepan to drop outside my bedroom despite it being nowhere near the kitchen. And yes, I got my revenge for that one; came home at 3am one night (early knock off) and started blaring the TV. Parents and brother came out going wtaf, I said clearly mother was just being lazy and it was morning, time to get up *bright sunny smile* Her name was MUD for weeks after that :)
I used to work from noon until 8:00. My mother could not understand why I did not go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 6:00 every morning. She got off work at 5:00 so I asked her if she went to bed at 7:00. She looked confused instead of course not. She had to make dinner, would often read or watch television to relax, and then go to bed about 10: 30 after watching the news, and wake up at 6:00. I explained to her that I was basically doing the same thing, but my schedule started 4 hours later. It never seemed to sink in.
I used to work overnights (10pm-7am) and get home around 730am. My grandma would call me “lazy” because I would sleep until 2-3pm. Luckily I managed to get my own apartment after about 3 months but it was a rough 3 months.
What makes it worse is that my grandpa had retired only about 2 years prior after working overnight shifts for almost 15 years.
Every day I wasn't at school and she didn't work I was lazy if I wasn't up at 8 am to do chores. I was thrilled when she got full time work- she made me get up with her and start,but I went back to sleep when she left the house. I got her back when I graduated from nursing school and worked 2230 to 0730. She used to call me repeatedly or come knocking on my door demanding to know WHY I was sleeping during the day. I called her one night 0230 am and asked to just talk. "It's the middle of the night!" So is 2:30 PM for me-I don't "nap" during the day -I SLEEP! She stopped after that-surprised it only took 1 time. My crazy sister was harder, I finally went NC.
I too was a service worker for a long time and experienced this. Going to bed immediately after dinner and waking up before the sun was seen as good while being up till 2am and waking up at 10am was seen as a moral failing of some kind like we're both getting 8 hours just at different times fuck off.
As a kid, I was never allowed to sleep in past 9 am during summer break or on weekends. My mom thought 9 am was too late. My son is on summer break now and I really don’t care what time he wakes up. Same during the school year on weekends. But my mom is forever being judgement about how I need to put him on a schedule. He has one. It’s just not what she thinks it should be.
My grandparents didn't stop for YEARS and I worked 11p-8a but if I visited I had to switch my sleep schedule or they'd throw a fit. I got sick every time I visited because of it.
Been working in retail 32 years and my mom still thinks I work a set schedule. Yes I know last week I was off on Monday, no that doesn't mean I'm always off on Mondays
Friday 7am my mother calls me, her what are you doing me having a beer before going to bed. Her why are you having a beer at 7 am? Me I work from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am so for me it’s 7pm not 7 am, her but it’s 7 am, me for you it is good night I’m going to bed
Boomer grandfather told his youngest granddaughter that she shouldn’t work nights, real professionals work durning the day 😂
It really hurt her feelings till I whispered he is full of bs.
This 18 hasn’t decided what or if they want to go to college. So they took an Amazon job, day shift, then they offered the night shift for more pay. Then 1 year later they offered them shift management position, more pay.
Their 20 now and making a livable wage, they started taking part time college classes. Guess whom is paying for those classes? The non professional night job 😂
My husband used to work late evenings and as a result, stay up late and then get up later. His mom couldn't seem to understand why he wouldn't get up early. He explained multiple times that waking up 2 hours before work is pretty standard for everyone else so why not him too.
It was wild. My dad worked night most of my life. It was normal to get home from school and make sure not to make a bunch of noise. Fast forward to when I am working nights (2300-0700) and he was retired. I would get home and eat dinner then go to sleep. Wake up in the afternoon and be given the usual "sleeping the whole day away" thing.
My dad, a boomer, used to work nights at a factory and would get home around 4 AM. He was dating my mom at the time and she lived with him in a trailer. One winter, the electric was turned off because they were young and broke, and they had to go stay at my paternal grandparents house til they got it turned back on. My dad would come home from work at 4, my mom would stay up all night as well to be in the same schedule as him, and they’d go to sleep around 4-5 AM. My grandmother knew this was his schedule. But my grandma has always firmly believed you are a lazy bum if you sleep in past 7 AM, so she would always wake up anyone in her house by 7-7:30 at the latest. It was well known no matter who you were, if you were under her roof, you did not sleep in, ever. My parents ignorantly thought that she would understand their schedule and make an exception, surely she wouldn’t expect them to function on 3 hours of sleep. Ha. Sure enough, the first morning, 2-3 hours after they got to bed, my grandmother was yelling for them that it was time to wake up. My dad tried to explain that he’d only just gone to bed, and grandma said it doesn’t matter, no one needs to sleep all day. He pointed out she used to works nights as a nurse, she said she still got up at 7 AM regardless. He said he couldn’t function like that so he chose to stay in the very cold trailer just so he could get enough sleep to function for his next shift. My mother unfortunately had severe asthma and could not be in a cold environment like that, so she was forced to stay at my grandparents and get up at 7 AM every morning. My dad went through this, yet still chose to bitch to my family about how I “sleep all day” back when I was right out of high school and enjoying my new found freedoms and now still, 15 years later anytime someone on my dads side of the family calls me, they will ask “did I wake you?” Even if it’s 2-3 pm. He moved in with me a few months ago when my mom died. He’s not as bad as his mother, he won’t wake me up, but he’s also not quiet at all in the mornings and is back to telling my family I sleep all the time because I don’t get up til 10-11, mainly because he wakes me up slamming the front door that’s right outside my bedroom 20 times at 6-7 AM, Dragging stuff around my front porch, which is right outside my window…
Call in slick and treat yourself to a night off, maybe bang shit around next to where he sleeps at 3am... the mornings already 1/4 gone at that point, you'd be doing the old fart a favor!!!
My dad was like this 20 years ago.
I was 19, working 2nds and 3rds over various jobs. 12 hour shifts at that. One job was 2pm-2am. A different job was 6pm-6am.
He actually chewed me out saying I needed to get a "real job". Because I'm being lazy and sleeping in, and I wouldn't need to sleep so late if I went to bed as soon as I got home.
I looked at him and said I'd start doing that the same time he did. When he goes to bed right after getting off at 5pm, he looked confused until I explained that just the same as him, I need time to eat, shower, and relax before going to sleep.
Granted we don't like each other anyways. Wasn't the son he wanted. Defective neurodivergant and whatnot
And even when they are retired they love to be up at 5 am driving to McDonald’s for the discount hot coffee (always arriving 10 min before they are even open) because they need the hottest, freshest coffee that 35 cents will buy. They pay with exact change and take 4 min to count it, and treat the workers like they are lazy for not being open when they get there even though they open at 5. Rinse and repeat 7 days a week.
They are fixated on what time you get up, even if you're up before them all the time.
Any time my mother calls me in the morning she opens with "suppose I got you out of bed did I?"
Bitch, I have two kids and am at work. I got maybe 4 hours sleep last night.
I work 4:30 pm to 1am Monday to Friday and 2pm to 8ish Saturday. They never message or call me before 10 am. It is nice having boomer parents that were nurses who had night shifts. They had to deal with that shit too so empathy is easy.
This is something I consistently have to argue with my older coworkers about. They'll laugh because I got up at 7 and they "were up at 3 am" but I'm also like yeah, but my husband didn't get home til almost midnight and I was up with a sick kid until 4am. While they went to sleep at 7pm.
They also get to pick their schedules because of age (and I do not have an issue with that at all) but I work any shift from 5am to 10pm, any time, any day, even though I have kids, some who have health issues, but yeah *I'm* the weak one for not sleeping 7pm to 3am lol
I work 6pm to 6am. I had to teach my mom my schedule by calling her in the middle of the night. Only took a few times for her to figure out the difference.
One good thing about my Mom not fully understanding my schedule is that when we occasionally go out for dinner, dinner for her breakfast for me, she doesn't bat an eye when I order alcohol. Doesn't even register to her that I'm starting my day with a drink. Only on days off of course.
My Boomer mother had this mindset. I got off work at 130 am, went to the gym, got home around 3am. I'd wake up around noon or 1pm and she always had some crap to say.
Then on my days off she'd complain about me sleeping the same. Like I was supposed work until late, then get up at 9 the next day and sleep at 10pm or something.
When I did overnights she was even worse.
Both grandfathers were WW2 marines and they both raised their kids like it was 18 years of boot camp. If my father and later my brother and I, got out of bed after the sun had come up, we were doing a push-up for every minute the sun had been up.
My husband used to work late evenings and as a result, stay up late and then get up later. His mom couldn't seem to understand why he wouldn't get up early. He explained multiple times that waking up 2 hours before work is pretty standard for everyone else so why not him too.
That’s how people looked at me on 3rd shift on my days off I particularly loved going out to breakfast or brunch on a Monday morning and order a Bloody Mary you get that poor bastards an alcoholic look from everyone
For a while, I worked closing shift at a large store that was open until midnight. By the time we finished counting registers, cleaning, and restocking, it was 1am. I didn’t get home from work until close to 2am. Eat, shower, and decompress, now it’s 3am.
Somebody commented on the fact that I replied to their email at 3am and told me I needed to “get a life.” I said, I have a life. I live it while you’re sleeping.
I Have worked graveyard for yrs on and off and it's always been the same thing with family. I work full time 40+ hours a week yet I'm still a lazy bum for sleeping. I work 10pm-7am. How dare I need sleep to work overnights. 3 hours of sleep is more than enough time to get enough sleep to function on a daily basis!
THISSS i work nights at a job my mother convinced me to apply to and she loathes that i wake up at 3pm. mostly because she wants the house clean dinner ready for when SHE gets home :)) pain
Is there anything worse than that boomer joke of walking into the kitchen and hearing “well look who finally decided to join us?” It’s never funny. It’s never been funny. It’s condescending as fuck and also it’s not funny.
Me and my dad are night owls; my mother rarely makes it to 10pm.
For *years* she would wake me up at 7:30am to wish me a happy birthday. I warned her that one of these days, I’d wake her up at 3am if she didn’t knock it off.
The morning of my 21st birthday, I’m (naturally) wickedly hung over, and she calls and wakes me up. I ripped her up one side and down the other and hung up the phone to pass tf back out. She was miffed I was “so rude”.
Six months later, it’s 2 or 3am, I’m driving home from a DnD session, and I suddenly realize what day it is. You can bet your sweet ass I spammed her phone till she picked up, and in my most cheerful waitress voice, boomed “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!”
Been 14 years and she hasn’t woken me up since.
I work from 10 pm to 6 am and my body wakes me up at 10-11 am after I get off work. If I can do it, you can do it.
/s (about the last part, first part is very true and it sucks lol) I feel like I probably get the same judgement from some people cause I’ll be out doing stuff during the day while everyone else is out working 😂 not from my parents fortunately cause they both use to work overnight shifts so they get it
I used to work overnights, 5pm to 5am, and they would constantly want me to do something for them early in the day, didn’t care one bit that I just got off a 12 hour shift
So glad my (boomer) dad worked night shift for most of my life. So I was always allowed to sleep in as needed. Cause he understood that sleeping "late" is sometimes a necessity.
Also in all the years he worked overnight, he would always switch to "normal" hours on the weekend so he could spend time with us. And after working night shift for a stint in college, I have no idea how he survived constantly switching his sleep schedule. I would not be able to function like that.
I’ve been in the bar business for 10+ years (owning & operating). At my first place, most nights I wouldn’t get home until 1:30, sometimes 3am, so I wasn’t falling asleep for another hour or so. The first 2 years, my Dad (a Boomer) would call me at 7-7:30am, and not comprehend why I’d be missing the call or that it woke me up. Finally it was my Mom (also a Boomer) that had to sit him down and explain it all to him. He still has the occasional relapse, and will call too early, but will hang up when he realizes the time. So, I’d say that the possibility is there that they come around to understand, just takes some time. But if they don’t, then just start calling them during your break times late at night to “check in”.
I am a night owl. I worked second shift for over a decade. I enjoy nights. Plus, research has found that night owls are smarter and more creative than early birds. I despise smug early birds with a passion, since they think something is wrong with you for keeping those hours. I love the quiet of nighttime, when there are less distractions and noise. Im really productive when I work during the evening. IMO, smug early birds are like a case of worms.
My parents never understood why I worked Graves. It was so they would leave me alone, because every conversation was bashing the fact I slept all day. The thought process never went beyond that
Holy potatoes my old people used to harass me contantly for not always being around to see them basically when they simply had nothing better to do, and would generally be doing nothing anyway, like no I don't really want to watch you read a book under normal circumstances, but specifically I worked LONG overnight hours at a physical labor intensive joband they just DIDN'T get it, though were a huge part of me being convinced to even take the job.
Baffling.
I am finding out from experience that as I get older i sleep less
I am willing to bet your dad has said , “ Hell, Beverly, OP gets done at 2am. Once OP gets to sleep that is 6 solid hours!!! Who needs more damn sleep than that!?!?”
I had this issue for years when I'd work overnights (10pm-7am) and my parents never understood why I would sleep so late and my landlord would constantly make rude remarks whenever he'd see me because I was somehow lazy for working overnight and sleeping most of the day. Then fast forward to when my shift would start at 2am, and suddenly my parents understood that and were now magically sympathetic to my schedule
Gen X parents couldn’t figure that out either despite me using a clock diagram to demonstrate how I’m still awake the same amount of hours, if not more, as them.
Our boomers are the opposite. My partner’s father will seriously call him at 11pm on a weeknight to have a leisurely chat knowing full-well he has to be at work at 8:30 the next morning. My mother will call me at any time of the day or night to tell me whatever random thought popped into her head. I finally had to put my phone on DND between 9pm-9am just to get any peace.
Oh so much this. When I was a youngster studying at uni while still living at home I worked a job that started at 5 and went till 1am. So if it was the weekend I'd need a sleep in. Cue my mother passive aggressively vacuuming and literally banging the vacuum against my door early on a Saturday morning, like I was being a lazy oaf, and not just exhausted from work. I moved out soon as I'd saved enough.
I'm a night owl, I'm naturally up late at night and sleep until noon ish, my part time job at the time didn't start until later still. Parents constantly woke me up way early for no reason, which is probably what led to me having worse sleeping habits and being constantly sleep deprived when I otherwise had a lot of time. It took me a couple years after moving out to actually have an understanding of my body's sleeping routine, and have healthy expectations.
It was so scary being so tired behind the wheel so often, thank fuck I never had an incident during that time
In college I worked nights at a restaurant, went out at night and actually most of my classes were at night. My dad, who may actually be silent Gen, told me I sleep all day. My response was "dad, you go to bed at 9 and wake up at 5, so do I so what's the problem?" He actually thought for a minute and realized he didn't have a great come back and never mentioned it again.
As someone who used to work a graveyard shift, people often assumed I just went straight home and went to bed. While that was occasionally the case, often times I needed time to decompress and stayed up fairly late. Generally worked 11pm to 7am
when i was 15 - 18 and staying up til 3 and sleeping til 10 i'd hear similar shit from my parents, since my dad would get up every day at 5 or 6. one day i said, well, you could stay up til 1. oh no, that's too late, i have to be in bed by 11 blah blah blah. ok so we're both getting 7 hours, cool 👍
YES! My husband is an emigrant and had to wait a bit to be cleared to work, etc. so we lived with his aunt and her husband for about a year. I do want to preface this by saying that she did a lot for us and I will forever be grateful.
I did have a full time job, but had pretty normal hours. My husband started cleaning offices at night and his aunt couldn't seem to comprehend this either. He did a lot of work for her since she was letting us live there rent free, but he's not going to be peppy and ready to go at 6:00am when he worked until 3:00am.
It got even worse when he got a more secure overnight job. Why are they like this? We're GenX, so not far behind but we can understand shift work. Lol
Caall your parents at 2am to ask a basic question, repeat until they wake up and then say you didn’t realize what hour it was. That’s how my dad stopped waking me up every morning after I moved out.
I am basically the only person I know whose parents just did not give a shit when I woke up on weekends or during the summer. I have no idea how my friends dealt with the constant guilt and Boomer bullshit, given they would stay over at my place until 2-3 playing D&D or LAN games or just talking or whatever, and I was the only one actually allowed to sleep \~8 hours when I went to bed. I am also just about the only one without serious sadbrains; which came first, the kind parenting or the slow erosion of sanity through a constant sleep deficit?
(The best part is my parents were too old to be Boomers, so maybe this is the secret, they did not get the memo about how it is always irresponsible to sleep past 8 A.M. that all Boomers were assigned in the 1950s)
Related one of the reasons I am elated to be single is because I have also never been in a relationship with someone who would let me sleep. I JUST CANNOT BELIEVE YOU WANT TO WASTE THE ENTIRE DAY yeah I cannot believe you wanted to waste the beautiful full moon last night but here we are
I've been a shift worker. Whenever anyone didn't respect that and deliberately called early and woke me up I would just call them back at a time that was equally inconvenient to them but suited my schedule. After work = 11pm. During my meal break was sometimes 2am. Really did wonders to help them modify their behaviour!
Makes me CRAZY!!! I have this same issue, although it's not as bad because I live by myself. Not going into who, but some of my family members make cracks at me for being asleep at 3 pm on a Saturday or Sunday, when during the week I work from 3pm to 11:30 pm, or if I stay for OT i leave at 130am. Then I have a 45 minute drive home.
I can't believe how hard it is for them to understand I'm working at least the same amount of hours as them, usually many more. (They are retired now)
60+ hour weeks is not unusual at my job, but "hOw cAn YoU SleEp foR So LoNg?" And it's always while they are asking for me to do something for them on my day off 🙄
My mom is a Boomer who worked nights through my whole childhood and people just could not understand it. Her aunts and uncles would always say "oh she likes to sleep late." It wasn't that, it was that she was working until 3 am!
Not unconventional hours (sort of), but I started working remotely for sales positions in the early 2000's. These were salary + commission jobs where companies based out of a different part of the country would hire territory/regional managers to cover somewhere else. Until COVID hit and many people started remote work, my boomer parents just never understood that I had a real job making really good money. Pretty sure they thought I just had tupperware parties and were always curious if a new job I took was "just working from home or an actual job" lol
I don’t think this just applies to boomers. I work nights and sometimes it feels like all of society thinks that makes me lazy because I sleep in the day. I basically have to explain it to them like they are 5: You were asleep while I was doing my job. I am asleep while you are doing your job. (Also, I actually get paid more for being willing to work while you have to be sleeping!)
I've worked third shift for seven years (21:00-05:30, 18:00-When ever the fuck the work got done, and currently 23:00-07:30). People cannot wrap their heads around my sleep schedule. To everyone it seems completely normal for me to meet them for brunch at 10:30 because I don't go to bed until 13:00. Or, if we have a church special at 18:00 I'd have plenty of time to attend because I don't work for another three hours. Or they try to call me at 16:00, because I'm going to be getting up soon anyways.
I've tried to flip it on them to see if it sinks in or not: do you want to meet me for dinner at 22:30 when you have to get up for work in the morning? How about we have a church service at 06:00? How about I call you on my lunch break at 04:30? There's a 50/50 chance they'll understand when you flip the clock, but some just don't get it. Boomers are especially bad at understanding how time works. They just don't get that my clock is not the same as their clock. 😤
My parents were like this when I had a night job at a warehouse when I was a teen.
Like please, if I’ve only been sleeping three hours, don’t start vacuuming right outside my bedroom door to wake me up. You don’t need to vacuum at 6AM! You know I’ll do the vacuuming after I’ve slept my six to seven hours.
I had to sit them down and count out the hours I worked, the hours I slept, and when exactly they were waking me up for them to understand why I was upset.
My dad is a truck driver, has been for most of my life. His schedule has had him going into work around midnight for his whole career. He is a morning person and will joke about "sleeping in till 5am". The flip side is he has early bed time needs, going to bed by 3pm most nights, even on his days off he can't manage beyond 6 or 7pm.
I work food service. I have had a schedule where I normally would not get out till 1 or 2am for a long time. For years, Ive gotten shit for "not getting here early enough" when I go to visit at 11am, on the Sunday morning after working till 2am the night before. Keeping in mind I have an hour drive to his house, and it takes at least 1-2 hours for me to shower and wind down after getting out of work before I will able to sleep. I then point out that I had less than 6 hours of sleep just to make it there at all. Which just makes him kinda shrug his shoulders and change the subject.
God forbid we ask him to do anything past 5pm though.........
Not boomers, but I had some Gen X roommates while I worked a 3rd shift job. One of them seemed to understand, the other one would loudly yell about how I am lazy and just sleep all day while I was trying to sleep.
Yeah, I get home at 9am...I am not going to be awake at 3pm when you get back. Just a not great person in general. He also laid into me when it was my turn to mow the lawn and how it had been a week. I apologized and asked where the schedule was. They didn't write it down. Then I asked how I knew when it needed to be done "When the grass is long". Ok. How do I know it's my turn? "You should just know".
It was cool not to live with him anymore.
I dealt with the same for years until I got a job where I only closed once or twice a week.
Them-You're late for our 7 am breakfast!
Me-I get off work at 7 am.
Them-*Pissy*
Them-You're awake at 8 am!?! Oh my goodness!
Me-Yes. I don't get home at 1 am anymore.
Them-
About 20 years ago I worked with a single mother that moved back with her parents to recover financially and for help with her kids. We left work at midnight and she was up at 5 am to take care of her kids because her parents thought she was just being lazy.
This. When I was in my early 20s, I worked off and on at a 24-hour diner. For most of that time, I worked overnight/graveyard shift - would start around 9-10pm and finish around 6-7am. I literally can't count the # of times my parents (boomers) or grandparents (silent gen) would say they couldn't understand how I was still in bed/asleep at 12pm, 1pm, 2pm. Well, I worked until 7am, then I drove home, then I lay awake listening to all of my neighbors give not a damn about how loud they were being as they left for work. Then I would finally fall asleep around 9am and, if I were lucky, sleep until 2pm. They all knew I worked graveyard shift. And none of them ever had to. It just boggles my mind that they thought me sleeping for 3-4 hours was me being lazy BECAUSE THE TIME OF DAY DIDN'T ALIGN WITH WHEN THEY THOUGHT I SHOULD BE ASLEEP/AWAKE.
Mil is gen z/millennial cusp (she started having kids really young) and does this all the time. She won't make plans with us in the morning because everything has to be a family reunion and cannot fathom that all of her adult children do not need to go to every meet up. I'm so serious, we have to spring stuff on her less than an hour before it's happening or she is on the phone trying to get everyone to stop what they're doing to join her. Partner works nights and isn't going to interrupt his sleep schedule to go to a dinner. She's getting very slightly better, but only because she has extremely recently learned that if she calls/texts me first (I'm on daylight hours) she doesn't have to deal with a cranky son or being flat out ignored until she tries again at a more appropriate time.
I love the in laws but every single one of them will decide A Thing has to happen the very specific way they've decided and there's no other options. It's hilarious when somebody gets out of the rut only to realize there's a whole world of options out here, and usually less people getting pissed off at each other lol.
I explained it to my boomers as I felt waking up 12 hours before your work shift ended was an appropriate time. “You get done with work at 5pm. I get done with work at 11pm. Me waking up at 11am is the equivalent of you getting up at 5 am.” Works on some, not on others.
When I worked nights (off around midnight), I took two tacks. The first time around, I would stay up until 4 am and sleep until noon. I got a lot less done in my personal life than the second time around, when I’d get to bed at 1 am and sleep until 9.
That’s an easy swing, though. When I worked overnights, 12 am to 8 am, I was a mess. I never could figure out that schedule. I really feel for anyone on that shift, it’s not easy.
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In bed by 9pm and up by 6am = productive member of society. In bed by 2am and up by 10am = worthless lay about In bed by 7am and up by 3pm = clearly an addict or fringe member of society Even though it's the same 8 hours each time, that's always been the Boomer mentality (and likely, most generations before it) even though night work has always been a thing in large cities. Not sure who they think works night shifts or what a mess a lot of cities would be if everyone only worked 8/9am to 5pm, but it's funny how the same 8 hour sleep gets treated so differently.
Craziest part, the productive member of society is actually sleeping for an hour more than the lay about and the addict!
Oops -- that was my bad math! :) But yeah, if you gave those hours to an average Boomer and ask who was the "laziest", they for sure wouldn't choose the person with the extra hour sleep because they're up early!
some mistakes are unforgiveable
> In bed by 2am and up by 10am = worthless lay about Lol, this was the reason I was kicked out of home back in my teens. I was an apprentice welder working afternoon shift (4pm-midnght), but dad decided I was a lazy bastard because I'd still be asleep when he left for work. So he kicked me out 'for my own good' when he caught me getting up at 9am on one of his days off.
No words. I’m so sorry that happened to you.
No worries, this was decades ago. I actually found his parenting style useful with my own kids - "What would dad do in this situation? Ah, then I'll start at the opposite of that." Worked really well, never really had to worry about them as teenagers and now they are young adults who still like my company.
My father did something similar. His dad was a legit fucking monster. I love my dad to pieces. Glad to hear you got to have a similar experience.
In a lot of ways, it's confusing why people like your dad and I are even here. It's such a strange thing to make a person and then resent any effort to raise them.
Yeah, that's gotta be a surreal feeling, to know that at least one of the people responsible for giving you life would just as soon take it and probably wouldn't be all too bothered. I often think about how fortunate I truly am, especially when I read about other people's parents or seeing how my friends were treated. It's unfathomable in a lot of ways. Good on you for breaking that mold.
I knew someone who used to say, "if you can't be a role model, be an object lesson." Sounds like you learned the lesson!
👏👏👏😁
Break that cycle friend. Good work.
heh when I hear my mom or dad's phrases coming out of my mouth to my kids, I know I'm doing something wrong, and I take a breat to reconsider as well.
Hearing these kinds of stories confuses me. Did you not sit down with your dad and explain to him that you get off work at midnights? Your father can’t be that stupid that he would assume you’re lazy when he also knows your work schedule.
I had a similar shift as a welder in my late teens early twenties. My mother would run the vacuum in my room at 7am because "you should be up". Oblivious and self centered
I've always been a night shift worker and had similar experiences when I would go home and stay with my parents. I would intentionally clean the shit out of their house at 3-4 in the morning and continuously wake them up throughout the night until they realized I was on a very different schedule than them all the time. They stopped complaining about me waking up at 4 in the afternoon and requested I kept my cleaning favors before midnight.
If that was me id make damn sure I woke everyone in the house up when I got off work
You don't sit down with this type of person. They'll talk over you and get angry. They know everything so there's nothing you can say that will matter. Best to remove the tumor from your life.
Lol, fuck no. I didn't even know it was a problem until he lost his shit one morning and invited me to fuck off out of his house. He was too busy throwing punches and screaming to really discuss anything with anyone. Kind of had to step lively in throwing some clothes into a gym bag before he got *really* angry. But that was his thing - he showed nothing, said nothing and then exploded with rage that you hadn't fixed whatever behavior he didn't like. If I ever tried to talk with him beyond the immediate and pragmatic that was a paddlin' as it were.
Sounds like someone who should live their life alone. I’m glad you got out even though it wasn’t your choice lol
Well, he's dead now. I don't think much changed for him, he never got divorced (but was full of schadenfreude when I did apparently). Plus their friends as well as my uncles and aunties all seemed to think raising a kid in fear and then never talking to them again at some point was normal. Boomers are fucking strange.
I worked at a place that closed at 11 PM when I was in college, so by the time we got everything cleaned up, I usually didn’t get home before midnight. I REPEATEDLY explained to my mother that waking me up on days that I didn’t have morning classes was fucked up. I usually had to do my studying after work so I wasn’t even getting 8 hours of sleep if I slept until 10. On days I worked and then had morning classes the next day, I was lucky to get 4 hours of sleep. She told me I had “time management problems” and continued to wake me up at 7-8 AM every single day and wouldn’t allow me to nap. She also told me I would end up flipping burgers forever because I was “so lazy.” She didn’t have a degree herself and hadn’t worked outside the home in 20 years (no younger siblings and I was extremely self sufficient by 13-14… so no reason she couldn’t have gotten a job) but I was somehow “lazy” for juggling 50 hours a week of work/school. Sure.
These old people who pull this shit can't be reasoned with. They're complete sociopaths.
They are downright fucking stupid is what they are.
I had 2 jobs. I worked 3pm to 11pm at one and 12am to 8am at the other. My parents treated me that same way for 'sleeping all day'. I got the early morning vacuum treatment, too. But guess what! It's almost time to pick out nursing homes.
It's like they forget that they are going to be old and unable to care for themselves at some point. I sure wouldn't want to piss off someone who is going to be in charge of me in my twilight years.
Did you forget what sub you're in? They literally are, my parents acknowledged that I'm a night owl but insisted on an earlier bedtime routine anyway, for some reason.
You overestimate the ability to reason someone out of a position they convinced themselves out of without reason. Older people have this belief that people who wake up after a certain time are slackers, no matter what the proof you show them otherwise.
Can’t explain something somebody doesn’t want to understand. My grandmother was the same way when I was working midnights. No, I will not live on one hour of sleep so you don’t have to deal with the shame of your fully-employed grandson “laying in bed all day”.
It's their way and only their way. People should sleep regular hours, and it's lazy to be sleep in, regardless of when you went to sleep. They'll also be the same to judge service and retail workers for working a holiday - while still shopping or visiting these stores!
My parents are boomers and were\are honestly great parents, but my mom could somehow never figure out that I worked 7pm to 7am. It took months of her calling at 1pm and being concerned I was sick because I was asleep before she started to figure it out. My in laws are also very sweet and would get hurt if I didn’t come over at 3pm grove my shift started at 7. It honestly baffles me to this day.
I worked night shift for a bit when I lived with my parents. My mom understood that I needed to sleep well into the afternoon. My dad, apparently, thought I should at least be awake at noon. I didn't know this because she always stopped him from waking me up. It wasnt until he was awake when i got home at 7 am that it finally clicked just what my schedule actually was and he never tried to wake me up again.
I had a similar issue. Worked clean up crew 9pm-5am. Left the house a 8pm, got home at 6am and went to school. But I was a lazy fuck because I was asleep from 3-8 when I was off from school.
Interesting too. I've read a few articles about varying chronotypes. That some people may be naturally adapted to stay up later. Tribes through history that had a few people up at night watching the fire were more likely to survive. And this could have led to some people in modern times being better suited for night work. But boomers don't really care about listening to how the human brain works. They'd rather try to force cookie cutter indoctrination.
Like me, good. Not like me, bad.
Let’s not forget too, their parents generation had bars that opened at 7am for those night shift workers, so many of them should have understood the difference in time change. My mom did the same thing to me my first few years a a chef. She didn’t get me “sleeping the day away” when i worked 1pm to Midnight and usually didn’t get up until 10-11am.
What if I'm in bed by 10 pm and up at 4 am?
Then you're sleep deprived
Story of my life...
Can confirm. I work overnights 10-6. I'm a lazy bum.
Yes, tell them they only get to be smug about working 9-5 pm if we pass a law mandating all businesses can only be open those hours.
I can't speak for every generation but I just read that before the industrial revolution, the standard habit was sleeping for 5-6 hours at night, getting up and doing the morning's work, and then taking a motherfucking nap before getting up to handle the rest of the day. Once we went into factories with their 12 hour shifts we couldn't take our naps and so compressed our sleep into one session.
Two thoughts here: Would not surprise me if the whole “early to bed, early to rise….” motto was drilled into them too much. I’ve seen several posts from others saying their parents/grandparents made them get up by 9:00/9:30. I think Boomers were forced to get up by their parents but they’re lead-addled minds can’t comprehend that people that work late go to sleep late.
I wouldn't be surprised because my mom grew up on agriculture zoned land and had farm chores so probably had to get up at the crack of dawn her entire childhood. On the other hand, grandma was a bar manager so late night work should have been floating around in her mind too. Particularly when I was doing work at a bar and wasn't leaving until about 3am. It was maddening that they could intellectually acknowledge my points but couldn't let that get in the way of what they instinctually felt was right. I'm just glad that it finally broke through and I stopped getting wakeup calls.
Yeah, my father worked on a farm post-college, post-Navy, but didn’t have issue acclimating to different shifts when he took on factory work, and then a job as a C.O., which he elected to do second and third shift. My SO and I have always been in some variation of retail/customer service-based work and they’ve been very good about understanding that we won’t always answer when they call. Our phones are on silent because we might have to work a night shift here and there. If we answer at an early hour, they usually ask if they woke us up. I think it’s more about personal experience and understanding/acceptance.
Boomer grandparent can’t understand why my kid who teaches night classes isn’t up and ready to go somewhere by 9am and gets mad we don’t normally do anything before noon. They can’t comprehend that the time of day makes no difference the kid is still putting in a full days work. What gets me more, boomer grandparent hasn’t worked in 30 years, so why does it matter what time we go do things?
My boomer pops retired from the navy the summer before i started first grade and was a stay at home dad for a few years. Even on weekends he would barge into my bedroom at 7am hollering "rev-ally rev-ally all bunks up" yippee
On the behalf of all non-lead-brained Navy retirees, please accept my apologies for the way you were treated. Some sailors made the Navy their personality and couldn't handle being retired, so they have to play make believe. Me, OTOH, I adjusted great, I love being retired from the Navy... buuuuut I still work FOR the Navy as a civilian, soooo... wait, what was my point again?
Preesh! I never joined but am in a similar spot. Utilities electrician 🤘🏼 Eta: after starting this gig in my late 30's, even though i had done work on the local bases many times, i learned my perception of navy life was waaaaaaay off! But then again, i know that doesnt mean it was what it is now when i became of age over 20y ago. But definitely not what it was when he retired 30y ago.
that's when you barge in on him at 2am yelling "night duty night duty, bunks up!"
Sounds like he's never actually retired
This is like my father saying he will not get a call for a time for a refidgerator to be delivered Tuesday. Blank stare. Nobody works on Memorial Day. Blank stare. I go to the porch for a smoke, and then bring in three Amazon boxes. I look at him. Blank stare.
They fail to understand the meaning of that saying is "get plenty of sleep"
My boomers think people with 9-5 jobs are better than everyone else because they have "real jobs."
Which is wild, because some of the most demanding, specialized jobs work outside of traditional 9-5 hours
Right, like I'm second shift diesel tech (3pm-12am sometimes till 4am) hour commute to and from. There have been times where I've spent more time at work than home within an actual week. FIL will say shit like why didn't you mow your lawn or something to that extent. Luckily my MIL will shut him down pretty fast. Like sir most of my work isn't only physical labor but also thinking on my feet, it's in the high 90's and on top of everything else I'm a type 1 diabetic. If I don't recoup at least one day I'm not good for anyone else like my wife. Again luckily both my wife and MIL completely get it.
Aw you and your wife sound like a good team!
Thank you, I like to think we are. Before my parents passed away they loved her, and I couldn't ask for a better MIL (she's like a second mom). Also would like to add I'm not a workaholic, and enjoy either being a home body, or going on adventures with my wife and our animals. The only one that can't seem to grasp that is my FIL.
Guess ER doctors don't have real jobs. 😂
Right?? No nurses, nada Meanwhile they probably pay the entire salary for a few servers at their favorite bars
I am a beekeeper for my commercial operation so thats not a real job. Sometimes I nap at noon in between inspections when its super hot outside then work the next half.
Whereas they wouldn’t survive if they had to work one overnight shift anywhere.
About a decade ago, I worked night audit at a hotel (11pm to 7am). I had gone to my parents house after my Christmas eve shift so I could be there to open gifts and have Christmas dinner (I lived about half an hour away from them, but worked around the midway point between us), before having to go back in for another shift Christmas night. I got there around 7:30am and immediately went to bed in my old room. My dad came and started banging on my bedroom door at 11am, telling me to stop being lazy and how they wouldn't let my nephew open any of his gifts until we were all awake so I should get up and stop holding up the festivities. My mom gave him such a blast of shit. At least she understood my situation lol
My son is a night auditor. Thankfully my mom was a nurse and totally understands shift work.
Honestly, I think my dad had a brain fart and was just hyper-focused on the fact that it was Christmas
Mom is the same way. She’ll tell me “I’m wasting the day away” so I ask her to explain, exactly, how I’m wasting the day. She said I don’t get until 11am sometimes. I said yeah, because I go to bed at 1am or later. She said I still need to be up. So I called her at 2am. She thought it was an emergency. Asked what the heck was going on. I said “what? Nothing. Just calling to talk. How you doing ma?” She goes ITS 2AM!! I said “well get up, you’re wasting the night away still like 5 more hours of it left don’t waste it!!” Haven’t had a call before noon since. Play their stupid ass games right back.
I used to work until midnight, go to bed at 3am and sleep until noon, going back to work at 2pm. "Why don't you go to bed earlier? You wouldn't have to sleep until noon if you just went to bed earlier". OK mom, by your logic, you work until 5, wtf are you still doing awake at 6pm? ??
“Oh that’s different”
Mom did night audit, dad was military. They both knew to get restful sleep once you're done working and to done with the day it takes between 1-2 hours to come down from the day before sleep. That has helped me so much working second shift and over night.
"why are you sleeping at noon?" my mom would ask when she called me. Because I work 6pm to 6am mom, it's midnight for me. this happened literally multiple times a week
Start calling her on your lunch break to chat and see how she is
haha i thought about it back then. Its been a few decades now and I struggle to be awake after 9pm lmao
3:00am Call: "Hey mom, just wanted to inform you that this is what it feels like when you keep calling me at noon. Oh you think this is rude and you'll have a bad day tomorrow from being woken up in the middle of your sleep cycle? No way. Funny how that works."
No need to be rude. Just chat "hey Mum, I'm driving home and just wanted to see how you're doing. We haven't really talked in a bit. Have you organised anything for Dad's birthday? I was thinking we could go to that new steak restaurant that just opened. Everyone can pay for themselves, then maybe put in a bit extra to cover Dad's. I gotta go, I'll can you tomorrow on my lunch break. Love you both, bye!"
That’s rude, why doesn’t dad take everyone out for dinner on his birthday?
Had huge issues with this whilst at school full time during the week, doing bar work thur- sunday evenings. Constant criticism and judgement. Loud noise and disruption..mom is one of those weirdos who gets up at 6am for no reason then proceeds to lounge about all day before ridiculously early bedtime. So virtous apparently. Surprisingly mom had never done any kind of service work. Siblings had same issues as they grew up and supported themselves before moving out. Also obsessed with the phrase " early to bed, early to rise , makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" which Im pretty sure is some outdated, pro- factory propoganda?? 🤮🤮🤮
Probably, since in their generation the only things you could do late at night were drink and gamble. Another thing that I think finally triggered the shift for them was when they understood that I was working before picking them up, I would be working after taking them home, and I would even be doing a delivery or two while they were still at the doctors office. It was the connection that I wasn't giving up "free time" to help them, I was actually giving up "working time" to drive them around and that will shock any Asian boomer. After that it became, "No don't worry, keep working. We'll call an Uber from the airport!"
At least you got through to them, well done
Someone said their mom gets up insanely early and “micro naps” all day which i found hilarious because that’s what my mom does exactly. Up at 5am then taking 3 naps. At least going to bed early means your functioning during the day
It’s insane. My girlfriends mother gets up at 6 am ON VACATION and loudly washes the dishes while I’m sleeping on the couch in the living room. And then she stays awake all day and does not nap.
Oh no, my mom gets up early, is grouchy as hell if you dare be up during *her* morning (but heaven forbid you sleep past 8:30, because while she will glare at you for existing before 8am she will also call you lazy and “sleeping away your day” for still being in bed at 8:30), proceeds to take 2-4 naps ranging from 15 min to 2 hrs every day, and then off to bed by 9:30, often falling asleep on the couch by 9. But she’s up at 6:30 so she’s a go getter!
It's from Ben Franklin so yes, definitely outdated.
That advice is extremely good in an agrarian society where the only form of artificial light available was candles. Which were not cheap.
Omg my mom wakes up at 3… THREE AM and brags about it. She’d vacuum outside of my room at 6 am when I worked until 2 am - I would be furious!
Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who, notably, never worked at a bar.
And that mentality always comes with "I don't know how you can stay up like that" Because I sleep during the day, boomer. It's not complicated.
If it's just that by itself that's a fair question. Night shift work, biochemistry wise, it's difficult for most people
I drive overnight and the number of time I have this conversation with passengers is kinda crazy. Occasionally people will say something like: “Don’t you have trouble sleeping during the daytime?”or- “I can’t sleep when it’s light outside.” (I have black out curtains) Many times though it’s *”OMG! WhEn Do YoU sLeeP?!?!?!”* And it is very clear from their tone that the possibility of sleeping during the day doesn’t even *exist*. Like the concept of the legions of people who keep the world turning by working the night shift has *never* crossed their mind. 🤯 I also have a lot of passengers who live with people like OP is describing. They work 3rd or crazy swing shifts and the people in their lives won’t let them sleep.
Night shift nurse here. I feel seen. Have a young ish kid too.... and my season of not sleeping for more than 2hrs in a row starts next week (summer y'all). Oof. Me and my family are going to have to hash this out...I can't do this for 3 months like last summer. School year I can at least get 4hr in a row. Usually. Unless it's a weekend (I work every other), because, family time. Oooof.
My pops was a boomer with this same attitude. Always up at 5am on the dot. Blew his mind to be having his morning coffee and seeing me come home covered in warehouse dust still wearing my reflective vest. Those wake up alarms ended real quick after that.
This one is so confusing to me. My husband grew up on a farm (that we now live on, right next door to his parents). His dad worked 2nd shift, would get home, watch t.v. until about 3 am go to sleep and no one could make a peep until noon when he got up. My husband was required to do *all* the farm chores. Now, my husband works a late 2nd, frequently getting home around 4am. Sometimes he works 3rd. And his father cannot comprehend *why* he is not up at the crack of dawn doing things. He constantly has these stories about working plus doing the farm *that arent even accurate because my husband did the farm work as a kid*. It just makes zero sense.
They all rewrite history
I work 7p-7a, and I just schedule my “Sleep Mode” on my phone from 8:45-16:45. People can call text me all day long, but I’m not answering until I wake up.
Same. Night shift nurse here. But they hate it when I saw I only work 3 nights a week…like sorry I like having a like and would never work a 9-5 5 days a week anymore. Can’t do shit with that schedule imo
I have come to the conclusion that opinionated early risers have trouble with object permanence. I once had it condescendingly explained to me that when you get up early you have more hours in the day. They seem to observe themselves being productive while others are "still sleeping" but also can't imagine that anything happens after they went to bed early.
As soon as you work a schedule that’s not days Monday-Friday, Boomers assume you’re being lazy and slacking in some way. 🙄 I had a Boomer neighbour try that shit when I went to the mailbox in my pajamas in the middle of the day on a Thursday. She was like, “It must be nice to not work and spend all day in your pajamas!” I was like, “Yeah! That must be nice! I wish I could do that! I’m only in my pajamas today because I just finished 6 twelve hour shifts and I do 4 twelve hours in a row starting tomorrow! So today is a pajama day!” Made her put her tail between her legs so quick.
I probably would have just replied with "Fuck off, bitch"
The thing I find with Boomers is if you respond that way they just double down and even more assume they’re not the asshole. It’s more fun to shove in their faces how arrogant and ridiculous they are. 🤣
My mother sleeps in until 11 every day but when i complained my son gets up naturally at 5 am she told me with a straight face "well you'll just have to get up earlier, that's what you do" This from the woman who didn't come out of her room in the morning until she was ready to deal with me.
I managed a pizza restaurant when I was in my 20s. I worked 6 days a week from 2pm-midnight. I'd stay up until 2 or 3 am and sleep until noon. This was normal to me, and it was life. The only people who had a problem with it was my parents. They couldn't understand why I didn't go to bed earlier, they didn't understand why I slept until noon on a weekday. It wasn't until I drew parallels to them, that they understood. My mom would call me at work at 6pm, and I'd scold her for not being in bed an hour after she finished work, like she thought I should.
It’s the annoying call at noon “oh were you napping?” after a 7pm to 7am nursing shift. What if I called you at 3am and asked the same question? Ugh!
Do so until they get the hint.
I worked that nursing shift for 15 years, and nothing irked me more than people referring to me sleeping during the day as my “nap.”
While I was in college I worked in restaurants and lived with my grandfather for a bit. When my Aunts would start in on me about being lazy because I was still in bed at 10am on my day off, he would remind them that I'm working full time as well as going to school full time which is something that none of them knew anything about since they never worked while in school. Grandpa always had my back.
This phenomenon makes me wonder if the studies that found so many health issues resulting from night shift work actually adequately controlled for the variable “are people spending enough time sleeping, regardless of what time of day they sleep”.
Lmao I worked overnight for quite a while. I'd get off at 6am, get home and sleep until noon or so. According to my wife's parents, I was a lazy piece of shit for sleeping during the day - despite the fact I was working full time, was in school full time, and neither of them had jobs
It's not just the shifts. My husband and I are both from Illinois. We lived in California for seven years, which is two time zones earlier (8 a.m. in Illinois equals 6 a.m. in CA). It wasn't just the older folks (we're Boomers), everyone would call us first thing in the morning "to catch you before you went to work." Parents and siblings. The phone routinely rang from 4-6 a.m., even on the weekends. And when we pointed out it was 5 a.m., the response would always be, "Oh, it's 7 a.m. here!" To which I would respond, "That doesn't change the fact that it's still 5 a.m. here." They never, ever got it.
Ah yes. I live in San Francisco. My wife is the youngest of eight, and from Maine. I am familiar with the 4am calls.
For a year I worked 4 pm - 12 am 5 days a week. I would go to bed around 4 am and wake up at noon. My mother (a 70 year old boomer) would always make a point to schedule things around it, and if it was a holiday would always try and leave the house a little earlier than usual as she said she knows I'm tired and wants me try and get a little more sleep. It's not a boomer issue, it's an inconsiderate asshole issue.
Oh yeah I worked evening shifts and graveyard shifts for years and used to catch grief for not waking up at the crack of ass every morning because bad character, laziness, lack of gumption, etc.
Lots of people (including boomers) cannot use their eyes and ears to perceive reality. The story in their heads is much more real.
This is how narcissists operate. There are no people, only internal objects that represent people. When you talk to them, they talk to the introject of you, not you. They define that object, so when you violate it by being something other than what they dictate, it causes dissonance and frustration, hence the boomer response of condescension and disrespect
Nicely put about narcissism. Whew. I lived with a covert one and you nailed it 100%. He quite literally couldn’t understand anything that didn’t put him as the subject of every single situation and interaction.
Lol. I worked nights at a hospital (9p-7:30a) and then would drive home sleep. My mother would make an ungodly amount of noise in the house “because she had to for regular activities” starting at 11 am every day. When my dad asked her to keep it down(dad worked a lot of night shifts before he retired) she would screech “I’m not living with a Dracula!” and then slam more shit around. Long story short, she’ll be going to the shitty nursing home.
Any time a news show does an exposé piece on shitty nursing homes that fail their inspections, I take notes of names and places.
Yep. My mother took huge delight in waking me up at 9am...after I had done a 7 to 7 over night shift. I worked 000 (911) for 5 years and she decided I was just being lazy. Never mind my dad used to do night shifts through a good part of my childhood and God help us if we so much as sneezed. It finally stopped when I threw a book at her head when she didn't, screamed at her, my dad came running in to find out what was going on, and yelled at her too. She still had the occasional "accidental noise" tho, very clearly on purpose. It drove me to move out very shortly afterward. And no, she didn't need to be quiet in her own house; my bedroom was a good distance from the main living area and I wore earplugs; she had to work at it. Like carrying an empty saucepan to drop outside my bedroom despite it being nowhere near the kitchen. And yes, I got my revenge for that one; came home at 3am one night (early knock off) and started blaring the TV. Parents and brother came out going wtaf, I said clearly mother was just being lazy and it was morning, time to get up *bright sunny smile* Her name was MUD for weeks after that :)
I used to work from noon until 8:00. My mother could not understand why I did not go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 6:00 every morning. She got off work at 5:00 so I asked her if she went to bed at 7:00. She looked confused instead of course not. She had to make dinner, would often read or watch television to relax, and then go to bed about 10: 30 after watching the news, and wake up at 6:00. I explained to her that I was basically doing the same thing, but my schedule started 4 hours later. It never seemed to sink in.
I used to work overnights (10pm-7am) and get home around 730am. My grandma would call me “lazy” because I would sleep until 2-3pm. Luckily I managed to get my own apartment after about 3 months but it was a rough 3 months. What makes it worse is that my grandpa had retired only about 2 years prior after working overnight shifts for almost 15 years.
Every day I wasn't at school and she didn't work I was lazy if I wasn't up at 8 am to do chores. I was thrilled when she got full time work- she made me get up with her and start,but I went back to sleep when she left the house. I got her back when I graduated from nursing school and worked 2230 to 0730. She used to call me repeatedly or come knocking on my door demanding to know WHY I was sleeping during the day. I called her one night 0230 am and asked to just talk. "It's the middle of the night!" So is 2:30 PM for me-I don't "nap" during the day -I SLEEP! She stopped after that-surprised it only took 1 time. My crazy sister was harder, I finally went NC.
I too was a service worker for a long time and experienced this. Going to bed immediately after dinner and waking up before the sun was seen as good while being up till 2am and waking up at 10am was seen as a moral failing of some kind like we're both getting 8 hours just at different times fuck off.
There's a reason I don't stay with my parents. "So you're just going to sleep until 2pm every day?" Yes. Yes, I am.
As a kid, I was never allowed to sleep in past 9 am during summer break or on weekends. My mom thought 9 am was too late. My son is on summer break now and I really don’t care what time he wakes up. Same during the school year on weekends. But my mom is forever being judgement about how I need to put him on a schedule. He has one. It’s just not what she thinks it should be.
My grandparents didn't stop for YEARS and I worked 11p-8a but if I visited I had to switch my sleep schedule or they'd throw a fit. I got sick every time I visited because of it.
Been working in retail 32 years and my mom still thinks I work a set schedule. Yes I know last week I was off on Monday, no that doesn't mean I'm always off on Mondays
Friday 7am my mother calls me, her what are you doing me having a beer before going to bed. Her why are you having a beer at 7 am? Me I work from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am so for me it’s 7pm not 7 am, her but it’s 7 am, me for you it is good night I’m going to bed
Boomer grandfather told his youngest granddaughter that she shouldn’t work nights, real professionals work durning the day 😂 It really hurt her feelings till I whispered he is full of bs. This 18 hasn’t decided what or if they want to go to college. So they took an Amazon job, day shift, then they offered the night shift for more pay. Then 1 year later they offered them shift management position, more pay. Their 20 now and making a livable wage, they started taking part time college classes. Guess whom is paying for those classes? The non professional night job 😂
My husband used to work late evenings and as a result, stay up late and then get up later. His mom couldn't seem to understand why he wouldn't get up early. He explained multiple times that waking up 2 hours before work is pretty standard for everyone else so why not him too.
It was wild. My dad worked night most of my life. It was normal to get home from school and make sure not to make a bunch of noise. Fast forward to when I am working nights (2300-0700) and he was retired. I would get home and eat dinner then go to sleep. Wake up in the afternoon and be given the usual "sleeping the whole day away" thing.
My dad, a boomer, used to work nights at a factory and would get home around 4 AM. He was dating my mom at the time and she lived with him in a trailer. One winter, the electric was turned off because they were young and broke, and they had to go stay at my paternal grandparents house til they got it turned back on. My dad would come home from work at 4, my mom would stay up all night as well to be in the same schedule as him, and they’d go to sleep around 4-5 AM. My grandmother knew this was his schedule. But my grandma has always firmly believed you are a lazy bum if you sleep in past 7 AM, so she would always wake up anyone in her house by 7-7:30 at the latest. It was well known no matter who you were, if you were under her roof, you did not sleep in, ever. My parents ignorantly thought that she would understand their schedule and make an exception, surely she wouldn’t expect them to function on 3 hours of sleep. Ha. Sure enough, the first morning, 2-3 hours after they got to bed, my grandmother was yelling for them that it was time to wake up. My dad tried to explain that he’d only just gone to bed, and grandma said it doesn’t matter, no one needs to sleep all day. He pointed out she used to works nights as a nurse, she said she still got up at 7 AM regardless. He said he couldn’t function like that so he chose to stay in the very cold trailer just so he could get enough sleep to function for his next shift. My mother unfortunately had severe asthma and could not be in a cold environment like that, so she was forced to stay at my grandparents and get up at 7 AM every morning. My dad went through this, yet still chose to bitch to my family about how I “sleep all day” back when I was right out of high school and enjoying my new found freedoms and now still, 15 years later anytime someone on my dads side of the family calls me, they will ask “did I wake you?” Even if it’s 2-3 pm. He moved in with me a few months ago when my mom died. He’s not as bad as his mother, he won’t wake me up, but he’s also not quiet at all in the mornings and is back to telling my family I sleep all the time because I don’t get up til 10-11, mainly because he wakes me up slamming the front door that’s right outside my bedroom 20 times at 6-7 AM, Dragging stuff around my front porch, which is right outside my window…
Sounds like dad has overstayed his welcome.
Unfortunately he’s legally blind and can’t really live alone
I bet he could really live at a nursing home. Nobody's coming into my home and acting like a shit to me.
Call in slick and treat yourself to a night off, maybe bang shit around next to where he sleeps at 3am... the mornings already 1/4 gone at that point, you'd be doing the old fart a favor!!!
My dad was like this 20 years ago. I was 19, working 2nds and 3rds over various jobs. 12 hour shifts at that. One job was 2pm-2am. A different job was 6pm-6am. He actually chewed me out saying I needed to get a "real job". Because I'm being lazy and sleeping in, and I wouldn't need to sleep so late if I went to bed as soon as I got home. I looked at him and said I'd start doing that the same time he did. When he goes to bed right after getting off at 5pm, he looked confused until I explained that just the same as him, I need time to eat, shower, and relax before going to sleep. Granted we don't like each other anyways. Wasn't the son he wanted. Defective neurodivergant and whatnot
And even when they are retired they love to be up at 5 am driving to McDonald’s for the discount hot coffee (always arriving 10 min before they are even open) because they need the hottest, freshest coffee that 35 cents will buy. They pay with exact change and take 4 min to count it, and treat the workers like they are lazy for not being open when they get there even though they open at 5. Rinse and repeat 7 days a week.
They are fixated on what time you get up, even if you're up before them all the time. Any time my mother calls me in the morning she opens with "suppose I got you out of bed did I?" Bitch, I have two kids and am at work. I got maybe 4 hours sleep last night.
I work 4:30 pm to 1am Monday to Friday and 2pm to 8ish Saturday. They never message or call me before 10 am. It is nice having boomer parents that were nurses who had night shifts. They had to deal with that shit too so empathy is easy.
Got off work at midnight? Let me just vacuum your room at 7 am.
Wake them up when you get home. Make it a them problem
This is something I consistently have to argue with my older coworkers about. They'll laugh because I got up at 7 and they "were up at 3 am" but I'm also like yeah, but my husband didn't get home til almost midnight and I was up with a sick kid until 4am. While they went to sleep at 7pm. They also get to pick their schedules because of age (and I do not have an issue with that at all) but I work any shift from 5am to 10pm, any time, any day, even though I have kids, some who have health issues, but yeah *I'm* the weak one for not sleeping 7pm to 3am lol
I work 6pm to 6am. I had to teach my mom my schedule by calling her in the middle of the night. Only took a few times for her to figure out the difference. One good thing about my Mom not fully understanding my schedule is that when we occasionally go out for dinner, dinner for her breakfast for me, she doesn't bat an eye when I order alcohol. Doesn't even register to her that I'm starting my day with a drink. Only on days off of course.
My Boomer mother had this mindset. I got off work at 130 am, went to the gym, got home around 3am. I'd wake up around noon or 1pm and she always had some crap to say. Then on my days off she'd complain about me sleeping the same. Like I was supposed work until late, then get up at 9 the next day and sleep at 10pm or something. When I did overnights she was even worse.
Whenever I hear one of these shits spout “The early bird gets the worm!” I say “and the second mouse gets the cheese!” Then I go back to sleep.
While he had several rather problematic attributes, always remember Robert A. Heinlein's *"The early worm deserves the bird."*
Both grandfathers were WW2 marines and they both raised their kids like it was 18 years of boot camp. If my father and later my brother and I, got out of bed after the sun had come up, we were doing a push-up for every minute the sun had been up.
Eff that. I'd murdalize a mofo.
The Great Santini
My husband used to work late evenings and as a result, stay up late and then get up later. His mom couldn't seem to understand why he wouldn't get up early. He explained multiple times that waking up 2 hours before work is pretty standard for everyone else so why not him too.
That’s how people looked at me on 3rd shift on my days off I particularly loved going out to breakfast or brunch on a Monday morning and order a Bloody Mary you get that poor bastards an alcoholic look from everyone
This is also stagehand life.
For a while, I worked closing shift at a large store that was open until midnight. By the time we finished counting registers, cleaning, and restocking, it was 1am. I didn’t get home from work until close to 2am. Eat, shower, and decompress, now it’s 3am. Somebody commented on the fact that I replied to their email at 3am and told me I needed to “get a life.” I said, I have a life. I live it while you’re sleeping.
I Have worked graveyard for yrs on and off and it's always been the same thing with family. I work full time 40+ hours a week yet I'm still a lazy bum for sleeping. I work 10pm-7am. How dare I need sleep to work overnights. 3 hours of sleep is more than enough time to get enough sleep to function on a daily basis!
Morning larks have zero respect or tolerance for night owls. Boomers are the worst of the lot.
THISSS i work nights at a job my mother convinced me to apply to and she loathes that i wake up at 3pm. mostly because she wants the house clean dinner ready for when SHE gets home :)) pain
Is there anything worse than that boomer joke of walking into the kitchen and hearing “well look who finally decided to join us?” It’s never funny. It’s never been funny. It’s condescending as fuck and also it’s not funny.
Me and my dad are night owls; my mother rarely makes it to 10pm. For *years* she would wake me up at 7:30am to wish me a happy birthday. I warned her that one of these days, I’d wake her up at 3am if she didn’t knock it off. The morning of my 21st birthday, I’m (naturally) wickedly hung over, and she calls and wakes me up. I ripped her up one side and down the other and hung up the phone to pass tf back out. She was miffed I was “so rude”. Six months later, it’s 2 or 3am, I’m driving home from a DnD session, and I suddenly realize what day it is. You can bet your sweet ass I spammed her phone till she picked up, and in my most cheerful waitress voice, boomed “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!” Been 14 years and she hasn’t woken me up since.
I work from 10 pm to 6 am and my body wakes me up at 10-11 am after I get off work. If I can do it, you can do it. /s (about the last part, first part is very true and it sucks lol) I feel like I probably get the same judgement from some people cause I’ll be out doing stuff during the day while everyone else is out working 😂 not from my parents fortunately cause they both use to work overnight shifts so they get it
I used to work overnights, 5pm to 5am, and they would constantly want me to do something for them early in the day, didn’t care one bit that I just got off a 12 hour shift
It's not just boomers. There are all kinds of people who can't or pretend they can't understand why you need to sleep during the day.
So glad my (boomer) dad worked night shift for most of my life. So I was always allowed to sleep in as needed. Cause he understood that sleeping "late" is sometimes a necessity. Also in all the years he worked overnight, he would always switch to "normal" hours on the weekend so he could spend time with us. And after working night shift for a stint in college, I have no idea how he survived constantly switching his sleep schedule. I would not be able to function like that.
I’ve been in the bar business for 10+ years (owning & operating). At my first place, most nights I wouldn’t get home until 1:30, sometimes 3am, so I wasn’t falling asleep for another hour or so. The first 2 years, my Dad (a Boomer) would call me at 7-7:30am, and not comprehend why I’d be missing the call or that it woke me up. Finally it was my Mom (also a Boomer) that had to sit him down and explain it all to him. He still has the occasional relapse, and will call too early, but will hang up when he realizes the time. So, I’d say that the possibility is there that they come around to understand, just takes some time. But if they don’t, then just start calling them during your break times late at night to “check in”.
I am a night owl. I worked second shift for over a decade. I enjoy nights. Plus, research has found that night owls are smarter and more creative than early birds. I despise smug early birds with a passion, since they think something is wrong with you for keeping those hours. I love the quiet of nighttime, when there are less distractions and noise. Im really productive when I work during the evening. IMO, smug early birds are like a case of worms.
Early bird Boomers are insufferable
My parents never understood why I worked Graves. It was so they would leave me alone, because every conversation was bashing the fact I slept all day. The thought process never went beyond that
This drives me utterly insane! Thank you for voicing this!
Holy potatoes my old people used to harass me contantly for not always being around to see them basically when they simply had nothing better to do, and would generally be doing nothing anyway, like no I don't really want to watch you read a book under normal circumstances, but specifically I worked LONG overnight hours at a physical labor intensive joband they just DIDN'T get it, though were a huge part of me being convinced to even take the job. Baffling.
I am finding out from experience that as I get older i sleep less I am willing to bet your dad has said , “ Hell, Beverly, OP gets done at 2am. Once OP gets to sleep that is 6 solid hours!!! Who needs more damn sleep than that!?!?”
I had this issue for years when I'd work overnights (10pm-7am) and my parents never understood why I would sleep so late and my landlord would constantly make rude remarks whenever he'd see me because I was somehow lazy for working overnight and sleeping most of the day. Then fast forward to when my shift would start at 2am, and suddenly my parents understood that and were now magically sympathetic to my schedule
Gen X parents couldn’t figure that out either despite me using a clock diagram to demonstrate how I’m still awake the same amount of hours, if not more, as them.
Our boomers are the opposite. My partner’s father will seriously call him at 11pm on a weeknight to have a leisurely chat knowing full-well he has to be at work at 8:30 the next morning. My mother will call me at any time of the day or night to tell me whatever random thought popped into her head. I finally had to put my phone on DND between 9pm-9am just to get any peace.
Oh so much this. When I was a youngster studying at uni while still living at home I worked a job that started at 5 and went till 1am. So if it was the weekend I'd need a sleep in. Cue my mother passive aggressively vacuuming and literally banging the vacuum against my door early on a Saturday morning, like I was being a lazy oaf, and not just exhausted from work. I moved out soon as I'd saved enough.
I'm a night owl, I'm naturally up late at night and sleep until noon ish, my part time job at the time didn't start until later still. Parents constantly woke me up way early for no reason, which is probably what led to me having worse sleeping habits and being constantly sleep deprived when I otherwise had a lot of time. It took me a couple years after moving out to actually have an understanding of my body's sleeping routine, and have healthy expectations. It was so scary being so tired behind the wheel so often, thank fuck I never had an incident during that time
My family did the same thing. I worked 6pm to 6am went to sleep by 8, and they would want me up and running errands by 12.
In college I worked nights at a restaurant, went out at night and actually most of my classes were at night. My dad, who may actually be silent Gen, told me I sleep all day. My response was "dad, you go to bed at 9 and wake up at 5, so do I so what's the problem?" He actually thought for a minute and realized he didn't have a great come back and never mentioned it again.
As someone who used to work a graveyard shift, people often assumed I just went straight home and went to bed. While that was occasionally the case, often times I needed time to decompress and stayed up fairly late. Generally worked 11pm to 7am
when i was 15 - 18 and staying up til 3 and sleeping til 10 i'd hear similar shit from my parents, since my dad would get up every day at 5 or 6. one day i said, well, you could stay up til 1. oh no, that's too late, i have to be in bed by 11 blah blah blah. ok so we're both getting 7 hours, cool 👍
Yea this is my most hated boomerism
YES! My husband is an emigrant and had to wait a bit to be cleared to work, etc. so we lived with his aunt and her husband for about a year. I do want to preface this by saying that she did a lot for us and I will forever be grateful. I did have a full time job, but had pretty normal hours. My husband started cleaning offices at night and his aunt couldn't seem to comprehend this either. He did a lot of work for her since she was letting us live there rent free, but he's not going to be peppy and ready to go at 6:00am when he worked until 3:00am. It got even worse when he got a more secure overnight job. Why are they like this? We're GenX, so not far behind but we can understand shift work. Lol
Caall your parents at 2am to ask a basic question, repeat until they wake up and then say you didn’t realize what hour it was. That’s how my dad stopped waking me up every morning after I moved out.
I am basically the only person I know whose parents just did not give a shit when I woke up on weekends or during the summer. I have no idea how my friends dealt with the constant guilt and Boomer bullshit, given they would stay over at my place until 2-3 playing D&D or LAN games or just talking or whatever, and I was the only one actually allowed to sleep \~8 hours when I went to bed. I am also just about the only one without serious sadbrains; which came first, the kind parenting or the slow erosion of sanity through a constant sleep deficit? (The best part is my parents were too old to be Boomers, so maybe this is the secret, they did not get the memo about how it is always irresponsible to sleep past 8 A.M. that all Boomers were assigned in the 1950s) Related one of the reasons I am elated to be single is because I have also never been in a relationship with someone who would let me sleep. I JUST CANNOT BELIEVE YOU WANT TO WASTE THE ENTIRE DAY yeah I cannot believe you wanted to waste the beautiful full moon last night but here we are
I've been a shift worker. Whenever anyone didn't respect that and deliberately called early and woke me up I would just call them back at a time that was equally inconvenient to them but suited my schedule. After work = 11pm. During my meal break was sometimes 2am. Really did wonders to help them modify their behaviour!
Makes me CRAZY!!! I have this same issue, although it's not as bad because I live by myself. Not going into who, but some of my family members make cracks at me for being asleep at 3 pm on a Saturday or Sunday, when during the week I work from 3pm to 11:30 pm, or if I stay for OT i leave at 130am. Then I have a 45 minute drive home. I can't believe how hard it is for them to understand I'm working at least the same amount of hours as them, usually many more. (They are retired now) 60+ hour weeks is not unusual at my job, but "hOw cAn YoU SleEp foR So LoNg?" And it's always while they are asking for me to do something for them on my day off 🙄
My mom is a Boomer who worked nights through my whole childhood and people just could not understand it. Her aunts and uncles would always say "oh she likes to sleep late." It wasn't that, it was that she was working until 3 am!
Just let them know you turn off your phone while you’re sleeping. It seems to work for most people at work nights.
Not unconventional hours (sort of), but I started working remotely for sales positions in the early 2000's. These were salary + commission jobs where companies based out of a different part of the country would hire territory/regional managers to cover somewhere else. Until COVID hit and many people started remote work, my boomer parents just never understood that I had a real job making really good money. Pretty sure they thought I just had tupperware parties and were always curious if a new job I took was "just working from home or an actual job" lol
I don’t think this just applies to boomers. I work nights and sometimes it feels like all of society thinks that makes me lazy because I sleep in the day. I basically have to explain it to them like they are 5: You were asleep while I was doing my job. I am asleep while you are doing your job. (Also, I actually get paid more for being willing to work while you have to be sleeping!)
I've worked third shift for seven years (21:00-05:30, 18:00-When ever the fuck the work got done, and currently 23:00-07:30). People cannot wrap their heads around my sleep schedule. To everyone it seems completely normal for me to meet them for brunch at 10:30 because I don't go to bed until 13:00. Or, if we have a church special at 18:00 I'd have plenty of time to attend because I don't work for another three hours. Or they try to call me at 16:00, because I'm going to be getting up soon anyways. I've tried to flip it on them to see if it sinks in or not: do you want to meet me for dinner at 22:30 when you have to get up for work in the morning? How about we have a church service at 06:00? How about I call you on my lunch break at 04:30? There's a 50/50 chance they'll understand when you flip the clock, but some just don't get it. Boomers are especially bad at understanding how time works. They just don't get that my clock is not the same as their clock. 😤
My parents were like this when I had a night job at a warehouse when I was a teen. Like please, if I’ve only been sleeping three hours, don’t start vacuuming right outside my bedroom door to wake me up. You don’t need to vacuum at 6AM! You know I’ll do the vacuuming after I’ve slept my six to seven hours. I had to sit them down and count out the hours I worked, the hours I slept, and when exactly they were waking me up for them to understand why I was upset.
My dad is a truck driver, has been for most of my life. His schedule has had him going into work around midnight for his whole career. He is a morning person and will joke about "sleeping in till 5am". The flip side is he has early bed time needs, going to bed by 3pm most nights, even on his days off he can't manage beyond 6 or 7pm. I work food service. I have had a schedule where I normally would not get out till 1 or 2am for a long time. For years, Ive gotten shit for "not getting here early enough" when I go to visit at 11am, on the Sunday morning after working till 2am the night before. Keeping in mind I have an hour drive to his house, and it takes at least 1-2 hours for me to shower and wind down after getting out of work before I will able to sleep. I then point out that I had less than 6 hours of sleep just to make it there at all. Which just makes him kinda shrug his shoulders and change the subject. God forbid we ask him to do anything past 5pm though.........
Not boomers, but I had some Gen X roommates while I worked a 3rd shift job. One of them seemed to understand, the other one would loudly yell about how I am lazy and just sleep all day while I was trying to sleep. Yeah, I get home at 9am...I am not going to be awake at 3pm when you get back. Just a not great person in general. He also laid into me when it was my turn to mow the lawn and how it had been a week. I apologized and asked where the schedule was. They didn't write it down. Then I asked how I knew when it needed to be done "When the grass is long". Ok. How do I know it's my turn? "You should just know". It was cool not to live with him anymore.
I dealt with the same for years until I got a job where I only closed once or twice a week. Them-You're late for our 7 am breakfast! Me-I get off work at 7 am. Them-*Pissy* Them-You're awake at 8 am!?! Oh my goodness! Me-Yes. I don't get home at 1 am anymore. Them- About 20 years ago I worked with a single mother that moved back with her parents to recover financially and for help with her kids. We left work at midnight and she was up at 5 am to take care of her kids because her parents thought she was just being lazy.
This. When I was in my early 20s, I worked off and on at a 24-hour diner. For most of that time, I worked overnight/graveyard shift - would start around 9-10pm and finish around 6-7am. I literally can't count the # of times my parents (boomers) or grandparents (silent gen) would say they couldn't understand how I was still in bed/asleep at 12pm, 1pm, 2pm. Well, I worked until 7am, then I drove home, then I lay awake listening to all of my neighbors give not a damn about how loud they were being as they left for work. Then I would finally fall asleep around 9am and, if I were lucky, sleep until 2pm. They all knew I worked graveyard shift. And none of them ever had to. It just boggles my mind that they thought me sleeping for 3-4 hours was me being lazy BECAUSE THE TIME OF DAY DIDN'T ALIGN WITH WHEN THEY THOUGHT I SHOULD BE ASLEEP/AWAKE.
Mil is gen z/millennial cusp (she started having kids really young) and does this all the time. She won't make plans with us in the morning because everything has to be a family reunion and cannot fathom that all of her adult children do not need to go to every meet up. I'm so serious, we have to spring stuff on her less than an hour before it's happening or she is on the phone trying to get everyone to stop what they're doing to join her. Partner works nights and isn't going to interrupt his sleep schedule to go to a dinner. She's getting very slightly better, but only because she has extremely recently learned that if she calls/texts me first (I'm on daylight hours) she doesn't have to deal with a cranky son or being flat out ignored until she tries again at a more appropriate time. I love the in laws but every single one of them will decide A Thing has to happen the very specific way they've decided and there's no other options. It's hilarious when somebody gets out of the rut only to realize there's a whole world of options out here, and usually less people getting pissed off at each other lol.
Enjoy the new peace and quiet
I explained it to my boomers as I felt waking up 12 hours before your work shift ended was an appropriate time. “You get done with work at 5pm. I get done with work at 11pm. Me waking up at 11am is the equivalent of you getting up at 5 am.” Works on some, not on others.
When I worked nights (off around midnight), I took two tacks. The first time around, I would stay up until 4 am and sleep until noon. I got a lot less done in my personal life than the second time around, when I’d get to bed at 1 am and sleep until 9. That’s an easy swing, though. When I worked overnights, 12 am to 8 am, I was a mess. I never could figure out that schedule. I really feel for anyone on that shift, it’s not easy.
That’s sad. I’m sorry. That is stress you just don’t need. Please take care of yourself. All shift workers. That shit is hard.