Night shift

After 15 years of keeping a daily journal, I decided to start my first blog. Since I work the night shift for E*Trade Financial I will have plenty of time to air my grievances and write about the things that should interest everyone else. I was started working for DLJdirect on July 10, 2000. Within one year we were sold and became CSFBdirect. I went to the night shift after being with the company for about 17 months. After about two years with the company we were sold to the Bank of Montreal and became Harrisdirect. Bank of Montreal owns Harris Bank in Chicago, and the merged us with their pathetic attempt at an online brokerage firm. In October 2005, BOM sold us to E*Trade Financial. We were all worried that E*Trade would lay off our office, but we are still here almost a year later. E*Trade has been much better to work for than I originally expected. We merged from Harrisdirect to E*Trade on January 11, 2006. Work sucked for the next few months. We had all kinds of technical problems with the merger. We went from holding about five calls at Harrisdirect to 250 calls the first night of the merger. The night shift has always been a great work environment because we are busy for the first half of the shift and slow the second half. There were five of us on the night we held 250 calls. Our customers were so mad. We had people holding for hours to talk to us. We knew we could never get through all the calls in one night. The next morning we transferred over 100 calls to our Charlotte office. We don't like them anyway. It took a few months for the calls to go away. We earned our overtime in those months. I worked a 22 hour shift one day. E*Trade rented out Boondocks for a company party to apologize for the merger. They gave away tons of prizes. I ended up with a $150 gift card to Cabela's. As it turned out, E*Trade was severely understaffed, so we finally had a chance for promotions in our office. I was able to act as a Team Lead and have time off the phone to help manage the new night shift. The veterans went to the weekend night shift, so we had rookies that needed a lot of help. In May I was officially promoted to a Team Lead and went to a day shift after 4 1/2 years on the night shift. I missed the night shift. It was in my blood at that point. It took a few weeks to get used to living like the rest of the world. I was so tired the first week. On July 10, 2006, I was sent back to the night shift as a Team Lead after about seven weeks in the sunlight.

This is where I belong. I see my kids more on this shift and it lets me teach Karate and mountain bike during the day. I work from 6:30 pm to 5 am four days a week. I wish I could work 2X20 and have five days off, but 4X10 in awesome. It makes the weekend feel so much longer. I never hit traffic and I don't have to be around a lot of people that I probably don't like anyway. The night shift rules.