Early to rise

On wintry mornings when most employees pull their cars into parking lots, they don't stop to think of people like Doyle Parmer of Dutchtown, who gets up in the early, bone-chilling hours to clear away the snow and ice.

When most people drink their morning coffee and eat a breakfast doughnut, it may not cross their minds that a baker such as Ralph Wille of Cape Girardeau went to work around 1 a.m. so those doughnuts will be fresh.

And as they're clearing away remnants of breakfast, putting away the milk and orange juice, loading and starting the dishwasher, it's easy to overlook people at the grocery store like Brad Eggimann, who spends all night overseeing employees who are stocking the shelves at Schnucks so those items are readily available, and mopping and scrubbing so that the store is clean.

People who work at night aren't always visible. The up side, they say, is they don't have the distractions that a day job brings. Nonetheless, night work takes some adjusting.

The most common problem among people who work the night shift is regulating their body clock to match the time clock. According to the National Sleep Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, the body's clock is linked to nature's cycle of light and darkness and regulates cycles in body temperature, hormones, heart rate and other functions. For humans, the foundation says, the desire to sleep is strongest between midnight and 6 a.m.

'Broken sleep'

Ralph Wille, owner of Wille's Bakery, 1215 Broadway, says he has always worked odd hours. What seems to work for him is that he grabs a few hours of sleep whenever he can. He doesn't wait until he has a six- or eight-hour block of time. Wille said he comes in around 1 a.m. and works until 10 a.m. He goes home and naps for a while, then comes back in the afternoon, and works until the shop closes at 5. Then he goes home and sleeps until it's time to start over. He calls it "broken sleep."

"Some guys will stay up all night," he said. "Staying up all night is harder."

The National Sleep Foundation recommends that shift workers take frequent naps, even on days off and weekends to keep the body's sleep schedule on an even keel.

Wille grew up in a bakery, helping his father who worked for, and later owned, Wagner Bakery in Jackson.

When he comes in, the first thing he does is make coffee. By the time his employees start arriving at 2 and 3 a.m., he's up to his elbows in dough so that hot, fresh doughnuts will be ready for the first customers, who show up around 5 a.m.

He starts early because he makes everything from scratch. The competition is tough; he offers what grocery stores and other large retail outlets can't offer while realizing that some customers have probably never tasted fresh pastry.

"I want mine to be the best," Wille said. "I want them to be the best product at the best price. I don't like to be second best."

Although his 18-year-old daughter, Kelli, works with him, he said he finds that most of the more reliable employees willing to work the late hours are older people. Now 52, Wille said that as he grows older he doesn't seem to need as much sleep. Or perhaps he's just built up a rhythm.

So accustomed is he to unusual hours, Wille said, that when he took a vacation recently his habits were hard to get away from.

"I'm so used to eating lunch and lying down I wanted to do that on vacation," he said. "I found myself wanting that afternoon nap."

Wille's body clock is apparently stuck at the hours he is accustomed to keeping. Kelli scoffed when Wille claimed to have slept until 8 or 9 a.m. while on a recent vacation.

"Try more like 4 or 5," she said. "He comes in knocking around saying 'get up, girls.' I said that's no vacation; we want to sleep in."

Other than the occasional unusual request for a handout, Wille said working at night is more peaceful than working during the day.

"I don't have a lot of distractions," he said. "I don't have the phone ringing, or somebody trying to sell me something."

Wille said he tried a day job once, working in a bakery at a local supermarket. It didn't last, but not because of the hours he said. He said he'd someday like to have a job with hours other people consider normal. He said he didn't think it would take much to adjust to the time change. But that would mean the loss of another independent, home-owned bakery that uses recipes instead of frozen dough. Maybe the world isn't ready to give that up just yet.

'You never adjust'

Doyle Parmer, owner of Dutch Clean and Lawn Care, says he works a 12-hour day. Most of the time he gets up early and comes home late, but in the winter he gets up even earlier to clear away snow. There are people who will work nights in bad weather, he said.

Parmer says he has always kept unconventional hours.

"In high school I worked 40 hours a week at night from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.," he said. "I went to school from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. I did it for three years. I remember being happy I had study hall at the end of the day. Come evening, I would work hard to hold my eyes open. Today if I tried to do that ... ."

At 47, he says he's slowing down some, yet he shrugs off the notion that it's unusual to get up before dawn in unfriendly weather to make life easier for people who haven't yet gotten out of bed.

"It's quiet," he said of the working conditions. "Sometimes it's a little spooky. It's very boring, you're going back and forth, back and forth."

Twenty years ago, Parmer said he spent three years working a swing shift at a local factory. It was there, he said, that he learned of a study the company did that concluded someone who works 30 years on a swing shift loses 10 years of his life.

"I believe that," Parmer said. "You never adjust. When I was on swing shift, by the time I got my bowels lined up the shift changed. If you can stay on one particular shift for a month, usually your body adjusts. If you change on a weekly basis the human clock does not work."

According to the National Sleep Foundation, shift workers experience more stomach problems, menstrual irregularities, colds, flu and weight gain than day workers. They also have a higher risk of heart problems and high blood pressure.

Night work can be hard on family life, Parmer said. Because of the way the schedules are arranged, shift workers get a weekend off maybe every three weeks.

"My wife did not like it," he said. "I did not get to see the kids. I could not coach a youth league of any type. The job is terrible on family life, I think."

Being off when most people are working has its advantages, Parmer said. When he works nights, he's free during the day to make doctor appointments without missing any work. He can buy a car or go to the bank when most people are on the job. Yet there's always the knowledge that there's something out of the ordinary about working those hours, even for the people who work them.

Isolated by the hours

Brad Eggimann's day at Schnucks, 19 S. Kingshighway, begins at 10 p.m. The difference between the jobs of the day manager and night manager is like, well, night and day.

"There's a different set of receipts, different activities," Eggimann said. His job is to monitor the store, maintain the freezers and coolers and get someone to repair them if they break down. He does other reports and "things they couldn't do during the day."

Eggimann agrees that he might as well be invisible.

"I don't get to associate with a lot of the people I normally would during the day," he said.

Schnucks is open 24 hours a day. At night, customer traffic is lighter and fewer checkout clerks ring up purchases, but employees are busy restocking shelves and cleaning the floors.

Working 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. is tough, but Eggimann said it's better than the hours he pulled when he worked in the bakery department, sometimes coming in 2, 3 or 4 in the morning. Either way, the hours can isolate him. Making family plans can be difficult.

"Weekends are tough," he said. "You can't really have friends over. They're off all weekend and I have to go in Saturday and Sunday night."

Eggimann said he goes to bed around 7 a.m. and gets up around noon. He only needs about five hours sleep, he said.

He does get to spend more time with his children, an 8-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son. He's home with them during the day; when he leaves for work, they're tucked in bed. He said he was able to enjoy his daughter's ballgames in the summer before going to work.

His wife is a nurse working 12-hour shifts at Saint Francis Medical Center -- sometimes at night. It makes time together tricky, but it can work.

"She gets home before I go to work, so there's always someone at home with the kids," he said.

Eggimann said he hopes someday to have regular hours. Night work is hard on a person.

"You're tired more," he said. "Your body was not meant to be awake at night. You spend 18 to 20 years of your early life sleeping at night."

Eggimann said not many customers come in so the store is fairly quiet.

Most customers just want to pick up a few items and get out quickly, he said, but the night brings out a few who have other ideas.

"We have people at night come in drunk," he said. "People on drugs, they are the worst. Luckily it's not much. A lot of times, they get upset because they want to buy liquor past 1:30 a.m. and they can't get it. The ones on drugs -- there's just no reasoning with them."

The day before Thanksgiving, he said, about 80 people came in between midnight and 2 a.m. Any other time, 20 or so stop by during those hours. Occasionally, there are times when only the employees are there, but that doesn't last long.

"Every so often somebody comes in," he said.

Night people need to shop too.

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160