Working through the dead of night
during the day, the maintenance is saved for the night crew, Mr. Thieret said.
“It’s kind of unique work,” he said. “It’s geared toward people who know what they’re getting into.”
That night, after leading a daily safety briefing at the company’s Preble Service Center on the North Side, Mr. Thieret took his crew to the River Vue apartments on Liberty Avenue, a building with four underground transformers.
Crew members lifted a section of the grate built into the sidewalk and cordoned it off with a pulley system attached to their harnesses.
Some joyous Penguins fans streamed around, oblivious to the work as they headed home after a game in Uptown. The company requires one worker to stand guard at the top of the grate, Mr. Thieret said.
Before entering, the crew tested for poisonous gases that can stray from other underground pipes or passing vehicles and hover in the vault. They looked for pools of standing water that would need to be pumped out.
Mr. Thieret, descending the ladder and standing next to the monstrous equipment, noted the vault about 10 feet underground was relatively clean and spacious. Tonight, he said, the crew would disconnect the breaker and make sure the spring-loaded system opens and closes properly. “Some parts just get old,” he said. “You’ll have a motor burn up or a switch go bad.”
If the whole thing would need to be replaced, the crews bring in a crane: The transformer and breaker together are the size of a truck and weigh 12,000 pounds.
From the setup to the drive back to the North Side, Mr. Thieret said, one maintenance job typically takes six hours. Married without children, he heads straight to bed after getting off at 5 a.m. and has no problem getting a solid six hours of sleep.
“This is normal for me,” he said. “This is kind of all I’ve known.”
March 8, 12:01 a.m.
The machines at Haemonetics were humming. Beads of plastic resin slid in through overhead hoses and were heated up and molded into various shapes. Components were attached together. More than 100 people scurried around the factory floor, minding their tasks.
All the time, a production counter loomed overhead — constantly clicking toward the daily goal of 63,000 bowls and 48,000 bottles.
Barb Greshauk, the sole quality technician working for Haemonetics at night, made her rounds to different cells — bright, sterile rooms walled off from the rest of the factory. She gathered temperature,humidity and pressure readings to mark the beginning of the day and carried a stack of paperwork.
Ms. Greshauk was looking for “nonconforming events” — blemished products that she must stop from leaving the factory. She pulls a sample of each product every night and inspects it. Workers on the assembly line also bring them to her.
One that she got this shift: a plastic bowl that spins to extract plasma from blood had a small bubble in a piece of the core. Though it was a cosmetic problem, the slightest error in one of the components could throw off blood tests or cause recalls.
“You never know what’s going to happen,” she said. “If there are no issues, it can be a real easy night, but if you start finding things wrong with the product, it can get real hectic and crazy.”
Meanwhile, Russ Greshauk, a mechanic, walks through the operation and fixes issues as quickly as possible.
“You have a room of people who are sitting there waiting on you to get this machine up and running,” he said.
April 4, 12:47 a.m.
Tom Whyel travels through the city like few others can.
Taking off in a bucket truck from the Port Authority’s South Hills Junction on Warrington Avenue, he breezed through the dreary Mount Washington Transit Tunnel, crossing trolley tracks onto the Smithfield Street Bridge. He connected with the East Busway and zoomed above the Strip District, far below the Bloomfield Bridge, past the glittering high-rises of East Liberty and Shadyside.
He stopped in Wilkinsburg and surveyed the park and ride lot with a frown. For the Port Authority, darkness is a liability that must be extinguished. And ensuring that every bulb works in places where people congregate or walk to their car is more important than having well-lit roads or tunnels, he said.
“I don’t like what I see on these light posts,” he said, opening up the back of this truck.
With a partner on the ground, Mr. Whyel methodically worked his way across the lot. On a good week, he repairs 70 to 80 light fixtures. He joined the agency eight years ago after retiring from a 24-year career as a mechanic for Bombardier Transportation in West Mifflin. “I wasn’t ready to quit working.”
The day before, Mr. Whyel, wearing his North Braddock borough manager hat, had been investigating a complaint from an elderly woman that an uneven sidewalk had caused her to fall while leaving a fish fry. He also had a meeting with the police chief. He showed up at a Boy Scout meeting, where he’s been a Cubmaster for 25 years.
Just before 11 p.m., he arrived at the Port Authority’s junction, a cluster of maintenance buildings where the night workers huddle. He set off with a truck full of bulbs, a box of tools and a cooler with his lunch.
“I’m getting lucky tonight — I like it when that happens,” he said. The first few fixtures had bad bulbs — the bulbs typically last around three years. The sooner you get to a bulb, the greater chance you have of avoiding damage within the fixture, which is trying to send power to the bulb.
If the problem is deeper, he has to detach the fixture and bring it down to the truck. That can add at least 30 minutes to a job. Animals are a pesky issue, too. At the East Liberty stop, rodents had gotten into the conduit and chewed on the wires.
“Even in the middle of wintertime, we’re out here because you still got to go out and fix them,” Mr. Whyel said. “It’s our obligation to the people.”
On this night, his luck ran out eventually. Around 1 a.m., a socket issue forced him to bring down the fixture and grab some tools from his truck.
March 8, 4 a.m.
For many night shift workers, there comes a time when they begin to drift.
“Four a.m. is my time,” Ms. Greshauk said. “My body tells me it’s time to go to sleep.” When it happens, she’ll turn on some loud music and try to get the blood flowing. “I’ll also get up and make laps around the warehouse or go talk to somebody because it can get real rough.”
Night workers interviewed for this story insist they don’t feel like they lose focus when performing a task that requires concentration or is dangerous; it’s the tedious parts of the night that have an effect.
But sleep experts have found that night shift work can cause serious cognitive impairments. According to a 2015 study published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, these workers are “alert insomniacs.”
“There is a physiological cost to being a night shift worker,” said Nathaniel F. Watson, professor of neurology at the University of Washington in Seattle and also a former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
“We’ve evolved over millions of years to prefer sleeping when it’s dark out,” he said. “You’re kind of fighting against your natural circadian rhythm.”
When they leave work in the morning, he added, shift workers should go to sleep right away. Wearing sunglasses on the commute home in the morning and putting blackout shades in the bedroom can help them ease into sleep.
Shift workers described feeling exhausted at the end of their shift, but some stay up anyway.
Some, like the Greshauks, choose to stay up to finish home improvement projects, sometimes to the point of “feeling like a zombie.” Mr. Kelley, the Gateway Center cleaner, said he wails on one of his 11 electric guitars or plays video games for a few hours before dozing.
“What we’re doing is unnatural — we’re supposed to be asleep, and your body knows that,” Mr. Kelley said. “So there comes a point every night where your body says that’s it, you’re done.” By the time he gets on the bus at 6:30 a.m., he said, he is “really noodled out.” He wouldn’t trust himself to drive a car.
Mr. Whyel of the Port Authority said when he sits down in his chair at the end of the week to watch a television show, “The show watches me.”
“But here’s the issue — I don’t even feel tired,” he said. “Until I sit down. Then I’m gone. Lights out, party’s over.”
March 16, 5:37 a.m.
With time running out until a wave of morning shoppers arrives at Giant Eagle’s top store in the region, Tom Boyle was on his knees in the frozen food aisle, helping one of his employees break down boxes.
It had been a relatively smooth night, with his staff of about 30 people handling incoming truckloads of products and filling up the shelves.
But Mr. Boyle, store manager of the South Hills Market District store in Bethel Park for five years, was well aware of the vagaries of the grocery store supply chain. He knew this shift had been light because snow halted a truckload of orders from Unified Grocers, a distribution company that would have to send it the following night.
“Tomorrow night and Friday night are probably going to be hell,” he said. “Because I already know the Unified order’s going to be twice the order it normally is. I didn’t write a schedule for that.”
Mr. Boyle, with a breathless cadence and the disciplined personality of a sports-team captain, used to own a business making and selling neon signs. Seeing no future there, he interviewed at O’Hara-based Giant Eagle and was offered the store manager position.
He learned the job quickly, he said, and can now spot unusual holes on the shelves, anticipate seasonal orders and examine wear and tear on the store that may need to be fixed.
He speaks in grocery store argot — pointing out endcaps, the shelves at the end of an aisle; bunkers, the open freezer containers spread throughout the store; and “blocking,” or bringing products to the front of the shelves so the aisles look like a long wall.
He was slightly critical of the Breyers ice cream display, which had not been blocked properly. “I can tell you we should’ve ordered that heavier,” he said. “If I go into business looking like this tomorrow, we’re going to have a chance of missing sales.”
In a typical shift, he walks as far as 18 miles. As the store began to buzz with activity, the meat counter display started filling up as workers cut slabs of beef and pork. The smell of blueberry muffins wafted from the bakery ovens. Though it’s open 24 hours, the store’s morning rush begins around 7:30 a.m., about the time the daylight managers arrive.
Mr. Boyle refers to the end of the shift as a “finish line” that the night workers must always reach. And, in his five years, they always have.
“There’s no fallback,” he said. “Once the business starts happening, daylight [shifts] will never recover. The goal for me and crew is to get the store set so good that the people here at daylight can just work on replenishing what sells.”