as I’ve gotten older and more experienced. I’ve learned that when I was younger I was flying around fatigued but just didn’t recognize it.
Yeah. If I put my schedule into a proper fatigue calculator, it would probably error out.
All I have to go by is "I feel no worse than usual, and if I called out for every 3am wakeup, they'd just straight-up fire me."
Some simple math: if you need 8hr of sleep a night and only get 7, by the end of a week you’ve lost an entire night’s sleep.
I promise I'm not complaining for the sake of complaining, but I'm on permanent AM reserve (3am to 3pm), and I regularly get worked well into the evening. I'm nocturnal by nature, and my normal sleep time is ~0600 - ~1300. I really feel lucky if I get 5+ hours during a work block.
I can't tell you the number of miserable nights where I've been laying in bed, wide awake, at 0100, check my schedule, and see a 0500 show. If I ever seem like I'm losing my emotional equilibrium about work issues, it's mostly that.
(Shout out to all those who wake up at 0300 to commute to a 1200 show then fly till 0000. Or the corresponding fly to 0000, rack out in the crew lounge until the morning shift comes in, then get up at 0430 to commute home)
Don't even need a commute to do that! With an hour and a half drive to work:
3am callout -> 5am show:
Table B up to 4 segments: 5am + 12 hours + 4: 9pm, or:
RAP + 16 = 7pm. Extended by two hours:
9pm.
45 minutes to get to your vehicle in the parking lot / garage, an hour and a half to get home, and it's almost midnight.
(But it's ok, they'll adjust your show time for the next day from 06:55 to 07:00. 07:00 - :30 (parking garage to inside security) - 1:30 (drive) - :30 (getting ready to go) means you get a whole four hours of sleep, if you can skip eating, showering, or uniform maintenance.)
(And yes, this pretty well describes my schedule, except my drive to work is only about 40 minutes, mostly because I ride a motorcycle)
That said, if I'm fatigued and know it, I do call fatigued. Being proud of not calling in fatigued or sick is, frankly, toxic and stupid. But I can't call in fatigued every time I'm exhausted.
It's a good thing people are excellent at determining whether they're fatigued.
Oh. Oh, wait.