The art of the overnight

when you’re up, you’re up

My first full time job, which commenced five days after I graduated from college, required me to work overnight. As a desk assistant at ABC News, I recieved my schedule one week in advance. Sometimes it would be 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., which was the worst. Not enough time for a decent dinner with friends, which was all I really wanted to do when I was 22 and newly living in Manhattan, in a railroad style two bedroom on 50th and 10th.

After several hard fought promotions, in 2011, I made it to a green screen.

On top of that, it was summer. Early June. Imagine making your Carrie Bradshaw dreams come true and then not being able to go out for cosmos on a balmy Thursday night. But I digress.

The other options were midnight to 9 a.m. — better, you could squeeze in a bite and a few hours of sleep — and 3 a.m. to noon, which was the best. You could have a decent dinner and multiple lychee martinis (my drink of choice back then) fall asleep around 10 p.m., wake up at two o’clock, blast yourself with hot water and hop on the M11 bus, which stopped not far from my apartment.

Uber did not yet exist; spending money on cabs to get to work seemed foolhardy. I was making a very good salary for a neophyte in media, maybe $55K, on account of my job being a union position that accrued overtime. But then, as now, I had no idea how to manage my money, so I lived with a sort of frugality over everything ethos until I went to Las Vegas at 25 and plunged myself into credit card debt, which is another story for another time.

No matter the hour, once I got to the office, I had no choice but to be up. The fluorescent lights helped, as did the ever present threat of being fired. My job entailed mostly administrative tasks, answering the phones and photocopying Good Morning America scripts and running them around the building at 47 West 66th Street. I was advised to dress business casual, which was more formal then than it is now, so I accomplished my tasks in kitten heels from Nine West that gave me blisters. It’s hard to fall asleep when you’re developing blisters.

There was also the bagel spread that would take over a conference room every morning at 4 a.m. on the dot (I might be misremembering the time but not the consistency — the powers that be knew that to keep to the troops motivated, you had to feed them at the same time, every time). These were not good bagels by any stretch of the imagination. They were corporate catering bagels. They were served with fruit that might have been imported from Chile in the 1990s. But DoorDash was also not yet a thing and my frugality over everything ethos precluded the spending of hard earned USDs on bodega egg and cheeses. (As a result, I never got into bodega egg and cheeses, which kind of feels like a crime.)

I ran off the buzz of the newsroom and the compulsion to get ahead. After about a week on the overnight, I wanted off. The only way to do that was to impress the human resources supervisor who looked after the D.A.s and made the schedule. She was the person who had hired me. She had also also overseen my internship at ABC News, the previous summer, and was surely aware that I could be persistent to the point of annoyance (my former Twitter bio).

This woman, whose name I can recite as readily as my own, will live rent free in my head for the rest of my life. The hold she had on me, given that she divined my working schedule and thereby, my social life … aside from a mother, I really don’t know if anyone should have that kind of power over anyone else.

It’s not her fault. I could have been more chill, but at 22, I was the opposite of chill. There was LIFE to LIVE and goshdarnit, I was going to do it.

The best desk assistants got to work from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. They served World News Tonight, which was anchored by Peter Jennings when I started. The way to get staffed on that shift was to meet with Peter’s deputy, a woman who wore nubby cardigans and had a hairstyle that recalled TV moms of the ‘90s.

This woman asked all hopefuls one question: “What sections of the New York Times do you not read?” My reply: “sports and real estate.” I knew I’d blown it the moment the words came out of my mouth. I didn’t know that the correct answer was “none” — you were supposed to say you read every section of the New York Times, even if you actually didn’t. Suffice it to say that I never got staffed on the 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift.

Which meant that I pestered the H.R. head for weeks and months for another sort of promotion. I wish I had a record of my emails to her from that time. Desperate would not even begin to describe it. While I had weekends to myself, and it sure was nice to kick them off at 9 a.m. on Friday, to go a dive bar with my fellow D.A.s and drink mimosas and convince myself that I was living the life, my work week schedule meant that I often passed out before I could make it to dinner, sometimes at dinner itself.

My sleep patterns were, naturally, a mess. In August 2005, thanks to the help of a meteorologist named Dennis who worked at Good Morning America and moonlighted as a real estate agent, I moved into a two bedroom apartment on 51st and 9th. Pros: it did not have a railroad layout, so I didn’t have to walk through my roommate’s bedroom to get to mine. Cons: there was constant construction on 51st Street. Even with earplugs in and an eye mask on, sleeping during daylight was a challenge.

Another pro: it was on the same block as Azuri, an iconic falafel joint with a crotchety owner who is rumored to have inspired the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. Often, prior to heading into the office, I would get an Azuri falafel pita to go … and get a second falafel pita to consume during the mid-shift lull. (Two months in New York City, and already, my frugal ethos was starting to crack.) Yet another pro: Dennis was and still is perhaps the least slimy real estate agent ever; we remain friends. If you’re reading this, hi, Dennis!

Despite the havoc it wreaked on my social life and general wellbeing (wonder what Oura would’ve had to say) there was something kind of magical about the overnight. Getting your work day over with while everyone else is asleep. Being able to run errands in uncrowded Duane Reades. Having your pick of the treadmills at New York Sports Club, none of which were good, per se, but you could probably nab the one beneath the TV tuned to NY1.

Twenty years later (yikes, I just did the math), I still find it special to be awake at this time, 3:58 a.m. Is it ideal? No. But, thanks to my tried and true in-flight routine,

I’m jet lagged, and sleep does not come as easily to me as it did when I was 22. To be able to be dead to the world for 10 hours, wake up, chug a liter-size Fiji (a Saturday morning indulgence, another crack in the frugality ethos) and go back to bed for another two … that is the literal stuff of dreams. Enjoy it while you can, youths.

It took seven months. In December of 2005 (or thereabouts) I got promoted off the D.A. desk and moved to 20/20 to be a production secretary. Perversely, I’d be making less money than I had as a desk assistant because my new job would be non-union, but I thought it was worth it to ascend a rung on the ladder and, hey. Welcome to media. Don’t come here if you hope to get rich.

These days, when insomnia strikes, I think about all those hours I spent clad in clearance rack Banana Republic, staring at twin monitors and strategizing how to “make it.” I’m now of the mind that you never really do — we humans are good at moving goal posts — but it’s nice to remember that if you toughed it out once, you can tough it out again, and if all else fails, you can always take a nap.

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