Lots of “day people” adjust to working night shifts. Why can “night people” adjust to working day shifts?
Actually, scientific studies have shown that most day people do not adapt well to being awake during the night and sleeping during the day. Their physical and mental well-being suffers, as does their job performance. There are some things that enlightened shift schedulers can do to help them cope, such as providing bright lights during night shifts, but the adaptation is never perfect and the aids, such as bright lights, must be maintained as long as the day person is required to maintain a night schedule because a day person’s body will immediately try to revert to a day schedule without such aids. In exactly the same way, night people never do make a permanent adjustment to day schedules. There are aids that sometimes help them cope, but a normal day schedule is not their bodies’ natural rhythm and is not ideal for eliciting their best job performance.
