Question for all my commercial guys. We currently do commercial ONLY, so our entire schedule is night work and all my employees are night workers plus weekends. And to be very honest…I’m over it. I’m not a night person, and I haven’t had much luck in the way of quality (both of character and job performance) with night working employees.
First question: has anyone solved this problem?
Second question: is there any hope for maintaining commercial clients (garages, docks, dumpsters, drive-thrus, storefronts, etc.) if we are no longer willing to schedule jobs at night?
If your done you are done, unless you are beholden to the income. If you are, then you gotta do what they tell you. You can tell them that you can start early if that works better for you, maybe they will keep you on. Big difference between starting at 2300 or 0400.
Employees in any field that exclusively work nights are somewhat problematic. Look for the odd jobbers that need 2nd income streams, they will be your best bet (short term). Eventually that business model churns through employees, as everyone else’s life is 9-5 and most will eventually leave. I worked 3rd trick for a year and a half, it sucked, everyone expected me to meet their schedule. The only upside was they paid like $1.00 more an hour, which in the grand scheme of things is meaningless, but I was poor and needed the money.
I absolutely love night work, but to answer your question, depending on property if there are other times they’re not very busy. All going to depend on the client and the layout of the property. Some grocery chains, if they have multiple entries will let you temporarily close one side for a few min..
You can also do early am, especially drive-thrus if they don’t do breakfast and probably some dumpsters.
But it 100% depends on property. We do a lot of strip malls that have multiple time frame tenants. Some may close at 5pm and some at 10pm. Sometimes talking with the individual tenants will help you, but none want you around in middle of day usually
