A Neuroscientist’s Plea To US Retailers
Dr. Tedd Roberts generally approves of commerce and enterprise. He is however disturbed by the ever-earlier opening trend on Black Friday:
The frank truth is that lack of sleep produces many of the same mental effects as being drunk or high, and Black Friday will be staffed by employees operating on too little sleep. The busiest retail day of the year is also the day when clerks and shoppers both are at the greatest risk of making serious judgmental errors at potentially high costs.
The factors that could lead to serious lapses in judgment include:
- Sudden shift from working during the day to working during normal sleep hours.
- Long work hours
- Difficulty in sleeping during the day
Many stores are opening at very early hours on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Shops which normally open at 8, 9 or 10 AM will open at Midnight, 3 or 4 AM. The employees will have to report to work 5-8 hrs early than normal, in fact, they will start work during the times of the day when they are usually asleep and all bodily functions are at a minimum. It is as if they had suddenly traveled from the U.S. to Europe, with all of the symptoms of jet lag, without the elapsed time.
After quoting some studies, he asserts that:
When sleep deprived, it is difficult to form and use short term memory – such as ringing sales and making change. It is also difficult to make critical decisions, such as identifying shoplifters or when to allow exceptions to sale terms.
Essentially, people who are sleep deprived show many of the same impairments of a person with a legally impaired blood alcohol level even though they do not show the same physical effects [Citek at al., Journal of Forensic Science, September 2011, volume 56, number 5, pages 1170-1179]. While factories, shops and offices that normally operate evening and night shifts have employees who are accustomed to working in the dark hours of the morning, most retail employees (and shoppers) are not. Thus, not only are your employees working impaired, your customers are shopping and driving while impaired. The increase in traffic incidents and police responses on Black Friday is commonly attributed to the size of the crowds, however, the increasing trend of early opening and sleep-deprived public has to be be compounding the problem.
While I don’t think he has any chance at all of being heard, not in a year when retailers are being simultaneously squeezed between the recession and competition from online stores, perhaps I should note that having retailers stumbling around and not quite able to engage the customer as they should, besides having sleep-deprived customers finding themselves back home with two hideous sweaters and a pint of Castor oil and wondering how this happened, will only push people to shopping on line more. Sometimes, perhaps the response to unfavorable results shouldn’t be to do more of what brought those results about.
Interesting read, but nothing new. I was in the Air Force for 24 years, from 71-95. I spent 24 years overseas. All of it was on a rotating shift. Part of the time I was on what we called the 4-1-4-1-4-3. Four swing shifts of 8 hours, starting at roughly 1600 every day. This was followed by 24 hours off, starting at midnight, the end of that 4th swing. The 24 hours was needed to recover. Following the 4 swings and 1 day off, we’d work 4 mid shifts, 2400-0800, followed by 24 hours off, starting at 0800 of the 4th mid. At 0800 the next day after the day off, we’d work 4 day shifts, 0800-1600. These 4 days were followed by 3 days off. Then it started again. This disrupted everything, one mostly slept during that time, trying to reset or internal clocks. Then it started all over. I became quite depressed, partly because I almost never saw the sun, and party due to the sleep changes every 4 days. We also would work a 4-3. This was 4 12-hour shifts followed by 3 days off. I was always recovering. Divorces and such were very common amongst the troops, so was binge drinking.
I worked rotating shift work in the Air Force for 6 years. I swear it aged me at least 12 years. Some rotation schedules are worse than others. By far, the worst I worked was called “double backs.” Double-back means working two shifts in the same 24 hour period.
Shift 1: Mid shift from midnight until 0800.
Shift 2: Mid shift from midnight until 0800.
Shift 3: Come back that same afternoon and work from 1600 until midnight. (DB1)Shift 4: Swing shift from 1600 until midnight.
Shift 5: Come back the next morning and work from 0800 until 1600. (DB2)
Shift 6: Work day shift from 0800 until 1600.
Two days off and start all over.
I called double-backs perpetual jetlag because it was the equivalent of flying 1/3rd the way around the world every other day. This also happened to be the first shift work schedule I ever worked. This went on for 16 months and I was sick & tired most of the time from lack of sleep and missed meals. You see, the chow hall schedule wasn’t in synch with our work schedules and neither would change. When I got off of a mid shift, it was too late to eat breakfast before the chow hall closed and I was asleep through lunch. To top it off, I only had about 15 minutes to grab something to eat before going in on a swing shift. “The Air Force takes care of its own.” Yeah, right.
Our society should be based on absolutely the lowest common denominator. I know some people who can only function on 12 full hours of uninterrupted sleep. Thus, no person should be allowed to be up for more than 12 hours per 24 hour day. We would not want people doing stupid things because they are sleep deprived you know. Before driving a car, a person will be forced to type in the time they slept and the time they most recently woke up. One minute late means the car will refuse to start. Lying to the onboard computer will result in the death penalty, it is the only way to be sure.
Just like all the artificial intelligence final judgements, the only way to protect you is to take absolute total control over your lives!
I was ambivalent about this article because I was afraid people would think that is what it is advocating, but I don’t think so. It’s more an attempt to make employers aware that what they’re doing MIGHT be counterproductive. In their circumstances. With their employees. For their client base.
When my husband was a junior programmer, they often had to work 18 hour days, and let me tell you, the product from those late-night jags sucked. But the employer didn’t see that part. He just saw “product.” Because the collapse induced by BAD product was gradual, it might not even be the same management team in place when the excrement hit the rotating object.
So I figured letting people know what the effects of sleep privation are on the human nervous system wouldn’t hurt. No regulation, just information.
Look, we regulate drugs. HOWEVER employers enforce conditions that are the same as doing hard drugs.
So what would I suggest? Eh. Regulate neither. Go after accidents/issues caused by this, instead of the cause. And publicize the cause and the effects. Then let people — and employers decide what to do. But that’s me, and I’ve been called a wild-eyed libertarian. Your mileage may vary.
That is the reading of the article I took: self-destructive exercise. Similar to your husband’s experience, I worked my way through school as a hotel night auditor. I distinctly remember one occasion when the gal I was relieving on 2nd shift was scheduled for a turnaround to 1st shift the next day. Meaning: for a guest staying overnight the person who checked him (her. it.) in the night of arrival was working knowing she would have eight hours to go home, go to bed, wake, eat, shower (or not), do make up and drive back to work in order to check him (her. it.) out that next morning. How great an impression of warmth and welcoming do you think this guest took from that stay?
Of course, this retailers’ dilemma is probably explored in games theory since the fundamental problem for retailers is that if ONLY ONE eschews the early opening that one is at a severe disadvantage to the competition while gaining only slightly. The reason libertarians ought be concerned over this is that if the situation deteriorates much further it is likely that gummint will impose further regulatory oversight of the private sector in the name of “helping families.”
I’ve been saying for years that since the Christmas Holiday season is, to retailers, when people shop the most, they’ve been pushing the date it starts back further and further. My joke was that eventually, the Christmas season will start Jan. 1 and last the whole year through Christmas itself, because this is when people *throng* stores, eagerly cleaning them out in their desperation to get gifts for everyone. Between Christmas and New Years is the after-Christmas sale, when retailers get rid of all the junk they couldn’t sell during the Christmas season…which’ll be a lot of stuff, given that the Christmas season will then be more than 11 months 3 weeks in length…
Shop online? C’mon – who wouldn’t rather be trapped amongst herds of smelly human cattle, most of them standing right in front of the item you want to look at except when they’re wandering aimlessly between you and where you’re trying to go? Especially when given the opportunity to interact with sales people who are exhausted and over-stressed.
I’m very thankful to be on the closing shift tomorrow. But I predict that the constant moving back of the pre-Christmas shopping so that it encroaches upon Thanksgiving, will eventually make Thanksgiving disappear entirely.
Thanksgiving used to mean a four-day weekend where people could travel and get together with family and relax. A lot of stores were closed. But now that more and more families have somebody working long hours in the retail stores on Friday through Sunday, family activities are Thursday only. And Thursday dinner is cut short now too, because so many people have to get to work very early on Friday. This year, some stores are open on Thursday for an early sale, to get those all-important consumer dollars before their competitors do on Black Friday. That makes the holiday go away entirely.
In the future, it’ll just be government people getting the day off. I suppose we should be thankful that there is one day when they aren’t doing us any of the mischief that they usually do!
To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke on Carter “And we should be thankful enough that there is some time they’re not messing with the country.”
Remember WHY these stores are opening at midnight- people were being trampled to death when the stores opened Friday morning, and closing the stores is simply not an option for the retailers. If the choice is between sleep-deprivation and a stampede, I choose sleep deprivation, and it’s unsurprising that the stores feel the same.
So now they’re being trampled to death at midnight instead. And pepper spraying each other to get at a “better” deal.
The whole situation is a disaster waiting to happen. I just wonder how high the toll has to go to count as a “disaster”.
Those of us who shop – or in my case avoid anything looking remotely like a mall as if it was infested with a particularly nasty plague – on Black Friday have that choice. The poor sods who work on that day don’t, really. It’s work the shift or say goodbye to the job.
Maybe somewhere along the line something will inject some sanity into the whole situation.