“Night shift workers”, I explain, “often have unstable and precarious jobs, without proper contracts”. A friend backs up the point saying that “at night the law sleeps….”, and goes on talking about the late night job she had as a seventeen-year old, cleaning her father’s surgery after all the personnel had gone home. Even though tedious, she enjoyed it, having a sense of freedom, doing the work out of people’s view and surveillance. She could decide when to do the cleaning, the important thing being that the office had to be nice and tidy in the morning. If she had wanted, she could have had easy access to drugs in the pharmacy and people’s medical files. It was spooky sometimes: working alone at night can make you feel anxious, there is nobody else present and outside it is dark, and you need to switch the alarm off and on, which adds to the sense of insecurity. Once in a while she and a friend would visit a night club across the road. They could observe the arriving crowd through the window, would dress and make themselves up in the surgery and forge the rubber stamp on their hands to be able to get inside for free.
Ⓒ Ger Duijzings. Location & date: Camberwell Green, South London, Wednesday 1 February 2012 (11am). Image: Ger Duijzings through DreamStudio.
