It’s midnight and Bonnie Eaton is grocery shopping at Kroger, Neil Brown is making doughnuts at Brownie’s Front Street bakery and Glennalee Ersch is beginning her shift at Selby General Hospital.
It’s midnight and while most of Marietta is asleep, a few people are wide awake and in the middle of their workday.
Our nights are their days.
The U.S. Labor Department estimates about 3.3 million — 3.3 percent of full-time employees in the United States — work throughout the night in what is commonly known as the third shift. Out of necessity or preference, these night owls keep cities, including Marietta, running 24 hours a day.
“You’ve got to have the doughnuts out, so it’s ready for the morning,” Neil Brown said as he rolled a batch of blueberry dough. Thirty-two percent of night shift employees work because of the nature of the job, the Labor Department said.
Deep into the night, Brown’s family bakery shines the sole store light onto the Front Street pavement. The surrounding stores stand dark — they all closed at 5 p.m. Even at 1 a.m. Brownie’s still displays the “Yes, We’re Open” sign in the window.
“I’m here anyway and if I lock the door, they see the lights on and kick on the door,” Brown said.
Brown has found there is a demand for late-night — or early morning — food.
“Usually on a Thursday and Friday night, the college kids will keep you jumping,” Brown said. “They hit the pepperoni rolls after the bars close.” Police, fire and emergency crews also stop in between runs, Brown said.
Marietta College student Ashley Anderson said a walk to Brownie’s for a midnight snack is a traditional study or party break for many students.
“I see a lot of people around at night,” she said. “I call them night critters.”
The residents of the night may be those who frequent the bars, but for other nightgoers it’s just a preference to work their daily chores late.
“I find it easier to shop at night,” said Bonnie Eaton, 57, as she walked out of Kroger with a load of groceries. “It’s easier and more peaceful. The lines are short and the aisles are clear.”
Eaton said she usually goes to bed about 2 a.m.
“I’m very much a night owl,” she said. “People don’t seem to understand that. They think you’re weird.”
Stores such as Kroger, Wal-Mart, and Food-4-Less stay open 24 hours in Marietta because of late-night shoppers such as Eaton.
“We live in a fast-paced world today that it’s 9 or 10 before people get home,” said Food-4-Less manager Bucky Lee. “We wouldn’t stay open if there wasn’t the business. Usually in the summer we do brisk business between 11 (p.m.) and 7 (a.m.) In the winter it slows up because of the colder nights.”
In both the stores and on the streets, the city of Marietta is still running late at night — it’s just less crowded, said Sgt. Anthony Lauer of the Marietta post of the Ohio Highway Patrol.
“I like working this shift,” Lauer said. He starts at 11 p.m. and ends at 7 a.m. “It’s a little quieter, the phones don’t ring as much and it’s a little less stressful.”
He said officers are mostly looking to keep impaired drivers off the roadways. Some of the disadvantages of the nightly work is that it is harder to see and there are fewer officers on duty.
“For example, tonight, I have one trooper alone in Morgan County,” Lauer said “I tell them to keep the safety aspect in mind.”
When Lauer is off duty, the third shift is a plus by providing more family time, he said.
“By the time I get up, they are coming home from school ... we can spend time together ... and by the time it’s getting close for me to go back to work, they are going to bed.”
Lauer’s 7 a.m. bedtime can sometimes be the toughest challenge of the shift.
“I can’t sleep with the light, so I have to block off all the light from my windows in the morning,” Lauer said.
About 15 percent of third shift employees said they work late because it provides better family arrangements, the U.S. Labor Department said. Another 21 percent of late-shift employees work into the night because they prefer it.
That is the case for Selby General Hospital nurse Glennalee Ersch. For 30 years, she has preferred to work through the night.
“I like to be able to do my work without a lot of the usual daytime interruptions,” Ersch said. “I like the solitude ... (but) the nursing care does not stop,” she said. “Illnesses can sometimes get worse at night.”
Ersch said when she finishes work at 7 a.m. she likes the flexibility of staying up and going out with her friends before going to bed in the afternoon.
Back at Brownie’s, Neil Brown’s sister, Rosie Brown, serves a hungry Andrew Hoagland who came in for some Italian bread. She’s worked late at the family bakery ever since she was a young girl.
“When I was in school, they had a curfew, but I got to be out past 10 (p.m.) because I was working with my dad,” Rosie Brown said.
As for Hoagland, he said he can be a day or night person.
“I’m writing a book, so I keep weird hours,” Hoagland said. “I often don’t know what time it is and then I look at the clock and realize that most everything is closed.”