By Rob Seal • Photography by Jack Looney
When most of us are turning off the lights and settling in for a good night’s sleep, the day is just beginning for those hearty few who work through the night. Here, meet some of the people who are busy at work while the rest of Albemarle slumbers.
Scott Shanesy
Baker, Owner — Belle
In his years as a professional baker, Scott Shanesy has done every kind of overnight shift: starting at midnight, started at 1 or 2 a.m., sundown to sunup, and even shifts that ended in the middle of the night.
“I started baking at 18, and I feel like I’ve been around the entire clock,” Shanesy says.
Now, around 3 a.m., you might find Shanesy making his way toward Belle bakery through the quiet streets of Charlottesville’s Belmont neighborhood, part of a nocturnal shift of area professionals who work the quiet overnight hours.
At Belle, which he co-owns with his wife and a partner, he and the team are usually at it by 3:30 or 4 a.m., turning on equipment and starting the day’s batch of sourdough: removing dough from the refrigerator, getting it in the proofer box to rise, readying the frying donuts, grilling English muffins, making baguettes and pastries that will be ready for sale in the bakery around 8 a.m.
“It’s all natural and plate-leavened,” Shanesy says. “We don’t use any chemical leaveners or short-cuts. Our only cheat code is using the proof box, so that helps it rise in a few hours rather than six.”
Shanesy got into baking as a young man and found that the hours—while tough on the body —can have their own rewards.
“There’s something special about being the one turning the wheel while others are resting,” he says. “Any worker that sees each other in the night, there’s this kind of acknowledgement. You both know what you’re going through. But it’s also taxing in ways that people who have never done it before don’t understand. There’s been times it’s been everything I wanted, and times it’s been a ball-and-chain.”
Opening Belle offered him the chance to set his own hours and try to preserve some function in the daytime, which has come in handy as he and his wife have expanded their family.
He says working nights for the long-term requires strategy. “Juggling the need to be at the shop so early with my need to be home in the evening for dinner and dad time isn’t always the easiest,” he says. “The nights tax me more than they used to, but I’m trying to structure my schedule in a way that’s sustainable.”
Alicia Sanchez
Pediatric Nurse – University of Virginia Health Children’s
Health emergencies don’t happen on a schedule, and some patients need 24-hour care.
That means that the University of Virginia Health System is running around the clock, with employees clocking in and out on almost every schedule possible.
For the past six years, Alicia Sanchez has been a night pediatric nurse, taking care of young patients during the overnight hours when most people are asleep. The job and the hours are demanding, she said, but for the right kind of person, it can be a good fit.
“My coworkers and I do it well together,” Sanchez says. “You get a kind of night-shifter family that you get really close to because you’ve been in the thick of it together.”
The shift might have stretches of quiet when nurses can work on training, she says, but at any moment, a young patient could arrive from a car accident or traumatic injury. Or a baby born prematurely at the hospital may have a cardiac defect that could require emergency surgery —some patient rooms on her ward can double as operating rooms if needed.
“We have a surgeon that’s available 24-7, and sometimes they do surgery right there at the bedside,” she says.
Her unit only allows one person at the bedside for a patient at night, so Sanchez often seems families dealing with difficult situations,
short on sleep.
“We encourage loved ones to swap in and out,” she says. “You’re not going to get sleep at the bedside. It will wear on you quick.”
Sanchez and her colleagues see parents in every condition: scared, angry, and everything in between. As a nurse, she sees it as her job to be there for the patient and the parents. And the dangers of short sleep aren’t just for families. Fully committing to the night shift as a nurse requires taking special care of your sleep and rhythms, she said.
“Before I start a shift, I make sure to stretch. I stay up very late the night before. Afterwards, it can help some nurses to go work out or something to get tired enough to sleep,” Sanchez says. “You just have to do trial and error to find the thing that works for you.”
The night shift suits the life Sanchez and her husband share, and she’s found ways to make it work. Her advice for young nurses considering the same?
“I do love nights, and I do think it makes some badass nurses,” Sanchez said. “I just tell them: don’t think, ‘Oh this is going to be so easy!’ Because it’s not.”
Jenny Rosenfeld
Public Safety Communications Officer II — CUA Emergency Communications Center
If there’s an overnight emergency in the area, there’s a chance Jenny Rosenfeld’s phone will ring.
Rosenfeld is a public safety communications officer at the Charlottesville University Albemarle Emergency Communications Center, or CUA911, which answers 911 emergency calls for the city, county, and University of Virginia.
The job requires 24-hour staffing, and that means Rosenfeld often clocks in for a 12-hour shifts that begin before the sun goes down and end after it rises. While at work, she answers any-and-all emergency calls—everything from crimes-in-progress to animal encounters—and sends first responders to the scene.
Recent calls include a road washing out in Albemarle County, the sudden formation of a sinkhole, downed trees, house fires, police calls, and more. Then Rosenfeld or her colleagues contact the appropriate agency—the county police or fire department, for example—and dispatch them to the scene, often while continuing a conversation with the caller, who might be in a distressed state.
“Even after years working in 911, I experience calls that I have never experienced before,” she says. “And there are many different techniques and ways that you can try to get information from different caller types, but you are often trying to help them stay calm and get the information needed to help them.”
Rosenfeld’s been in this line of work for 18 years, though she’s only been on the night shift for the past few. Working nights has its challenges, she said, but there are benefits too.
“Night watch is actually what I choose to do,” she said. “It works better for me, being a mom, and also working about an hour away from home. It means being able to be available during the daytime for my kids and being available for the EEC at night-time.”
Because she lives about 60 miles north of Charlottesville, it also means long drives to and from work. But the difficulties are worth it because of the flexibility it affords, Rosenfeld says. The shifts are long, but she also gets several days off in a row and a lot of time for her family.
Overall, she said she enjoys the feeling of working overnight and her colleagues.
“You learn different tricks, and you rely on your coworkers that have been doing it longer that you have,” she says. “So you find ways to take care of yourself.”
Once home, she’s often helping gets the kids off to school, then turns in to get some shut-eye herself. “I’m pretty strict about when I sleep. You have to make sure you’re getting enough.”