There are some 20 nurses and two doctors, at least five police personnel, three gas stations/convenience stores, several manufacturing and/or shipping businesses, a number of hotels and motels, one grocery store and one coffee shop ready to do business from midnight until dawn in the area.
The reasons for the 24-hour service are often obvious -- emergency medical care, gas, coffee or toilet paper is something everyone may find they need in the middle of the night at some point in their lives.
The reasons there is a workforce willing to offer these all night amenities are more varied, with the members of the Brattleboro area's graveyard shift citing everything from increased autonomy on the job, better wages to an inability to keep more conventional hours.
"I was always up all night," said Dustin Russell, who works from midnight to 8 a.m. six times a week at the Sunoco in Dummerston near Exit 4 of Interstate 91. "If you sleep during the day, there's less hassle. I normally just sleep two or three hours in the afternoon and then I'm up all night anyways."
Russell, who is 23 and recently moved to southern Vermont from northern Florida, said he has a good perspective on who else keeps alternative hours, because many of them stop in during his shift.
"We get
Brattleboro Police Lt. Chuck Aleck also works the night shift and has for two years now.
Brattleboro has the only police department in southern Vermont with an officer on duty 24 hours a day. It always has at least one officer on the road and there are at least three on duty at all times. Two dispatchers field calls for local police, fire and ambulance services.
Aleck, who said most night crimes involve alcohol or domestic abuse, likes working nights because there can be more action.
"When you work the day shift, you're more responding to what happened," he said. "On the night shift, you're responding to burglaries as they happen."
Exciting for police officers, maybe. But not for Russell, who works at a gas station that gets robbed several times a year.
Aleck attributes that to its slightly out-of-the-way location near the interstate.
"Brattleboro isn't the sleepy little town everyone thinks it is," Aleck said, noting that when not patrolling for drunken drivers, Brattleboro police are often checking all the buildings and locations in town for suspicious people or behavior.
"All the bad guys work the night shift, too," he said.
But that is not to say that all the people that work the night shift are bad guys. While cops and convenience store clerks may represent the more visible and noir-ish side of the late shift, most are regular people with regular jobs who happen to punch in when most people are nodding out.
"I love it," said Claire Bemis, the night shift nurse supervisor at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. "There is a little less activity with the patients. There's no physical therapy or x-rays. I like the quietness of the hospital at night."
There are drawbacks, though, she said, such as it's hard to volunteer for various boards at the hospital. She tries not to let it affect her social life, and she often plays softball before coming into work.
She goes to sleep when she gets off work in the morning, and tries to wake up around 2 p.m., when her two kids are getting out of school.
"Sometimes it's hard for them," Bemis said. "I've overslept a couple of times when I was supposed to pick them up. Both their parents work the night shift. It's all they've ever known."
Unlike Bemis, Bonnie Bigelow, who works an overnight shift at C&S Grocery on Putney Road, said it's hard to maintain a social life while working at night.
"I don't have one," she said. "If I was younger, I'd do something about it."
She does data entry for C&S, but she said the grocery supply business also loads and unloads trucks at night. The most coveted job on the graveyard shift, she said, is working in the cigarette and candy room. "There's a little less supervision on the night shift," she said, noting that there are often several boom boxes blaring music in the warehouse at once. "It's a little less hectic."
Bigelow works a 12-hour shift, three nights a week. She likes this schedule because it gives her more days off. At Putney Paper, where they make napkins and tissues in downtown Putney around the clock, Reuben Vose has an even more complex schedule. His schedule is as follows: Four, 12-hour day shifts followed by three days off. Next, he works three 12-hour night shifts, followed by one day off; then, another three nights on, followed by three more off. His month-long schedule concludes with four days shifts followed by seven consecutive days off.
"This time of year, I like working nights best because it's cooler," Vose said. He also said the wages are a little better for him when he's working the night shift.
"People say the night shift is where the money is at," he said.
That's certainly the case for shelf stockers at Price Chopper grocery store on Canal Street in Brattleboro. Suzi May, the nighttime manager for the town's only 24-hour supermarket, said stockers can make an extra $1 to $1.50 just for working third shift.
"You can go from making $7.50 an hour to $9," she said. "Not many people are willing to work the third shift."
And then there are people like Mike Camara, who works at Dunkin' Donuts on Putney Road, who wouldn't consider working at any other time of the day.
"I've been working the nights for 30 years," said the 55-year-old Camara. "I go home and go to bed for a couple of hours, then come back into work again. I don't really have a problem with it. It's just something you do."
Robert Plain can be reached at rplain@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 271.
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