Hi, I'm typing this from the front desk of the King & Prince Beach & Golf Resort on lovely St. Simons Island, Georgia. It's a few minutes after 5:00 AM on my shift as Night Auditor. I'm here until 7:00 AM.

I don't drink coffee but I do get plenty of caffeine from tea. My tea and listening to pieces like this on PRX are what get me through the night, when I'm not checking in late-arriving guests, sending Security to investigate noise complaints, or doing the Accounting spreadsheets. This is a 194-room upscale resort property with several buildings. By day, our staff levels probably range between 40-70 people. At night, the hotel staff shrinks to a mere two people: me and the Security officer. I'm the switchboard operator, the front desk clerk, and the nerve center of the hotel, and the Security guy is my eyes, arms, and legs, so to speak. Unfortunately we don't have an all-night Maintenance guy, so if a toilet backs up in the middle of the night, Security has to fetch a plunger. If something goes wrong with a guest's room, my only option is to move them to another one.

By around the midpoint of my shift (3:00 AM) most of the drunks have all passed out and things get quiet. Yes, even in upscale four- and five-star hotels you will still find plenty of drunks late at night. Probably just as many as you'd see in the low-end dives. Our drunks are dressed a little better and drive nicer cars, but they're just as obnoxious.

Unlike New York City, St. Simons Island as a whole doesn't have much nightlife. By midnight, almost everything is closed. It's just a few of us hotel folk who are working. Us, and the cops, and the people at the 24-hour Waffle House.

I actually like this shift. A few years ago I discovered that the independence/autonomy of third shift appealed to me. I get to work at my own pace, mostly. There's no overbearing bosses, incompetent or annoying coworkers, or office politics to deal with.

When the excrement hits the fan on overnight shift, it has the potential of getting very ugly, but fortunately I've never been robbed or had anything more dramatic than a fire alarm yet (and that one was a false alarm).

Mostly it's peaceful and relatively low-stress. I'm all about low stress. The mellower the better.

Thanks for an interesting radio piece.

This piece, in addition to covering an interesting topic and presenting information that may not be common knowlege, is an excellent people piece. It shows that there is as much diversity to be found in the city in the middle of the day as in the middle fo the night. It is at many points a fine example of the strengths of radio, it's ability to put us "there" with through thoughtful, well-placed atmospheric audio samples. He does a good job of bringing the unexpected bustle at a time of night many people have never even seen, as well as tackling health and social issues related to the subject. It's interesting, surprising, funny and moves rather quickly.