Night Owls Get Their Day in the Sun (So to Speak)

Employers begin to see the value of later-day saints

By Ed Goldman

Are you a night owl, morning lark or bird of another feather? 

Here are two questions to help you determine if you’re a true night owl:

1. Do you TiVo Stephen Colbert’s show so you can watch it even later than it airs (as I do)? 
2. Do you similarly record things slated to begin before noon on TV, even if you know in advance it will be our country declaring the start of World War III?

You are not alone! Because of the global shutdown, a new corporate tolerance has apparently emerged for night owls, those of us who hit our productivity marks at 10 p.m. or later—at a time when morning larks have already flossed, jammied and gone night-night.  

I’ve been a night owl all of my life. It doesn’t mean I didn’t have to force myself into being otherwise for years (that damned K-12 had awful hours) or that some of my jobs didn’t require apple-cheeked perkiness at an hour when I’d have preferred collapsing into, instead of climbing out of, bed.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, writer Krithika Varagur observes that because of the pandemic-caused work-at-home mandate, “…many jobs have never been so untethered from the 9 to 5 paradigm. And a lot of night owls, who do their best work later in the day, are thriving.” Nevertheless, Ms. Varagur points out that a number of those night owls “are navigating how to balance their habits with bosses and colleagues who work on more traditional daytime schedules.”

Since I work alone, you’d think that last part wouldn’t be problematic. The trouble is that my 18-and-a-half-year-old cat, Osborn the Magnificent, sometimes forgets that neither he is nor I am a morning creature; consequently, he begins to howl at seven a.m., even though his landlord of record had hit the hay only three hours prior. And for the record, I don’t mean “meow loudly.” I mean HOWL.

Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence and I’ve found that the best way to keep it that way is to have Osborn join me to watch old movies into the wee hours. He really enjoys westerns, especially if there’s a scene of a posse pursuing bad guys or of cattle stampeding. He seems to like things being in motion, no doubt because it’s a change from watching his aforementioned landlord. To clarify: If I were French, I think my given name would have been Ennui. I believe this is the much lazier form of Henri.

By the way, my owlish schedule once nabbed me a gig hosting a 1 a.m. talk show on the first cable-TV station in Long Beach, California. This was in the early 1970s, the Pleistocene Era of non-broadcast television. I co-hosted a show called ”They Only Come Out at Night” (you can imagine what its non-licensed theme song was; my apologies to Edgar Winter). 

ME: And are you in Bellflower right now, “Roy from Bellflower”?

ROY FROM BELLFLOWER: You bet, Ed.

ME: And do you realize that this station has no subscribers in Bellflower, Roy?

ROY FROM BELLFLOWER: You’re fired, Ed.,

I got home from the station a little earlier that morning and was in bed by 2:30. I wondered if I were about to become a morning lark.