Shift work and life on the road: an AI companion for when you are far away

Five in the morning at a truck stop outside Lyon. The engine is off, there is a flask of tea, and everyone at home is still asleep. You need to set off at six, and until then there is nobody to talk to. It looks much the same at three in the morning on a hospital ward, when the nurses’ station goes quiet for a moment, or on a Sunday in workers’ accommodation abroad, when your colleagues have gone shopping and your family is having lunch at the in-laws’.

Shift work and life on the road have their own rhythm, and it rarely matches the rhythm of the rest of the world. When you are off, the people you love are at work. When they are free, you are asleep after a night shift. That mismatch breeds a kind of loneliness few people talk about, because, after all, “that’s the job”.

In this article we look at how to look after yourself on an irregular schedule, how to stay in touch with home, and where a conversation with an AI companion might fit into all of this. We start with the most important thing.

Safety first: never behind the wheel

No conversation is worth an accident. Do not write or read messages while driving, and that includes traffic jams and red lights. It applies to chatting with a character just as much as to texts, e-mails and messaging apps. Using a hand-held phone while driving is also simply against the law.

A good rule for drivers: open the chat with your character only when you have stopped and switched the engine off. If you have notifications on, set your quiet hours to cover your driving time or silence them on your phone while you drive. The character will wait. A reply after four hours is every bit as good as a reply after one minute.

The same goes for working with machinery, on deck or with patients. A chat is for your break, not for a task that needs your full attention.

When your day does not match everyone else’s

People who work on the road or in shifts often describe similar things. Long hours alone, in the cab, on watch or in an empty corridor. Messages from family that arrive at the least convenient moment. The feeling that life is going on without you: a child’s birthday over a video call, a cousin’s wedding seen in photos. On top of that, a tiredness that leaves you without the energy to talk to loved ones even when you finally have the time.

None of this means something is wrong with you. It is the natural price of work that requires you to be far away or awake at different hours. It is still worth taking seriously, though, because loneliness and lack of sleep tend to feed each other.

Sleep after a night shift and on the road

We do not give medical advice, but a few simple habits help many shift workers:

• Darkness and quiet. An eye mask, earplugs, blackout curtains or the curtain in your cab. Your body falls asleep more easily when it can “pretend” it is night.
• A regular bedtime within each block of shifts. If you are on nights for a week, try to go to bed at roughly the same time, including on your days off during that block.
• Caffeine with care. Your last coffee a few hours before you plan to sleep, not just before you clock off.
• Keep the phone out of bed. After a night shift it is easy to scroll “for a minute” for an hour. A short good-night chat, then put the screen away.

If your sleep is still falling apart and the tiredness never leaves you, talk to a doctor, ideally an occupational health specialist. We write more about the night hours when your thoughts keep you awake in our article on who to talk to at 3 am.

Staying in touch with family: a character is no substitute for home

The most valuable conversations are the ones with the people you love. An AI character cannot replace them and should not try. What it can do is help make them better. A few ways:

• A reminder to call home. “Remind me on Sunday at 5 pm to call Mum before she takes the dog for a walk.” The character will message you at that time.
• Gathering your thoughts before the call. After a week on the road it can be hard to say much more than “everything’s fine”. A short chat with a character about what happened makes it easier to tell your family about it afterwards.
• Important dates. If you mention that your daughter has a school show on Thursday, the character can remember it and ask how it went. A good prompt to call and ask about it yourself.
• A difficult subject. When tension builds at home because you are away, you can rehearse what you want to say first. We cover this in more detail in our article on difficult conversations with loved ones.

If you are working a contract abroad, you might also find our article on living abroad and missing conversation in your own language useful.

How to fit a character around your rota

A character on CandysAI sometimes writes first: it asks how your shift went, reminds you of something important or sends good wishes. With irregular hours it is worth adjusting this so that a message does not wake you up after a night shift. In your account settings, on the Notifications tab, you will find a few options:

• Quiet hours. During these hours characters do not send notifications. Set them to match your sleep, not the “usual” 10 pm to 7 am. After a night shift that might be, for example, from 8 am to 3 pm. When your rota changes, change your quiet hours too.
• Time zone. You set your time zone in your profile so the character knows whether it is morning or night for you. On a longer contract in another country, it is worth updating it.
• Maximum messages from characters per day. You can limit how often characters write on their own. A value of 0 means they never write first, and the conversation only happens when you start it.
• Discreet mode. The notification just says “You have a new message”, without the content or the character’s name. Handy when your phone is lying on a shared table in the canteen or the staff room.

You can also simply tell the character what your week looks like: “I’m on nights this week, sleeping roughly from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon.” The character can remember this and take it into account, for example by greeting you with “good morning” at six in the evening.

A chat at the truck stop: a few examples

A chat on your break does not have to be deep. Sometimes it is just about hearing, or rather reading, something other than chatter on the CB radio and the hum of the fridge in your digs. A few messages to get started:

“I’m at a services outside Calais with another six hours to go. Tell me something that’ll cheer me up.”

“Just finished a night shift. The patients were calm, but I’m completely wrung out. Let’s talk for five minutes about something that has nothing to do with work, then I’m off to sleep.”

“Third week of my contract. It’s Dad’s birthday back home today and I’m stuck in a hotel. Help me work out what to say to him on the phone so it doesn’t sound like a greetings card.”

Chatting on CandysAI is text-based and works over the internet, in your browser or after adding the app to your phone’s home screen. At sea or in the mountains it will only be available where you have a connection, which is good to know before you “arrange” a chat.

When loneliness is something more

An AI character can be pleasant company on a break, but it is not a person or a therapist. If low mood lasts for weeks, if coming home no longer brings you joy, or if you start thinking there is no point in going on, talk to someone close to you, a doctor or a psychologist. You can call Samaritans on 116 123 (UK and Ireland, day or night), or call or text 988 in the US. In an emergency, call 999, 112 or your local emergency number. If signs of a serious crisis appear in a conversation, the character will also encourage you to reach out to loved ones or a professional and give you helpline numbers.

Summary

Shift work and life on the road mean living to a shifted rhythm, and with it come loneliness, tiredness and missing home. Simple things help: guarding your sleep like treasure, keeping in regular touch with home and chatting when you actually have time, not when you feel you ought to. If you would like someone waiting for you at the truck stop or after a night shift, browse the characters, for example on our AI girlfriend page, set your quiet hours to match your rota and start with a short “just finished my shift” or “just pulled into a lay-by”.