How to Meet Women When You Work Nights

Turn your week around. While most men are at their desks, you are free, and coffee shops, gyms, grocery stores and parks are full of women with time to talk. Do your meeting in the daytime, use your weeknights off when bars are quiet, and set dates for late morning, lunch or early evening on your days off. Mention your schedule plainly once and get on with it.

A nine-to-five man has evenings and weekends, which is exactly when everyone else is out too. You have the middle of the weekday. The gym is half empty at eleven. The coffee shop at two is full of students, freelancers, nurses coming off shift and women working from laptops. The grocery store on a Tuesday afternoon has room in every aisle.

Fewer people around means fewer people watching, more time for each conversation and almost no other men trying the same thing. Many night workers treat their days as recovery time and nothing more. Sleep first, then set aside a couple of afternoons a week as your social hours.

Talking to women in the daytime suits a night worker better than anyone. Walk up, say something about what she is doing or what is around you, and see whether she wants to talk. In a coffee shop, a comment about the book on her table or the drink she ordered is plenty. In a store, ask her opinion on two things you are choosing between.

Places worth adding to your daytime rotation:

• Coffee shops between ten and three.
• The gym in the late morning.
• Grocery stores and bookstores on weekday afternoons.
• Parks and running paths around lunchtime.
• Daytime classes, such as yoga or dance.

a dating coach rates dance classes as "absolutely amazing for meeting women." Many studios also run morning and early afternoon sessions that office workers can never make.

If your nights off fall on weekdays, that works in your favor. A bar on a Tuesday is quiet, the music is lower, and the women there chose to be out. a dating coach makes the same point about talking to women who work in bars. A packed Friday is a bad time, and "a Tuesday or Wednesday night when they're wide open and there's barely anybody in the bar is a much better time."

Your body clock helps here as well. On a night off you are wide awake at midnight, when other men are fading and looking for a cab.

Plenty of women work nights too: nurses, bartenders, servers, hotel staff and hospital workers. They understand a schedule like yours without explanation, and you are awake when they are. The late diner, the all-night gym and the coffee place near the hospital are where those hours overlap.

If she is working when you meet her, be brief and easy, since she is on the clock. Talk when she has a quiet moment, and ask for her number before you leave instead of camping at her station all night. A woman on your own shift is a coworker, so the usual workplace caution applies: friendly first, and a private, low-key ask if it comes to that.

Dates work best when they fit your real week. A late breakfast, lunch, an afternoon walk or a drink at six on a night off all make good first dates, and many women like a daytime first date anyway. Say it once and plainly: "I work nights, so afternoons and Mondays are my good times." Then offer one specific day.

The risk with an unusual schedule is a long gap between meeting her and seeing her again. Ask for the date within a day or two of getting her number, while the conversation is still fresh for both of you.

Fatigue shows on your face and in your voice. A man at the end of a twelve-hour shift talks slower, smiles less and gives up on a conversation sooner. Go out after you have slept, eaten and showered, never on the drive home from work. One good afternoon beats three tired ones.

A Cold Approach Bootcamp mixes daygame and night game to suit each student, which fits a man whose best hours fall in the daytime. It runs in Miami and New York, in person and fully in the field. Each training day is two four-hour blocks, with live coaching on every approach and feedback after every set. Group is three consecutive days at three students per coach, and Private is 1-on-1 for one, two or three days. Nobody needs experience to join.