History Main / AlwaysOnDuty

* Although obviously many things are delegated, there are still some jobs where the job-holder has to be ready at any moment- for example, the President (or Prime Minister) of a country in case of a sudden major crisis.

** In addition, Joker is ''the'' Normandy's pilot. Not only is there never anyone else shown in his seat, there's never a reference to anyone else flying it even when he is elsewhere (except once, and that was when it was literally being hijacked). Given that it takes two hours to dive into a mass relay, and you may do this a dozen times between stops, the guy must go through a ''ton'' of keep-awake pills. {{Justified}} after the [[spoiler:Collector attack]] in the endgame for ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', since now the onboard AI has the authority to control it, and does not need to sleep, so presumably EDI controls it when Joker is off duty.

* {{Lampshaded}} on ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' when our heroes investigate a seemingly open-and-shut case of an AttemptedRape foiled and go home for the day, only for certain inconsistencies to start nagging at them until they all go back to the scene in the middle of the night.

** Played straight in the beginning of ''[[Literature/XWingSeries Wraith Squadron]]'', after the squad captures the ''Night Caller'', when they have to stay up to all hours of the night running the corvette because their twelve-man squadron and a shuttle crew are literally the only friendly forces in the star system. For obvious reasons, they make it a priority to get a real crew assigned to the ship from the Republic fleet.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' zig-zags this. Sometimes, references are made to shifts and various operations changing depending on the time of day. The two-parter episode "Chain of Command" shows what happens when a more micro-managing personality runs a starship--among other things, he orders the entire ship to be changed from three to four shifts--but as anyone who has ever served in any navy can tell you, this is far from uncommon in real life. Other times, it's always our familiar bridge crew who encounter the monster/anomaly/new civilization of the week, and no explanation of what happens when they're not on duty.

** Discussed in "11001001"--Data feels responsible for the ''Enterprise'' being hijacked, pointing out that as an android he could be on-duty all the time if he chose to. Geordi tells him it wouldn't matter, as the theft could have just as easily happened with Data manning his station on the bridge.

->'''Jay''': Zed, don't you guys ever get any sleep around here?\\
'''Zed''': The twins keep us on Centaurian time--standard thirty-seven hour day. Give it a few months. You'll get used to it ... or you'll have a psychotic episode.

* Averted on ''Series/ChicagoFire''. The show explicitly follows the firefighters of the second shift out of at least three.
* ''[[Series/WonderWoman1975 Wonder Woman]]'': Being Wonder Woman means never getting a day off, and in "The Feminum Mystique" using her leave time [[spoiler:to return to fight Nazis on Paradise Island]]. In "The Queen and the Thief" and "Knockout", Agent Diana Prince's apartment is set up to alert her when she's needed using signal lamps that look like normal ones. Being woken up in the middle of the night and coming home at midnight are commonplace.
* Justified in ''Series/{{Longmire}}'' as the titular Sheriff Walt Longmire only has three deputies under his command at best.
* Justified in ''Series/{{MASH}}''' as the 4077th is a combat hospital only 3 miles or so from the front lines and have to be ready to receive wounded at any time. Multiple references are made to the surgical staff spending 24+ hours in surgery during major offensives, and characters on leave have been recalled due to a surge in wounded.

* Jack Webb did his best to avert this in ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}'' and ''Series/AdamTwelve''. It is made clear that our main characters are one team out of many working one shift out of many and that just as much happens off-camera as on. Similarly averted on ''Series/{{Emergency}}''.

The reason for this is clear enough: Unless your production has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, there's only so many people who can be shown at a time. Even then, it's hard to make the audience care about all of them at once. So while having rotating watch stations would be realistic, it is hard to do well.

* The ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series is notable in being a rare complete aversion of this trope. On numerous occasions, the watches are shown rotating, main characters are on different watches (so not all of them are there for every adventure), and the captain and other crew members are show explicitly taking the time to eat, sleep, etc. This is helped by having Main/LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and a surprisingly realistic aversion of most of the tropes in ArtisticLicenseSpace.

* Lampshaded in a chaptre of ''Manga/DetectiveConan'' by Inspector Megure when he says to Detective Mouri: [[LampshadeHanging 'Have you ever thought, that wherever you go, someone dies?!']] (or something along those lines)

* The ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series is notable in being a rare complete aversion of this trope. On numerous occasions, the watches are shown rotating, main characters are on different watches (so not all of them are there for every adventure), and the captain and other crew members are show explicitly taking the time to eat, sleep, etc. This is helped by having Main/LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and a surprisingly realistic aversion of most of the tropes in Main/SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay.

* Much like the Millennium Falcon in the movies that it is spun off of, the Ghost in WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels has a crew of about 6 (or 5 beings and a droid) and everyone onboard is involved with whatever affects it.

* With an AlienInvasion going on, there are no days off for the VideoGame/{{Xenonaut|s}} soldiers! Although admittedly they often sit in the base for days on end, doing nothing productive.
* VideoGame/PhoenixPoint gives soldiers Stamina values. You can send soldiers on mission after mission, but each one will reduce stamina (some events will reduce it further). You can send tired soldiers on missions if needed, but being below half stamina gives a penalty to Action Points, which will get your people killed. But the Pandoravirus isn’t going to stop attacking, so you’d better find out how to keep your team AlwaysOnDuty.

A SubTrope of EconomyCast and ConservationOfDetail. Contrast LowerDeckEpisode, when the people on the relief watch ''do'' get an adventure. This can be TruthInTelevision in very small or overextended organizations, but is not sustainable for more than a few days, at which point everyone collapses of exhaustion.

* WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes subverts this trope brilliantly on several occasions. Two characters, like Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, are shown in constant conflict. It seems like the Ralph [[{{Determinator}} never rests]] in his determination to carch and eat a sheep; near the end of the short, Sam has Ralph in his grasp and is in the process of beating him up...and then a steam whistle blows. [[PunchClockVillain Both of them stop fighting, collect their lunchboxes, clock out, and greet their night shift counterparts as they start their walks home.]]

There also exists a tendency for senior members of the organization to be at the controlling station all of the time. TheCaptain may be responsible for the whole ship, but seems to spend all her time on the bridge, for no stated reason. This is realistic in some circumstances--some things ''are'' important enough that TheCaptain needs to be involved, however tired she is--but this trope is for when it seems like she may as well set up a cot and sleep there, too.

Related to but distinct from TheMainCharactersDoEverything. It's not that the hero runs the entire ship himself, from the bridge to the engine room to the hangar bay, but that strange things only seem to happen whenever the main cast is on watch, implying that they're either on watch all of the time and don't eat or sleep, or that the other watch sections are absolutely boring with nothing to do.