Sleeping on the Job

Sleeping while at work is generally considered to be unacceptable behavior by most U.S. employers.  With some types of work falling asleep can be dangerous, while with other types such as office work, falling asleep implies one’s failure to be available for productive work during a specified time. There is no tradition in this country of a post-lunch or afternoon Siesta. Yet dozens of studies agree that the U.S. is a sleep-deprived nation. A National Commission on Sleep Disorders, 2003 reported: “Sleep deprivation costs $150 billion each year in higher stress and reduced worker productivity.” In the early 1980s I tried to imagine desks that would accommodate an employee’s need for a quick nap. While I was working on these designs, the American office itself was changing.  The purpose and design of the desk was being redefined. The Computer Revolution had arrived. Here, an employee takes a break from working on her Mac Plus. She climbs into her soft, comfortable and soundproofed File Cabinet Sleeping Quarters for a quick nap.

As the computer took over more office functions, the concept of the Work Station emerged. I wondered if it would be possible to acknowledge the way workers were increasingly stuck at their stations by designing the workstation and the office chair together as a unit.  Aside from needing to walk down the hall to take a bathroom break or to eat lunch, one might never have to move from one’s workstation. In this concept the chair flattens out for naps. And I tried incorporating a snack machine into the design. The employee would rarely have an excuse for leaving his or her station. By 1990 I had started to worry about what the future held for office workers. Might they become prisoners at their jobs and be required as a condition of employment to never leave the office, day or night?  Would their work stations become their homes? Here I showed how an employee’s life had been reduced to a few functions, accommodated in an enlarged Live-in Work Station. In this concept, I imagined that the office worker needed to ask for permission to have social interactions outside of the office building, knowing that his or her Full-Life Pay would be reduced based on the amount of time spent away from the job. While some of my designs for Live-in Work Stations lacked bathroom facilities, others included them. In some of my concepts, tall cubicle walls supported an accordion-style, folding, sound-proofed ceiling allowing one to sleep – or meditate – peacefully inside. A sign saying “Do Not Disturb” could be hung from the doorknob. One of my concepts that might end up in the Never Going To Happen category is Nappers’ Cubicles for seniors.  As recently as 2005, when this was drawn, trends were forecast that showed incomes remaining fixed during retirement at a time of rising health care costs, forcing many senior citizens to remain at the job past age 65. Giving the trend a positive twist, cheery articles appeared in AARP, The Magazine that showed smiling seniors eagerly making use of job skills late into their 70s! Believing that the forecast was accurate, I reasoned that it would become law for companies to offer napping facilities for senior employees. Yet the current severe economic downturn has upended that prediction. Even though the number of elderly Americans as a percent of the population continues to rise, the availability of jobs for all citizens has been gutted. Now, most seniors who need extra income find themselves unemployable. Ageism, a term applied to discrimination in the hiring or firing of senior employees, suddenly seems like a meaningless issue. With large numbers of citizens of all ages competing for the same few jobs, almost everyone can feel discriminated against, or as was said about African-Americans, they may become “the last to be hired and the first to be fired.” Nappers’ Cubicles, a cute idea, might need to go in my Clever Ideas Waste Bin.


I work in an offsite office and did a lot of furnishing myself from the second-hand store. I put a couch in there. I can't recommend it enough. It's amazing how refreshing it is to take a quick nap whenever I feel it's necessary.
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I'm surprised mindsets regarding having an afternoon siesta are still frowned upon, where it's common practice in China and Europe, where people would get up on their desk for a short snooze and feel refreshed for the rest of the work day, instead of leaving work completely drained. I'm sure there are some companies in the US that do practice this though.
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All I could think of for the first desk design is how inappropriate it would be for people with a fear of enclosed spaces! The design is great but human quirks render it impractical. I think lots of employers are becoming more amenable to the idea of their workers taking catnaps (at least in the office setting). My mom works for the city I grew up in, and there's a couch in the ladies' room where people occasionally take brief naps. I'm a state employee and I admitted to my boss that I sometimes close my door and nap right on the floor. He wasn't at all bothered by that.
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The day after my 21st birthday i showed up at work more hung over than i'd ever been in my life. Told the boss i was going to lie down for a bit as i wasn't feeling well.

fast forward to around noon. boss came in, kicked me gently awake and proceeded to tear me a new one. i'd only been at the job for 9 months or so. i was about *this* close to being canned on the spot.

i think what really did it was the fact that i had retrieved a blanket AND pillow from my jeep.

just celebrated my 5 year anniversary here. yay!

lesson: if you're too f'd up to go to work, STAY HOME.
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I, for one, am a bit put off by the basic assumption of these designs. I do not live to work. Give me a utilitarian workspace so I can get the work done and get back to my real life.
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I often get paid to sleep when I work as a support worker, where there is a staff sleep-in room within the individual's house. The only trouble is that I sometimes get woken up by someone needing something, I don't get paid a lot for it and actually it's not that relaxing knowing that you are in a work environment. Which I guess is the point you are trying to make?

Your images and ideas remind me of the sleeping pods in Japan's big cities.

http://www.geobeats.com/videoclips/japan/tokyo/capsule-hotel
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Most of these designs are claustrophobic (which I am myself) and lend to total abuse. I fully agree that naps/mid day rests are key to staying productive but with these designs it's too easy to sleep through the day. However, not everyone can cat nap. For many a nap means 1-3 hours or sleep. What you really want to do is allow down time in the day.

I think having a rest areas available where you can nap, or meditate or decompress is key. Also flexible schedules or designated off hours works well too. Ways to play also motivate. A game of foosball or pool can energize too.
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The obverse of these clearly satirical, whimsical designs is the real-life practice of "pretending to work," which makes up at least 20% of a so-called productive day. Americans are obsessed with the idea of themselves as hard workers, perhaps going back to some Puritanical notion of work-as-virtue. What is the difference between surfing the web and writing emails (or commenting on blogs) while on the job, and actually sleeping on the job? The thuddingly literal interpretations some commenters have about this blog cracks me up. If Marcel Duchamp showed up today with his retouched Mona Lisa, and put it up on Neatorama, he'd get commenters saying "The Mona Lisa doesn't have a mustache," "I think it looks terrible," "there may be copyright issues with this blog," or "she's obviously not menopausal, so why does she have a mustache?" It's called satire--look into it.
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@Strubisatoaster

One of my co-workers found out that the women's restroom has a couch for the women to rest on. He started getting upset that the men's room didn't have the same thing.

I looked him straight in the face and said, "Dude, if there was a couch in the men's room, would you want to even sit on it?"

Of course no sane person would want to sit on a men's restroom couch. I guess it's OK for women, even though they leaver their restrooms much dirtier (former janitor).
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What might be an even better idea is to not have to work yourself so hard you have to sleep through the day just to think straight.

I get up at 6 AM. I get home at 5.15 PM and thats an average day. I'm betting there's lots more people work longer hours than that.
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Splint as a woman, I could not agree more. I hated having to use the bathroom in school b/c the girl's bathroom was always disgusting. As if these girls were using a toilet for the first time or something.
Just pee, poo and other bodily fluids EVERYWHERE.

Anywho.. as for that desk... suuure, who wouldn't want that, sleeping in a coffin feeling.. o_O
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Regarding the comment by several here that some of these ideas were already explored on Seinfeld, I should note that the Seinfeld series did not launch until 1989, when I was over 50. I had been working with these concepts for a decade or more. Is it my fault that the creators of Seinfeld were still in short pants when I started working on this? :)
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Ben Franklin wrote satire about sleeping on the job. Does that mean no one else can write about it? Ooops, I've written about it before myself. My mistake; I rarely ever watched Seinfeld. But I napped at work a long time before George Costanza was conceived.
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Matt Groening's Work is Hell was my "bible".

I enjoyed working grave shift at a hotel. You could really get a lot of napping done from 3 to 6 am.
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If you check all the Sienfeld shows I am sure you will see that all the words used above would have been used somewhere in its long run already. So stop using those words and think up your own.

Griujlki opl juhk!
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What's more amusing than Steve's "Inventions" is the inability of some of the readers to realize that Steve has been working on these ideas (and publishing them!) since the 1980s - as he clearly states in the narrative. George Costanza's sleeping under his desk in the early 1990s can only be considered an original concept in the BIZARRO World! Seinfeld again??
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The summer between high school and college, I got a job as a night watchman at a welding shop owned by family friends. It was really make-work to help with college expenses. My mother insisted I take a cot so I could get some sleep. I was very embarrassed showing up with a cot for my first night watchman shift. They let me set it up. I did nap, but didn't sleep much because right then my girlfriend told me she thought she was pregnant. My cot became the place of intense prayer that I be delivered from this possibility.
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