sleeping at work

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I often (tues-thurs) get extremely tired sitting behind my desk at work and no matter what combination of opening the blinds drinking a soda or even getting out and walking around a bit I try I still turn into a zombie in the middle of the week. I work out after work, get a good nights sleep most of the time, and have a reasonably healthy diet. Is it that my job is that lackluster that my brain and body just feel the need to shut down durring this time?



anyway I'd like to hear stories from the other people here who share this same delima. Am I the only one who fanticizes about taking an old video card and placing it on the desk then crawling under my desk and catching some Z's so if someone were to walk into my office and catch me I could pretend to be upgrading my machine.



I actually was so tired one day a few months back that I considered spilling my coffee on the desk and floor and turning my chair on its side then just laying down and going to sleep. If anyone were to walk in I was planning to act dissoriented and play it off as if I had passed out.



C'mon share some thoughts with me, I may just use your ideas.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    Depends on what you do. I sometimes give myself an assignment different from what I normally do toi challenge my brain. I study sociology and work at the customer service at a telcom. I found that doing advanced Excel "coding" keeps me fresh and make my brain exercise different "areas" and keeps me fresh.



    A story from work: One day I was so tired that I actually fell asleep at least ten times during the day while speaking to customers. My job is focused on technical testing and sometimes system enquiries and measurings take some time, up to a minute. While waiting for that instead of small talking I just doozed off for a few seconds, waking up, remembering where I was, what I was doing and what the customers situation was. I garantee that they did not notice anything, just me not speaking for five-ten seconds
  • Reply 2 of 3
    playmakerplaymaker Posts: 511member
    another funny story...



    in High school I worked with a guy named Mike at a supermarket. Mike was always thinking of creative ways to sleep on the job and concequently the turnover in managment helped him to get away with these such things. I have so many "Mike Stories" from those days but in an effort to keep this short I'll share one of my favorites. Mike was assigned to creating all of the new displays at the end of the isles. So he decided to create a new display for the charman tissue. Mike removed all of the tissue and began to build a large towering display with plywood seperating the different layers. On the second level he kept the inside hollow with a few rows of tissue paper to keep the light out and any customers from seeing inside the display (I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this).



    Well the next day Mike got to work for a mid-saturday shift and waited for his oportunity to climb inside. After a few hours of sleeping inside the toilet paper display an elderly woman who couldent reach beyond the 2nd shelf grabbed one too many packs of double rolls and caught a glimpse of the body inside...and flipped the hell out. She thought it was a dead body inside the display. Mike in a panic climbed out with both wrinkled face and uniform and tried explaining to the gasping woman he was simply fixing the inside of the display. When the managment got word of this they simply gave him a warning (not actually catching him sleeping inside the display) and called it a day. The few of us who knew about the escapade had to go laugh it off in the cooler in the back to avoid blowing his cover. I still laugh out loud today when the look on both Mike and the elderly womans face crosses my mind.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    kneelbeforezodkneelbeforezod Posts: 1,120member
    I rarely get enough sleep and often have trouble getting my shit together when leaving the house in the morning, but I generally don't have a problem with feeling like I'm going to fall asleep once I?ve made it into work. I attribute this to the potentially life-threatening amounts of coffee I drink during the day and the fact that I have way too much stuff to do.



    About the only times I start to drift these days are in dull meetings. If I'm not able to doodle on the back of a legal pad, I sometimes feel like I might be about to have some trouble keeping my eyes open. Sticking a sharp pencil in my arm usually snaps me back for a few more minutes.



    In one of my first proper jobs (about six years ago when I drank less coffee and had less responsibilities) I used to sometimes powernap in one of the toilet cubicles. This was in Europe though, so the cubicle doors and walls went all the way from floor to ceiling and made it much easier to catch some Zs. Meetings were much, much worse back then - particularly these regular Tuesday morning ones that went from 8.30 to 12.00 and were conducted 80% in French. I used to be hallucinating with boredom and tiredness by the end.
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