Sleeping at Work


While I was befriending my computer while at work during night shifts, it is a usual occurrence that I will find myself suddenly struck with a very severe affliction of the 3 to 5 am syndrome of yawning. Much more if you are here seated in this all too remote humdrum, solemn, and floating place we call call center. You’ll definitely feel your eye ‘balls’ drop bouncing a couple of times until you realize you have erroneously done something to your customer's account. And this yawn syndrome” seems to be spreading like an epidemic infecting all of us in just a split of time.

Mapping out the syndrome or should I say, this yawn epidemic before me, I knew something had to be done. Or do you have any reserve energy left to do anything when you’re down like a rotten vegetable in front of your computer. Your competency drops, your concentration weakens, and your eyes will be heavier that you ever felt before. The free coffee at the pantry just gave up on you to give the waking energy. Your world became silent. You became slow and weak. You now have to press ctrl+alt+del and stop working. Your productivity slope drops instantly. You lost the war. You are sleepy. That’s while company's clock is still running.

So, you would absolutely just take a nap. Or later, you will then extend for a couple of minutes of stealing more naps which will turn out to be a nice goodnight long sleep.
Alright. So that’s just the way it is – you are still on the clock sleeping in a nice dark unnoticeable spot, under the cubicles perhaps just beside the toes of your closest team mate. You will then think that this is such an innovative way of having an adequate napping/sleeping spot within the premises of the call center area with no one to realize someone is napping in the grassy warm carpeted floor. Hidden behind that ideal nest, in a dark spot, the location exhibits a soft bed-time experience plus an advantage if you specifically position a working toe at you back - which is an excellent medium to receive alarming kicks for any approaching team leader.

Then suddenly, someone just kicked your back.

Yes. The team leader is coming. And then you tend to wake up briefly quite unaware what is happening with your red teary eyes blocking your view of what is really happening outside until your closest ‘toe friend’ told you that the team leader is looking all over for you. Now you are completely in great trouble.

In the very near end. You arrived at your working spot again; quite comfortable. Your productivity slope goes back in its increasing rate. You are refreshed. You would think that you survive the war after all. Or have you?

I would like to share a reading from a business consultant named “Mistersix” from Contact News Magazine. He pointed out the term “Sacred Responsibility”. It is defined in the article as “a truthful, religious, and unselfish deed quite indistinguishable far more than as a point of personal instinct of doing the right thing even when nobody’s looking.” This is quite a conceptual definition though that it is somehow difficult to apply in a real time scenario where we know that some company don’t have any necessary tracking devise if some point in its time you get out of the premise and spend some time someplace that we would rather not be, and that is to sleep while on duty. And if you are flying high to the clouds while asleep when everyone else is working, you are actually falling outside the criteria of Mistersix’ definition.

I want you guys to read on the exact words of Mistersix in the article and reflect on it completely. He states:

“Work time is not nap time--no matter how you cut it or rationalizes or even argues that you have already done your job, it is still an inappropriate behavior in the work place; a disservice to the employees who are focused on work and it is likewise will be a muddy dirt for a company’s image in the long run…”

“With sleeping while on duty, you are actually stealing your company’s financial compensation budget. I am not talking about the spontaneous naps we have during breaks because they are not paid for but only those silent thieves who sleeps at work then stating that he already have done so much already for its entire shift already. I have no idea what’s his responsibilities are, and I don’t care what are those even though he made it to finish his work faster than anybody else or made it to the topmost list of fastest track and field athletes in Olympics. Why do I care? He’s outside the criteria of sacred responsibility. At the head on the onion, you are being selfish for not offering your hand to your other team mates, and worse, from a strictly ethical point of view sleeping while being paid is stealing.”

Ok. So what is work then in the first place?

Work is simply a productive play of sacred responsibility and it should be personally and financially rewarding, validating and, if your lucky (and perhaps diligent) being part of something greater than yourself treating it as your most valuable property - an asset that needs to be develop.

And any company don’t want to work with a dull, idle, and sleeping/stealing property.