Last week, we talked about napping at work and here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared.
1. The hideout
I worked at a big box home improvement store for a few years, and we hired a couple young guys to work the lot. Bring back carts, help customers load heavier items or large orders, flag for the forklifts, etc. Well, these two, no one could ever get them on the radios for help. They would just disappear, then show up much later claiming they had been busy helping a customer. This went on for weeks.
Our assistant manager went looking for them one day when we were slammed and had a bunch of customers needing loading assistance. She’s walking the aisles trying to find them, and calling them on the radio over and over. As she’s walking through the insulation aisle, she hears herself calling them on the radio. About two shelves above her head. Turns out, these two had built themselves a hideout in the upper shelves of the insulation aisle, where they would climb up to nap and hide from work whenever they felt like it (which was apparently 95% of their shift).
2. The medical concern
I did a brief stint in data entry, and it was so mind-numbing and physically uncomfortable (noisy, smelly, bad chair) that I’d get sleepy. The complex was massive, and one day I found a little nook with an exit door, a sort of unused hallway off another unused hallway at the end of an unused wing. I spent my lunchtime and breaks in that nook, lying on the floor on my side. Until the day two security guys rushed down the hall, one carrying a first aid kit, and woke me up, then grilled me about what I’d eaten that morning and if I needed to go to the hospital. I’d been spotted on a security camera, and looked “sprawled out, like you died.”
3. The drywall
One day I heard a huge thud from Frank’s office. I went to see if he was all right. He said he was. But Frank was known to fall asleep at his desk. I noticed a fresh hole in the drywall by his office chair. Later when he was out I went into his office, placed his chair on its side, and gently slid it up against the wall. Bingo! The caster lined up perfectly with the new hole in wall, which was even the same distinctive shape. The thud I heard had been Frank falling asleep and flopping out of his chair, running it into the wall.
4. The phone call
I used to have a coworker who would go into a small closet, sit on the floor with his knees up and phone positioned just so on his ear and then fall asleep. So that if someone opened the door, they would just think he was doing the very normal action of taking a phone call in a small dark closet…
5. The family nap
I was training a group of new hires in a Teams meeting. One guy had his camera on and was working from his bedroom. At one point during my presentation, his wife/girlfriend came into the bedroom and flopped on the bed for a nap. Then their dog followed her and curled up on the bed. A couple minutes later, he got up from his chair, crawled into bed, and started napping with them. I don’t think he realized his camera was on.
I turned his camera off and continued with my presentation. He had to redo the training with a one-on-one trainer who made him leave the camera on the whole time to make sure he wasn’t slipping away for a snooze again.
6. The cover
At my first job, which was an apprenticeship program at a media company, we had a monthly rotation. So, every three months, I would be on a team that refused to give apprentices any work. Since this was a media company, we had private suites for phone/Zoom interviews. They weren’t soundproof but the doors were fully opaque, and you would usually determine if someone was in a “phone room” by listening at the door.
So! I would go in, pull up a recording of an old interview on my phone, play an “office keyboard typing ASMR” video on YouTube, and take a nap. Anyone who came to listen at the door would hear me asking questions and typing, with the interviewee on speaker. Worked like a charm.
7. The box
We found a temp sleeping in a large box on our manufacturing floor. He was angry that we had woken him up!
8. The microscope
I worked in a clinical lab one summer. The lab technologists had stereoscopic microscopes at their cubicle desks. One of the technologists apparently was on a PIP because she was caught napping at her desk. She didn’t just lean back in her chair or lay her head on her desk, though. She would sit at the microscope and would nap with her head (maybe closed eyes even?) resting on the eyepieces of her microscope in an effort to look like she was working when she actually was sleeping.
9. Chad
I work for a public accounting firm. During tax season, everyone works extra hours, but we have a lot of flexibility – we have core hours we are supposed to be there, and then you can come in early or leave late, whatever you need to do to get your work done.
Several years ago, a manager popped her head in my office door one evening about 7:00. She asked if “Chad,” who had the office next to mine, was still there, or if he had left for the day. I said I hadn’t seen him since around 6, and she said, “His light’s off, he probably went home. If you see him before I do in the morning, tell him I need to ask him something about a client and to come see me.” She went back to her office and her work. About 10, she went home. She walked through the office, noting all lights were out. She set the alarm, locked the door and left.
A few hours later, one of the partners got woken up by a call from the alarm company. There was movement in the building. The partner met the cops there, and they found Chad … who had turned off his light and laid down on the floor behind his desk about 6:00, thinking he’d take a quick nap. He woke up eventually, and decided he’d make some coffee and then work an hour or so before going home to change for the next day. He never thought about the alarm being set. Until the cops came in. Poor Chad – it took years for him to live that one down.
10. The cat protector
Previous warehouse job, was really chill, kinda miss it, but they had a shop cat, and that fluffy orange menace would hop onto my shoulder and start purring while I was eating lunch. One day I woke up four hours after lunch with the fuzzy feline purring on me non stop. It was later reported to me that each time someone came in to wake me up, they got hisses to ears and paws bapping at their face to get them to leave me be. Everyone took the hint from the orange menace.
Naturally wasn’t paid for my nap, but I really couldn’t care less if I was or not, that was the best nap I had in my life. Only time I fell asleep at work as well. And I swear that nap fixed me for at least a few weeks after.