Sleeping on the Job
For most of us, the thought of getting caught sleeping at our desks is stressful enough to send our brains a zippy little wake-up shot of cortisol. For others, napping at work might bring to mind one of those hyper-trendy companies, the kind with yoga and juice bars, and an almost disturbing zeal to replace desk chairs with exercise balls, or treadmills, or kiddie pools filled with salt water and live tropical fish. (Give it time; it’ll happen.) And indeed, firms like Google, Ben & Jerry’s, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Zappos have all invested in creating a space specifically for employees to close their eyes and take a mid-day snooze. In fact, according to a 2015 article on Inc.com , roughly 6% of employers now offer an onsite nap room of some sort. As with many trends in the U.S., we didn’t invent the nap break so much as we borrowed it from other cultures. In Spain, businesses famously close from 2 to 5 to accommodate a daily “siesta” for workers— although ironically, our ...