Sleeping During the Workday

I grew up convinced that one of the quickest ways to get fired or reprimanded by a manager was to fall asleep on the job. I think part of it had to do with the angry teachers that my friends and I had to deal with during all of middle school and high school whenever one of us fell asleep during class. Now that I have joined the workforce, I realize that staying awake during the day is just as hard now as it was in high school. There are just some days that seem to crawl by. I've been tempted to spend part of my lunch break in my car taking a quick nap. A recent article in Newsweek brought this issue to light. It was surprising to see that 37% of Americans nap during the day. I guess they counted my roommate's response a couple of thousand times because that number seems awfully high. Sara Mednick said this about what an ideal nap looks like:
The ideal nap length fits well within a lunch break. Mednick recommends 20 minutes to boost alertness and motor performance. Getting between 30 minutes and an hour of sleep will put a napper into slow-wave sleep, leaving them groggy, she says.

Comments

[Jonathan Praklis]

Wow, 37%?! I used to work for the state years ago and I do recall a fair amount of them sleeping on 15 minute breaks, that would end up to be an hour, but it's not like they could get fired easily.

In the private sectore, however, I can't imagine someone not getting in trouble for falling asleep at the job.