The Craft of Napping

Guppies at work are bored a lot. Boredom leads to drowsiness, and drowsiness leads to naps. Since management generally disapproves of sleeping on the job, Guppies must develop good clandestine napping skills to get the rest they need to be sharp and alert after work when their real day begins. Napping is about equal parts art and craft; the art you are born with, but the craft can be learned. Here, then, are the basic principles for the craft of napping:

Achieve a Stable Posture

This is the first principle of napping on the job. Part of the great attraction to napping is the relaxation response that occurs when all of your muscles let go as you drift peacefully off into the arms of Morpheus. But when this happens, unless you are either lying down or are in a structurally sound position with bones bracing and supporting your body parts, you are likely to experience some sort of collapse. Nothing detracts from a good nap more than falling out of your chair, or dashing your face painfully into the keyboard--both considered extremely poor form, by the way.

To prevent these sorts of embarrassing disasters, learn to use triangles in your nap postures. The triangle and its relative the pyramid are the strongest, most stable of the geometric shapes; if you ensure that your head and upper body are supported by triangles, you can snooze for hours in rock-solid security. There are many triangular postures--some quite daring and exotic and recommended for experienced nappers only--but the most basic is the old chin-in-the-hands position: lean forward, place your elbows on the desk at about shoulder width, and place your chin on the joined heels of your two hands with the fingers resting comfortably on each cheek. Your face should point to your terminal, as if you are studying something intently on the screen. This is a tried-and-true technique and, if other conditions are right, will give you many hours of peaceful slumber.

Select the Napping Site Carefully

It is perfectly acceptable to sleep at your desk if you have a modest amount of privacy from bosses or nosey passersby, but if your desk is exposed, you may have to select another nap site.

Bathrooms are good for naps, but sitting on a commode for long periods tends to make your legs fall asleep. The danger is that the company will call a surprise fire drill and you will have to be carried out of the building. Sleeping in the bathroom also can be hazardous if you tend toward hemorrhoids. I once worked with a man who spent at least four hours of every work day locked in a stall in the bathroom, sound asleep. He complained a lot about hemorrhoids, and we speculated that he used them for a snooze alarm. The theory was that he sat on the commode and slept until his hemorrhoids hit the water; the shock would wake him up so he could return to his desk for a while until the next nap attack struck.

Have Explanations Handy

Sooner or later, somebody is going to catch you napping. When that happens, it helps--particulary if the catcher is a boss--to have a plausible explanation ready. If all else fails, claim narcolepsy.

Great Nappers I Have Known

In my thirty years as a Guppie, I've had the opportunity to observe many nappers and their techniques. Three stand out in my memory for their creativity and style.

Leroy

Leroy and I shared a cube in a secure area that was protected by a locked door, so surprise visits from the boss were not a problem. A couple of illustrators worked in the cube next to ours, and they insisted that the overhead lights be kept off because reflections on their CAD screens gave them headaches.

It was nap heaven.

I drifted peacefully in and out of consciousness for several days, delighted and well-rested in my new surroundings, before a curious sound intruded to disturb my naps. I began to notice that every few minutes a short beep sounded. It wasn't loud, but it was like a leaky faucet--I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. At first I was mystified; I thought the illustrators must be doing it, but I soon discovered that it came from Leroy's direction. I turned around quietly (we sat back-to-back) and watched him. He seemed to be working. He was leaning back in his chair, his left hand supporting his chin in a good napping position, but his right hand was on the keyboard and he seemed to be scrolling up through a file looking for something. Suddenly, the scrolling stopped at the top of the file, and the terminal emitted the offending beep. Leroy, as if treated to an electric shock, immediately roused up and took a quick look around to ensure nobody had sneaked up on him. He then placed his finger on the right arrow key and began scrolling back down through the file while he went back to sleep. When it hit the end of the file, it beeped again, rousing Leroy for another quick perimeter check before he reversed the process again. He spent all day scrolling up and down through the same document and getting lots of rest.

Harvey

I shared an office with Harvey back in the days before computers, when we wrote everything by hand on yellow legal pads. He was the best napper I've ever seen; he was always on the verge of taking one. He took a morning nap, and an afternoon nap, and during lunch he put his head down on the desk and took a lunch nap. To Harvey, napping was a devine right. He made little effort to conceal it when he felt the urge to doze. I've seen him sit reared back in his office chair, arms hanging straight down on either side almost to the floor, head lolled back so that he faced the ceiling, slack jawed, mouth open, snoring like a dirt bike, and not giving a damn who walked by and saw him. The man was a master.

But for his most entertaining nap sessions, Harvey used the bobbing-for-apples technique. I can close my eyes and--if I don't fall asleep--I can still see him: He sits hunched over his desk, pencil touching the pad of paper before him. Slowly his head begins to sink. At first it is a slow, gradual lowering, as if he is trying to get closer to what he is writing. But the lower he goes, the more speed he picks up. Finally, after he has attained terminal velocity, lowering his forehead toward the desk at a frightening speed, he suddenly snaps to a stop and pops back up. But he doesn't recover quite as far as his starting position. He starts another descent, and, like a bouncing ball, each bounce is a little lower in amplitude than the one before. Miraculously, he never descends to the point where his head bumps the desk. At the end, when the bounces have died out, he is sitting with his forehead about three inches above the pad, sound asleep. He starts to snore.

Richard

I shared a cube with Richard right after he retired from the service. His great napping talent was his ability to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. He loved to talk and tell war stories, so he usually initiated the bullshit sessions. But after he had told his story, and it was your turn to respond with one of your own, he would sit and look you right in the eye and smile and nod as if he were following what you were saying, but his lids would droop and finally close completely. All you could do was stop talking, turn back to your desk and go back to work. After a while, he would wake up and, as if nothing had happened, start telling another war story. I heard later that he was diagnosed with narcolepsy, but it was damned disconcerting to watch him fall asleep while looking you right in the eye.