Why must employees be treated like children and not trusted to do their jobs even if they’re not in the office, even if they take a little rest during the day? A few companies have made progress, but the rest are as inhumanely regimented as junior high.

“I found I could add nearly two hours to my working day by going to bed for an hour after luncheon.”
-Winston Churchill

“Measure not dispatch by the time of sitting, but by the advancement of the business.”
-Francis Bacon

Among the many dimensions of evil is a specific bit of inhumanity (which is an essential component of evil) that simply will not go away: white collar/office bosses’ insistence on face time and their taboo against sleeping during the work day.

I’ve been reading about this issue for at least 20 years.  A Chicago Tribune article (3/4/08) contained a news article that reveals that “one third of the people in a survey fell asleep on the job” or had to fight off sleepiness…and then in the “Health” section there’s an article about how “a growing number of authors, doctors and entrepreneurs are promoting guilt-free daytime naps as studies show both that napping can improve productivity and that Americans are sleeping less and less at night…”.

They’re still issues???

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It is absolutely ridiculous, not to mention humiliating to the worker, that face time (about which there are also plenty of articles, including how to fool your boss into thinking you’re there) and a daytime rest in the workplace should even be issues.

What is wrong with bosses and managers, that they insist on face time and prohibit afternoon naps?  They’ve already claimed a good two-thirds of people’s lives, if not most of their waking lives, with ever-growing jobs and ubiquitous technology. 

And now these exhausted people can’t take a few minutes respite during the day?  Is that the nature of capitalism, to chew people up and spit them out?  Now you see what I mean by inhumanity.

Industrial Age mentality

What is wrong with bosses and managers, for one thing, and is that they are mired in an Industrial Age mentality, where you are not productive unless you are standing there at your machine, punching out parts or sewing garments. 

It is the most loathsome of ironies that the technologies that should free us from the office have not, in most cases, done a damn thing except allow the office to spread to all of life.

Control and productivity

Face time and no-naps also means control.  A huge part of organizational life is mere ostentation and obedience.  Certainly, to see a person pretending to be alert, at a computer, doing something, is evidence that he/she must be working. 

I agree that productivity is devilishly difficult to measure in our age of the information-worker, but surely being chained to the machine is not a sign of it.  Yet that is what too many bosses really believe.

It may not surprise you to learn that some powerful people in organizations get the complete privacy that a nap would require.  They have closed, opaque doors and administrative assistants to ward off all intrusions. 

Napping: my secret

A mid-level professional like myself got an office with a closed, opaque door (although my boss could barge in anytime he wanted — truly a sign of power display), with windows that ran above eye level. 

Thus, if I wanted to doze during the day, I had merely to close my door, turn away from the windows, and spread a newspaper out in front of me as if I were reading it.  My heart aches that I and others must play these stupid, degrading games.

The face time and nap regulations, although they undermine productivity and humiliate human beings, will not go away anytime soon.  They are well established as signs of obedience, productivity, and power. 

There is a special place in hell for bosses who reprimand and punish employees for “lateness” and “office hours” when it’s really not necessary to be there.  Every time I was reprimanded for my “hours,” I wore it as a badge of integrity.   

Power trumps health

No matter how much they say they care about their employees’ health, most companies will continue to regard sleeping on the job as, at worst, a terminable offense, and at best, a horrible loss of face. 

I knew one executive who openly slept in his office, but this guy was such a workaholic that for him, face time was 24 hours a day.  So I guess there are some circumstances under which napping in the office is okay. 

The other reason why face time and nap prohibitions will prevail is that this format resembles another institution that teaches conformity, obedience, and subordination: school.

Back to school

At school we have to be in certain places at certain times, without fail, or we are truant or tardy.  Other people are in control of our bodies and our time.  Attendance is taken.  Authority figures are there to make sure we’re working.  There are vacation days and sick days, when your attendance is not required.  It’s good preparation for the workplace.

But here’s the contradiction I don’t get: if bosses are going to treat employees like children, why don’t they let them take naps?