Some firms allowing employee nap time

Every day after lunch, Katrina Resevic beds down under a desk next to a mailroom copier, lulled by the hum of the machine. Her employer, Regina Villa, is undisturbed by the daily siesta. In fact, she OK'd it.

"I eat while I'm working. Then, I take my lunch break and nap," says Resevic, a 46-year-old video editor and camera operator who admits to napping with a stuffed rabbit. "Naps make me feel rested and more alert."

Who can blame her? Most of us could use the sleep, says a 1997 National Sleep Foundation/Gallup survey that found 56 percent of all working adults experience significant drowsiness during the day. Experts like Dr. Neil Kavey, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, recommend at least eight hours of sleep a night. Kavey traces Americans' current battle with sleep deprivation to the late 1870s, after Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb. Kavey believes the light bulb interrupted our circadian rhythms, those internal 24-hour "clocks" that tell us when to sleep. Disruptions of these rhythms, coupled with neurochemical changes when we don't get enough sleep, contribute to loss of concentration, irritability, drowsiness, and the kind of miscalculations that can cost an employee his or her job -- or life. "Certainly, before the electric light bulb, Americans had more sleep," says Kavey. "Then, TV appeared in the 1950s, and that changed our sleeping rhythms again because it provides even more stimulation." "Our great-grandparents went to bed when the sun set, and they woke when the sun rose," notes Jeanetta Rains, clinical director of the Center for Sleep Evaluation in Manchester, N.H. "They got their sleep. Why? Because there wasn't that much to do." Meanwhile, work demands also have increased, with some companies remaining open 24 hours a day. Americans watch TV, play on the Internet, work longer and harder - - all of which takes time away from sleep. According to the Washington-based National Sleep Foundation, 20 percent of the nation's 25 million shift workers -- those working other than 9 to 5 -- report falling asleep regularly at work. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill was caused, in part, by a drowsy shipmate who ran the tanker aground. And sleep deprivation may have played a role in the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, notes Kavey. Of the U.S. employees who feel drowsy during the day, 34 percent report being dangerously sleepy, with $18 billion a year in production losses as a result, the foundation says. One solution, says Boston University psychologist William Anthony, is workplace napping. Anthony, 55, and his wife, Camille, also 55, are researching a book on napping on the job. Camille Anthony, a fiscal manager at the public interest lobbying firm Regina Villa Associates, naps on her bosses' sofa daily. Last year, William Anthony's The Art of Napping focused on nappism, nap pride, nap management, and nonanapology, or the science of napping. The book not only heralded the virtues of a little shuteye, it sought to dispel the notion that napping is bad or abnormal. "People who nap," wrote Anthony, "are often made to feel guilty and ashamed. They may even incorporate the prejudices of napaphobics and believe themselves to be slothful malingerers." One woman the couple interviewed is so afraid of being detected by her boss that she naps in a bathroom stall. Others sneak naps in cars in company parking lots, in utility closets, or in conference rooms. Anthony is hoping naps one day will become part of America's workplace culture, complete with file-a-beds that can be folded and tucked under desks after a nap. In Europe, for example, formal rest breaks -- known as siestas -- are routinely held at midday. Meanwhile, Columbia-Presbyterian's Kavey suggests we ignore those who claim to need only a minimum of rest, and take our cues from people who get a full measure of sleep. "People brag about friends or relatives who get along with just a little sleep," says Kavey. "We should look up to those who manage to get all the sleep they need. ... Just because you need nine hours, doesn't mean you're slothful or lazy."

Copyright 1998
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.