Nap time: Memo requesting space for “day sleepers” at Phidias & Associates
It’s been one of those days . . . you were dragging by 10 a.m., ready to slump over onto your drafting table at Phidias & Associates architectural firm in San Francisco. Even that incredibly bright bay view outside the office windows hasn’t helped perk you up, and the coffee is just giving you stomach pains. How are you supposed to be creatively inspired when you can barely get your eyes to focus and your head feels as if it’s full of cotton? No, you weren’t out partying last night; you’ve just been working long, late h ours on a rush job for one of the firm’s biggest clients. San Francisco is the workaholic city, but this is too much. If only you could stretch out for a little catnap, you’d be good as new in fifteen minutes.
Groggily, your mind brings up the memory of an item you tore out of the Wall Street Journal a year ago. You saved it with the vague notion of presenting it during one of those officewide, corporate spirit “pep rallies” your employers are fond of. You rummage around in your desk drawer—ah, there it is. A paragraph or “nap rooms” in the workplace. At first, your work ethic was shocked at the concept, but then your creative self started to glow at the thought. After all, didn’t’ they teach you in school that Thomas Edison kept a cot in his office and got his best ideas when he was napping? And the article quotes an expert, William A. Anthony, author of The Art of Napping and professor of rehabilitation counseling at Boston University. He says most people aren’t sleep deprived, they’re “nap read.”
There are plenty of other precedents and pioneers out there in the business world. At Macworld Magazine, the human resources director, Shelly Ginenthal, says their two-person nap room was installed in 1986 and usually has a waiting line. It must not be interfering with productivity if they’re still using it ten years later, you muse. And here’s another firm, Yarde Metals in Bristol, Connecticut, whose president, Bruce Yarde, says, “A quick little nap can rejuvenate you.” So he’s fighting employee stress with a 25-person nap room. Wow. That’s almost like you old kindergarten. And yet another—you like this one best—an architectural firm in Kansas City, Missouri, Gould Evans Goodman Associates, has plans on its drawing boards to add a nap space to its offices. If they can do it in Kansas City, why not here?
Your task: After you’re had a good night’s sleep, write a memo to Jonas T. Phidias, persuading the senior partner that the distinguished offices of Phidias & Associates could benefit from the addition of a corporate “nap room.” Be sure you use your best persuasive skills, though, or you may send the wrong message to your employer.