Excessive Daytime Sleepiness
by Christopher—Age 27—New York, NY
Filing patient records in a doctor’s office, I discovered that I possessed a physiological inability to stay awake immediately after lunch. I took my naps upright, sitting in a chair and hunched over a stack of corrugated cardboard boxes. It was my first real job. I guess the office manager, Gloria, took pity on me.
As an intern for the publications department of the National Zoo, I would almost always pack a lunch, which I would consume sitting on the same couch I would subsequently pass out across. Meanwhile the rest of the publications staff, all four of them, would quietly peck at their computers, which were in the same room. I have no idea why they never reprimanded me.
Being the only American, and new, meant that I was both constantly scrutinized and completely ignored. Eating the traditional big gummy wad of sticky rice with my lunch of fish and miso soup did nothing for my ability to stay coherent in the un-airconditioned staff room of Imazu high school. (It was summer and the rainy season.) Incredibly, this was the first place I’d ever worked where naps—not just my own—were a fairly frequent occurrence. Like the P.E. teacher to my right and the English teacher to my left, I would let the chatter of cicadas lull me to sleep as I lolled in my metal chair during the heat of the day.
Molecular biology and MRI physics can be taxing—so taxing that despite a generous hour for lunch in which the multinational members of the neuroethology lab of Donald H. Edwards would discuss the sorry state of American politics as filtered through Der Spiegel, Le Monde and Al Jazeera, when 3 o’clock rolled around I would go to the top floor of our building and lie prostrate on an extra-long institutional couch. One day my boss caught me and just laughed. I like to think he figured he was already getting his $27,000 a year out of me.
My worst job ever, and the last time I ever fell asleep at work: while leaning against a vent hood, straining to stay focused enough to learn how to purify RNA for a tissue labeling experiment. I just couldn’t do it anymore—hate the daylight hours that much; be as convinced of the injustice of paid labor.
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