If Lora Manka feels sluggish during her workday, she heads for the area her boss has set aside for employee nap breaks and catches 40 winks. If I have had too big of a lunch I just want to go lay down for 10 or 15 minutes. The rationale is that a short nap helps workers perform at their best for the rest of the day. In some cases, businesses actually build special napping areas for employees to snooze. Gould Evans, for instance, set aside a small village called ''spent tents'' for its 150 hard-working employees.
Architects often pull all-nighters.
People can end up working longer if they can sleep here instead of going home. We try not to keep people here but the reality is sometimes we need them,'' Manka said. People get 20 percent less sleep now than they did before Edison invented the electric lightbulb,'' he said, while the typical work week is about seven hours longer than it was only a few years ago. The NSF said it does not have figures on the numbers of businesses that allow or encourage sleeping on the job. But it has spread to many major industries including transportation, law firms, high tech and others where the clock never stops.