The first few weeks of work, I was really careful about not drinking coffee in the morning in an effort to avoid a caffeine dependency. That is completely out the window now. When I get to work, I am a complete wreck. I'm usually so tired that just keeping my eyes open gives me a headache. I usually try to just zone out for about an hour, and then my gal pal, Yue, and I go get coffee. Immediately after taking my first sip, I feel so much better. By the time I am done with the whole mug, I feel right as rain.
Of course, this high only lasts about an hour, so by the time 10:00 rolls around, I am crashing once again. At first I tried to get up and walk around, maybe endulge myself in a morning cigarette to get the ol' heart rate up (yes, smoking is my cardiovascular workout). But ultimately, I've found it works better to just take a quick cat nap. Napping at work has its own tricky requirements ... namely, not getting caught. That is SO unprofessional. I think I've pretty much mastered it, though, which is why I feel qualified to teach this course.
The first thing I figured out is that you MUST turn off your screen saver. There's no bigger give-away than staring at your idle screen. Most people are just going to be cruising by your cube and not even give you half a glance, so as long as something is open on your screen, you're fine. I like to use an Excel spreadsheet, cause its hard to read and looks busy. The other key is to nonchalantly block the direct line of sight anyone might have of your closed eyes. I like to rest my head on my hand, and cover up the exposed side of my face. I also try to sit like this whenever I am not sleeping, so it won't establish any discernable patterns. I also always, always rest my other hand on the mouse. Not only does this keep up the appearance of work, but if someone happens to walk in, you don't have to move a muscle to go from sleep to clicking around on the screen. Very smooth transition.
The last hurdle I couldn't figure out how to overcome was what happens when you have a visitor. It's easy enough to satisfy the passers-by who could give a shit less what I was doing to begin with. But a few times, my friends would walk into my cube and scare the shit out of me. And it is so obvious that you dozed off when someone says something and you jump. But today, I solved the problem. There you have it, folks. A picture is worth all thousand of those lousy words I just purged onto the screen. HEADPHONES! Headphones were the missing key. I put on headphones, but do not listen to music. But everyone thinks I am. Most of the time I will hear them walk in and there is no problem. However, if I've really gone into REM, it is completely justifiable that I didn't hear them come in, because I'm obviously blasting my ears with with something more palatable than the golden oldies coming in over the speakers. Then they generally bang on something, say my name really loud, or touch me on the shoulder ... all three of which would cause any music lover to jump (as if they were sleeping). It's brilliant!
Now all I have to do is make sure my coworkers don't read this site.
