Naptime
Sleep has been shown to improve athlete performance. In the Stanford basketball team, sleeping 10 hours a night improved player shooting accuracy by 9% and sprinting by 12%. Other studies have shown that sleep is essential to memory consolidation, and to creating new ideas. Some researchers claim that we can learn new information while we sleep

Jerry was reading an article on the importance of sleep in the New York Times and started thinking. Sleep is for everyone, not just for athletes, the study applies to his software engineers just as well. He was going to institute a policy of at least 10 hours of sleep a day, mandatory.
But how could the rule be enforced? People wouldn’t want to waste their free time at home sleeping, just because the head of engineering told them to do so. They would rather watch TV, listen to music, or drink beer. What would be a good incentive? How could you check that they actually slept?
He decided that everyone could nap for two hours in the office. They still had to put in their regular hours, and finish projects, but they could sleep. They had a woodwork construction firm install baskets hanging from the ceiling. A person could crawl in, close the door, and get some shut-eye. The cells hung about half a yard above the floor, were well insulated, and had a high-quality mattress and pillows.
“Janice, where are you going in those pajamas?”
“Can’t talk, late to a meeting,” Janice replied, running, holding on to her laptop and pillow. “The alarm clock didn’t wake me!”
Over a month, fewer errors were introduced into the codebase, bug reports were more accurate, and new documentation was more legible. Jerry was happy. He reported to the board that “This new strategy is going to make us leaders, the cream of the crop is going to come to learn from us how to manage software construction. It is all about the people, nurturing them, and providing a supporting sleeping environment. It is all about sleep satisfaction.”
The head of the security team spotted an opportunity. She installed a small network-connected device in each basket. Once a person was sound asleep, it started playing a soundtrack that extolled the virtues of long and complicated passwords: at least 24 characters, numbers, letters, and symbols. Reusing old passwords was a big no-no, and no door surfing was allowed.
The device emitted a rotten eggs odor and decaying cheese when the soundtrack mentioned passwords shorter than 18 characters.
If a person doesn’t get enough sleep, he gets moody, eats snacks, and drinks more coffee.
Jerry decided that to make sure people were getting enough sleep, there wouldn’t be any coffee in the office. There was a lot of grumbling, because people were used to quality coffee beans and superior espresso machines. Rumor had it that they had the best latte in the area. But since this was a command that came from above, there was no point in arguing.
“Sam, why is the sleeping mattress dirty? It has a big brown stain”, Karl asked.
“Oh, I spilled some of my coffee stash, sorry! I was in a rush to wake up and go to a meeting.
“Is it the good Ethiopian stuff?”
Sam looked cagey. “Well, sort of”.
Karl surreptitiously extracted a small opaque bottle out of his inner jacket pocket. “Well, if you pour me some, I will forget about this small incident”.
Sam scowled, but when he saw that Karl was serious, he reluctantly reached into his backpack and poured a rich mocha-colored liquid.
Karl took a sip, and a big smile slowly spread across his face. “This is like sitting on a rocking chair on your front porch on a pleasant spring day,” he said.
As Sam entered the meeting, he was surprised to see that two engineers were wearing nightcaps, a third was carrying a blanket, and a fourth was dragging her favorite pillow. Janice was sitting in the back, glassy-eyed. “A classic case of caffeine deficiency,” Sam thought.
…
The following Monday Jerry brought a customer for a briefing and offered coffee.
“But we have no coffee,” the office manager whispered.
“What do you mean no coffee? Get some from the CEO stash upstairs,” Jerry replied in hushed tones.
Her eyes went wide, “I didn’t know about that, I thought it was contraband.”
“Please, just go get some, we don’t want to look bad in front of the customer,” Jerry whispered.
Janice was just coming around the corner when she saw the well dressed office manager carrying a tray with a choice of coffee brands. She immediately froze, but her eyes tracked the tray like a hawk. They had that Brazilian brand she only heard rumors of, Cafe Pilao, a full-bodied coffee made with dark, slow roasted & finely ground beans.
…
The next Monday, Karl had to change his expenses system password, which was going out of date.
“But it is 13 characters, and you only created one three months ago,” Sam said.
“How do you know that? I can smell something rotten, did you break any eggs?” Karl said.
“What are you talking about? Besides, I know your password, it is the same as the one you use for all the other accounts.”
“Shh, Shh! Keep your voice down” Karl said, looking woozy and pale.
“You don’t look so good, did you have any cheese this morning?” Sam asked.
Karl leaned on the wall, kept his eyes on the floor, and walked in the direction of the restrooms.
“Why did he have to talk about short passwords?” Karl thought. The floor felt unstable, and the walls were out of focus.
…
Janice liked the quiet of the office in the early morning. She was alone in the kitchen, brewing her Cafe Pilao. The smell was wonderful, like walking through an orchid of coffee interspersed with citrus trees, and berries. She could feel the heavy ground underneath her feet and see the early morning mist.
“Good morning, what are you making?”
Janice almost jumped out of her skin.
“Hmm, it smells just like my favorite coffee.”
It was the CEO, Janice forgot he liked to come in early to beat the traffic.
“Oh, it’s my favorite coffee too,” she forced a smile, “but we aren’t allowed to drink it anymore”.
“But why is that?”
“It is this naptime thing, where, we won’t get enough sleep if we drink coffee.”
“Really, I didn’t know about that,” the CEO said, his brows raised.
…
The next week, the coffee restrictions were lifted. However, everyone that ever opened the office in the morning, by typing in his four-digit password, reported a smell of rotten eggs. No one ever found the eggs.
THE END