Last week, in one line#

Week 6 ended on a question: what does a person have to be seen to be, in order to be allowed to sleep?

Today we take it out of other people’s cultures and put it in the room you work in, where it is harder to look at.

Autonomy tracks seniority#

• the people most able to close a door are judged over months
• the people least able are judged by the hour, or by a queue
• strongest single predictor of who can rest

And it is not about how tired anyone is.

What is actually being read#

The rule is rarely “no sleeping”.

It is that being seen asleep means something about you — and what it means depends entirely on who is doing the seeing, and on what they already assume.

Inemuri, revisited#

Last week’s case, as the cleanest illustration.

• the same act reads as devotion, or as delinquency
• which one depends on the sleeper’s position
• the behaviour is constant; the interpretation is not

Surveillance#

Monitored work removes the ambiguity that made informal rest possible.

• a break that is not logged is not taken
• the discretion that let people manage their own trough disappears
• no rule has to be written for any of this to happen

The night shift#

Where napping is most defensible on safety grounds, it is most often forbidden.

Week 9 takes this up properly. Note here only that the argument against it is about appearances rather than outcomes.

Who is believed to be tired#

Fatigue is not read the same way on everyone.

• track who has to prove it
• track who is taken at their word
• the difference is the whole topic