Well, I’ve been at work for 48 straight hours now, with about 3 hours of sleep in the midst of it all. Blame random projects with rapid deadlines, too much to do, too few to do it, and maddening irritations coming from those around me. But, this thread isn’t to complain about the things out of my control that are causing me to work insane hours.
No, this thread is about stupid stuff people do when they are drop dead tired. Need an exmple? I’m glad you asked.
About 4 hours ago I started developing a fairly major headache, no doubt from the sheer exhaustion. But, I had intelligently planned ahead by putting a pain relief pill in my pocket for just such an emergency. I jam my hand in my pocket, grasp at the pain relieving savior, and throw the item I just grabbed into my mouth.
“Gah, must these things always taste so crummy? Who wants a pill that tastes metallic!”
“Ugh, must these things always be so difficult to swallow. This thing is huge.”
But, swallow the horrible little thing, I did. How to reward myself? Howzabout a Coke? I empty my pockets and realize that, not only am I now a nickel short, but I still have the pill in my pocket.
I’m sure countless people will tell you that your productivity is negative at this point, and a solid 8 hours of sleep followed by 8 hours of work would be a better result than 16 hours of work. So I’ll let them do that, and instead point and laugh at you.
In some seriousness, one of the things you’re also doing by working such insane hours is making a lot of mistakes you’re going to have to fix later. [Of course, I have no idea what you do; I just hope it isn’t something like surgery.]
I once worked about 7 hours overtime trying to figure out a problem, finally gave up when I realized I was trying the exact same solution at midnight that I had tried at eight o’clock. The next morning I saw the problem in about 15 minutes and had it fixed in a half hour.
I’ve been so out of it before that when I went to proofread something I had translated the night before, I found that I didn’t recognize it at all and it didn’t even look like my work. Intensely surreal… though not quite as impressive as obliviously swallowing a nickel.
I once attempted suicide by sleep-deprivation and driving across the country and back in less than 5 days.
After what seemed like a week driving in a blinding snowstorm, I pulled into a Wyoming motel at 2am and tried to get a room. The guy at the front desk was on what must have been a very important phone call and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
I pulled the lobby furniture into a “fort” and climbed into the middle and sacked out.
I was working first shift at Kinkos, 7-3. It was busy when I was getting ready to leave, so I put in some overtime and stayed until a little after 4. Went home, prepared dinner, and got a call from my manager saying the 3rd shift guy called in sick and he needed me to cover for him. Went back into work at 8. Around the 5:30 AM mark, I was really getting tired. I had to separate some pads of paper but couldn’t find the proper padding knife. I figured a razor blade would do just as well.
In my sleep-deprived stupor, I ended up shoving the razor deep through my index finger and into my middle finger. I swear I heard it hit bone as it passed through my index finger. I frantically taped some paper towels to it and called everyone from 1st shift to see if they could relieve me early so I could go get some stitches. No one was able to come in early.
I ended my shift trying not to get blood on everything and packing more paper towels onto my wound. By the time the first shift people got there, blood was on almost every counter top, the bathroom sink, cash register, telephone, etc. Every time I tried to clean up any blood, I’d just made a bigger mess as the blood got through the paper towels. My manager insisted I go to get stitches, but I was so tired I just wanted sleep. I never ended up getting stitches, and no ill side effects except for 2 large scars on my fingers.
Ha! This is the SDMB, sir - we don’t need to be tired to perform sad acts! Witness the number of perfectly perky people who have shoved wedding rings up their noses.
No, I couldn’t find the thread, even though I searched. Was it lost?
Yes, I can put my wedding ring up my nose too. And extract it as well.
I wake up at 5 AM. I come home at 7 and start doing approximately 5 hours of homework. At this point, I start to go to sleep and end up writing down whatever I, in my semi-sleep state, “dream” about (I put it in quotation marks because it’s a sleeping daydream- lucid, but uncontrollable at the same time). I’ve cultivated a new habit - using 3rd period as a time to rewrite my chapter summaries. It helps to not turn things in that start off talking about Jefferson and finish at coxswains after going through marshmallows, power tens, five dollar bills and usually something sexual.
I once showed up to Greek class after a very, very late night. I’d finished my translation at something like 5 AM, and class was at 9.
My notes were nice, neat, orderly, and I’d gotten everything translated. But about half the English translations of the words were spelled out phoenetically in Greek characters.
Back when I was working for Three Initial Corporation, my product got into a bit of trouble due to egregious bad management, so TPTB decided that everyone had to start working 54 hours a week. Note the beauty of this: it cannot be done by working five 10-hour days, and it cannot be done by working six 8-hour days; in order to have at least one day off, one must either work five 11-hour days or six 9-hour days.
The mandatory overtime went on for months. Employees turned into snarling animals.
On one of my rare days off, I decided to visit some friends who lived about 20 miles away. I left their place at dusk. The next things I knew a large semi was blaring its horn at me. I came to and got my car back in a single lane, but I had no idea where I was. I kept driving until I passed some signs. I had driven about 50 miles past my home exit. I have no idea where my mind was. Surely I couldn’t have driven 70 miles if I were asleep. But I have no memory whatsoever of the time between getting on the freeway and being startled by the truck horn over an hour later.
In Navy nuke school I once turned in some homework that went on about some random tangent. I don’t remember much except the part about someone having violet eyes.
Working 24 hour shifts as a firefighter I usually got some sleep. Not always, one night driving home I thought to myself I really should open my eyes. When I did I saw penguins in the road. AHHHHHHH! they turned out to be the white stripes as lane markers. Time to pull over and go nappity nap.
