I’ve always heard former bookstore employees say that they’d often dream about arranging bookshelves continuously, before waking up to do it again for real. I’m on my second bookstore job this year and I haven’t had that dream, but for the last week or so, every night I dream that my real-life best friend and I are working at a Chinese restaurant. The setting is always nighttime, and my job is completely removed from the buy/cook/eat process–something overspecialized like hanging coats or wiping down tables. But instead of dreaming about working, my dream starts 20 minutes from the end of my shift: I do the last of my work, say my goodbyes, clock out, and go out for a night on the town with my friend.
Anybody else dream about work? If so, what’s it like?
Not anymore, as sitting behind a desk isn’t very “dreamy”. However, when I worked at KFC in high school, I used to dream I was working all the time. I think it’s because the tasks were all pretty monotonous, and didn’t take a great deal of thought. That would explain why they were having dreams about organizing the shelves. You have to think about it, sure, but it’s pretty automatic.
I also have dreams occasionaly about a video game I’ve been trying to beat, a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve, etc.
I tend to have pretty vivid and memorable dreams generally. Nearly every night I will have at least one dream that I remember.
I do dream about work or the people that I work with fairly frequently. The type of dream depends on what is happening at work or in my non-work life. Sometimes they are the normal stress type dream, e.g. I’m late for a meeting and one thing after another prevents me from getting there or they could just be silly dreams that incorporate elements from my work or my colleagues.
I’m currently on holidays for two weeks, but even so had a dream the night before last that I won the Amazing Race teamed with one of my colleagues from work. The host, Phil Keoghan, was also in my dream. The race to the finish line was all very exciting.
I always dream about work. Comes from being a teacher for 20 years…it gets hard to shut off. It usually takes a good month or so in the summer for my mind to stop making up lessons and rearranging debate teams.
I used to work at OfficeMax, having left there six years ago. To this day I still have dreams about working there. Usually the store layout is disorganized and I have no idea where anything is and I am often unclear on what my job duties are. The store is uaually empty and eerily quiet, as if I am the only one there and I can’t find my way out of the store. The whole thing is very confusing. I also have [del]nightmares[/del] dreams from my days at Burger King. I hope to never go back to that hellhole again.
I had a weird one just before I woke up this morning.
I work for the post office, but in my dream it was also the bus company. I dreamed I got on a bus, and the driver saw my uniform, and we started “talking shop”. He asked me if I was a driver, and I replied that no, I was in that big depot where they do all the mail.
I used to work in a stockroom when I was in high school. I specifically stacked and organized boxes of shoes at a department store. The shoe storage was seperate from the regular stock storage area, so I spent a lot of time in there by myself.
I used to dream about stocking things. It would pretty much be after a long day (when the other stock-person didn’t show I worked a double) and then went home to sleep quick before doing anything else. It was almost like the dream was a replay of what went on at work, with a little less interaction with people and a little more shoe boxes…
I dreamed that a dog came in unresponsive and there were no doctors around, so I gave it CPR and it recovered just as a Dr. came in.
And then I dreamed about being in large apartment with like 30 roommates that included my Chief of Staff and several other technicians. We all had a good time.
I dream about work all the time. Not dreaming that I’m doing repetitive, work-like things, but dreams set at work.
One time I dreamed that the doctors I work for decided that, to drum up new business, the office staff would go topless. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me a bit. I even encouraged another woman who was horrified at the idea that she’d get used to it.
Once I dreamed that they decided that the staff would pay the utilities. I agreed to give them $157 every Tuesday for the phone bill.
A few months ago I dreamed that the bathroom at work was my bedroom, and I was pissed because people using the bathroom would lay down on my bed and breathe on my pillow.
I lecture on art history, so I frequently have dreams about heading to lecture and discovering that my computer/ slide projector/ slides/ printed exams are all totally screwed up and the students in the dream get mutinous.
I’ve also been having horrible interview dreams-- in academia these are usually 2-day on site stressful affairs, and in the dream things always go totally surreal. I also have the dream where I’m supposed to give a conference paper and something’s gone horribly wrong. I don’t know, come to think of it, that I have normal neutral work dreams-- they’re always pretty much nightmarish. I wonder what that means. . .
This always happens to me when I start a new job. The oddest time this happened is when I was a bank teller. I dreamt that I was working at a teller at a secret swiss bank. The customers were chatting with me in German, and I kept trying to respond to them in German, but kept accidentally slipping into English. The entire night, I kept asking for their account numbers, and they kept insisting that the account number was a secret (it being a secret swiss bank and all)!
I agree that a bit of it has to do with working in a repetitive job. When I worked in Tech Support, I spent my dreams solving connectivity issues, and when I worked at a sandwich shop, I dreamt of cutting veggies.
When I worked at Budget Rent-a-Car, I spent a month changing tires – we mounted snow tires on all the cars for the winter. The tires were stacked up to the ceiling all around the shop.
One night I dreamed that the tires were falling, so I pushed my girlfriend out of the bed, yelling “The tires are falling!”
She’s now Mrs. Danalan, but she’s never really forgiven me for that night. I keep trying to tell her that I saved her life, but she just remembers waking up on the floor.
When I first started out as a lawyer, I mostly did document review: you get shut up in a room, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, and you review documents all day. The case I remember working on most was a construction case, so I reviewed really exciting construction related documents. I used to dream that I was the contractor, and spent all night dreaming that I was building the project. It was awful – all day shut up with these documents, all night dreaming about what was in the documents.
I started reading Nancy Drew books before bed – the plots were simple, the chapters were short, and so I could very easily get through quite a bit before I fell asleep. So then I had Nancy Drew dreams!
I’ve always had work dreams, since my first job at the blueberry factory (I would dream of the blueberries going by on the belt), to my job at the factory (I would dream of tins of sardines going by on the belt), when I got my raise at the factory (I would dream that I had to stay by the belt and pile the boxes faster, higher, and though I had to pee, I couldn’t go, because I couldn’t flag down anyone to give me a break - nearly wet the bed that time), to my current job at a consignment shop where I am a processor (I dreamt that I was asking my manager how much she thought I should price old bananas… I had to ask her, since I thought we should throw them away, since I would be too horrified to sell them, and she agreed… instead of tossing them, however, she told me to put them into the donation bin). I particularly hate these recent dreams, since sleep is one of the few escapes I have from rude customers, and when I do sleep, I tend to dream of rude customers. This has made me rather surly in the mornings and I don’t want to go in to work.
I need a mundane job again, so I can dream about mundane things.
Me too - it usually only happens when I’m starting a new job, and am still a little anxious. It may also happen in the run up to a stressful event at work, like a public presentation. I definitely remember it happening with my first menial job, which was serving in a restaurant, but also with the more cerebral work I’ve done since.
