I don’t often dream about work, I think because what I do at work is constantly changing, but I do dream about my maintenance co-workers, one in particular.
You know you’ve been spending too much time at work with someone when they start cropping up in your dreams. I can’t remember the details now, but I think there was one that was almost mildly erotic… maybe he was trying to get a date or something, I don’t know. I’m not remotely interested in him, so it was a slightly odd dream.
Blech! Don’t remind me. I once had an erotic dream about a boss I absolutely loathed.
When I dream about work, it involves people I work with and/or situations that have occurred, but one oddity I have long been aware of is the place I am in during the dream at best has only a very vague resemblance to any portion of the three buildings I have worked in while employed with this firm.
In fact the place I am in during the dream usually does not look anything like those buildings whatsoever, but I always think of them as work-related dreams because of the people and/or events occurring in them.
I’m a programmer. Once, at a time when I was debugging and fixing some rather nasty ‘C’ code written by someone else, I did some work in my sleep.
In the dream, I discovered a serious bug during testing, isolated the cause of the bug in the source code, analysed it and came up with a fix (quite a complex one, too) that worked 100%. On waking, I could remember what I’d done - unusual for me, since I don’t normally remember dreams.
After waking, I washed, dressed, breakfasted, etc, went into work, and then immediately did some testing, looking for this bug. Sure enough, it was there, just like in the dream. So I tried the fix I’d dreamt about, and it worked fine first time.
Not ESP or anything - I’d been working with this big mess of crappy code day-in, day-out for weeks, and my subconscious must have picked up on the code at a level my conscious mind didn’t.
Maybe I should have filed a claim for overtime. 
Occasionally…and I also talk in my sleep. When I was in college, I worked as a telemarketer for a couple months. I also used headphones to listen to music as I slept, so as to not disturb my roommates. I went to bed early one night while my roommates were still up doing homework, and apparently, as I slept, the cord from my headphones became wrapped around my neck. Katie came over to take my headphones off to prevent my impending strangulation, and as she did, I said to her, “no! no! I’m making a sale!”
Usually, though, I dream about werewolves, vampires, and zombies, and apparently sleeping with me is rather unnerving, as sometimes I’ll cry and occasionally full on scream in my sleep. But it’s better than dreaming about work!
I’m a graphic designer and I’ve had dreams of typos or errors numerous times and found I did need to change them when I got to work.
I wish I either had them more reliably or they would leave me alone on my off time.
I’ve dreamed about work many times, especially just after starting a new job but sometimes off-and-on later. It’s more likely to happen if the job is really repetitive (cashier, data entry, call center, etc…).
Recently I’ve been teaching myself to knit, and I’ve had a few nights of knitting dreams (knitting over and over, or trying to figure out how I’d make a knitting pattern for a particular item).
I often dream about work. When I do, to borrow from Johnny Cash, “I’d wake up in the morning feeling tired.”
The most amusing case was from my teenage years. After several days of hauling hay, I woke myself up trying to spit hay out of my mouth. From the position of my arms and legs, it was obvious I was trying to throw a bale on the truck.
That same week, my buddy told he dreamed we were hauling hay using an old school bus (not uncommon). Except, unlike everyone else, we didn’t cut off the body and remove the seats. We were throwing the bales up to the roof and stacking them on top. He said we were having a hard time of it, too.
Usually when I start dreaming about work I know it is time for a vacation. I’ve had dreams about the stupid meetings, the idiotic sales reps and the moronic managers. When I wake up from those dreams I immediately get on Orbitz and look for a quick getaway to decompress.
I dream about work ALL THE TIME. It drives me insane.
The thing is that I pretty much sit in front of a computer. So my dreams are really boring. Occasionally I’ll have a dream where a volcano will go off or something and I rush out to capture it with my video camera and get to write a story - but for the most part, no. Copy. Fax. File. Type.
~Tasha
Like other programmers, I have found bugs in my sleep too. That is VERY gratifying.
Lots of times I will work until like 5 or 6 AM, go to sleep for 4 hours and in my dreams go over the code a bazillion times in my dreams, until I wake up again to sit at the computer and go over the code some more. It’s absolutely EXHAUSTING. It’s really like working 24 hours, straight through.
My dad has worked at Ford for 38 years. He says he never dreams about Ford. But, he worked as a bread truck driver for like 2 years, maybe 20 years ago (while laid off), and he always always has dreams about being on the bread truck. No idea what that means.
I dream about work when I’m under stress, like starting a new job or new role in the current job. I hates it. But I really hates that I still dream about school and I’ve been out of school for [sub]mumble-ty[/sub] years.
Some years ago NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered did a delightful piece on their staffers’ work-related nightmares (this was long before Al Gore invented the Internet, so you won’t find it on line). I especially enjoyed it because my first such dream happened shortly after I started working in radio - I was supposed to do a newscast but could not find the room I was supposed to do it from (finally got there in time to hear the DJ offer a disclaimer and move on).
I quit television several years ago but still have the occasional nightmare. My favorite was the one where I was directing a live newscast but would go blind whenever I looked up at the monitors (a distinct disadvantage when you’re punching your own switcher). (Once I had an actual directing experience that was truly nightmaric, but I ain’t gonna share it!)
Not long ago, I was asked to prepare a query/report on certain charges. Sounded simple–until I realized that the Departed Consultant from Hell had left out the necessary field. The Co-Worker who “designed” the application had requested the omission; he said it would have been “too hard” to enter.
So I dreamed I was trying to connect two power cords. But both connectors were female, so nothing could be done.
The illogic! Does not compute!