Have you ever had that fantasy at work (no, not that one) where you slip quietly below your desk, and, tucked up in the foetal position, have a snooze? Or thought that if you close your eyes and have a little zzzz for a couple of moments, perhaps no-one will notice?
It’s surely a thought that loops on repeat in a lot of weary workers’ minds – especially on a Tuesday, which is obviously the worst day of the work week. You’ve already grafted all of Monday and then had the harsh realisation that you’re still not even halfway through the five-day cycle of deadlines and endless meetings that could have been an email.
At Currency we have a compatriot who says his one non-negotiable for an office is a couch so that he can have a snappy snooze every day. After lunch, he hits the sofa, shuts his eyes for 20 minutes and recharges briefly for the afternoon ahead. He has businesses in both Joburg and Durban and there are couches in both. Yes, it helps that he’s the boss.
Many moons ago I interviewed a health psychologist who was all for the weekday siesta but advised that you settle down holding your keys. That way, when your body starts to relax as you plunge into too deep a sleep, you drop them, wake up and – ta-da – nap time is over!
Off course, this is all well and good if you happen to work from home or run the show. It’s not so practical for, say, the thousands of Amazon workers who’ve just been forced to return to work full time – or be fired. We bet Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has a nice soft chaise, alongside the tank of sharks, in the corner of his lair on the island from where he runs the e-commerce empire.
Enter the bed trunk
Which brings us to the excellent, but also wildly outlandish, option for us proletariat drones. Louis Vuitton has just released two updated versions of its iconic bed trunk, designed by American singer Pharrell Williams and French fashion designer Nicolas Ghesquière respectively.
One look at the pics of these babies – basically camp beds that pop out of LV steamer trunks – and you’ll immediately understand why they are a spectacularly brilliant idea. The version by LV men’s creative director, muso and polymath Williams features a stripy trunk; Ghesquière, who is creative director for the women’s collections, decked his out in a high-shine exterior and with pretty mattress cushions and mattress topper as contrast.
Imagine shlepping this glorious accessory into the office and setting it up – wedged between the photocopier and your desk. On goes the eye mask, in go the EarPods, and – bam – you’re on the bed trunk for forty winks before the audit committee arrives.
Sure, the original bed trunk, invented by Monsieur Vuitton in 1868, was intended to make global journeys comfier, and we’re not ruling that out either. Ideally, said trunk should be permissible as hand luggage (hey, it’s not improbable – we’ve seen what you all sneak on board Safair and squeeze into the overhead compartments), so when your flight is inevitably delayed at Cape Town International, there’s just the effortless matter of setting up near gate A11 while you wait.
If this all sounding like a hypothetical that you’d like to turn into reality, the good news is that you can order the newly released bed trunks from Louis Vuitton. The bad news is that you’re looking at about R4.48m for Ghesquière version and R3.8m for the Williams one at the current rand/dollar exchange rate.
With that cash it might be a better option to just set up your own gig, and make sure you’ve got a normally priced couch in your corner office. One can dream!