Crazy Capitalism!
Okay. Capitalism has officially gone nuts.

A company located in the Empire State Building has come up with the highly innovative concept of charging harried New Yorkers $14 in exchange for a 20-minute nap in a reclining chair. Apparently, they're doing quite well. Here's the math: That's $42 an hour. To doze off in a la-z-boy. (You can sleep an entire night in a double bed in your own entire private motel room for less than that -- though, maybe not in the heart of midtown.) It's the equivalent of renting a comfy chair for $30,000 a month.

Of course, you get more than just a comfy chair. The chair has an integrated space-age looking pod-thing which envelops your head to create a sense of privacy, blocking out light and sound in varying degrees, while leaving your vital organs and genitals exposed. The service will also pipe in the white noise or music of your choice during your 20-minutes. And for an extra fee, they will serve you lunch upon waking. That's one high-class nap.

Are you telling me that all those times I fell asleep at my desk, it wasn't cool? I should've been running out on my lunch hour to spend $14 on a 20-minute nap? With midtown traffic, it probably would've taken me 30 minutes to get to the nap-store, then there'd probably be a line of nappers ahead of me, so that's at least 10-minutes standing around waiting to nap. And since it always takes me a little while to get to sleep, I'm really only gonna get about 11 or 12 minutes of actual nap-time. And then my lunch-hour will be over and I won't have eaten anything, so I'll be hungry, distracted and weak for the rest of my workday.

But I wouldn't mind owning one of those cool pod-chairs.

http://www.metronaps.com/

Instead of that, it is far more economical to go down to the NY Open Center and avail yourself of their public meditation room. It's open all day during the day. Or at least it was the last time I checked. It's dark, quiet, you don't have to wait on a line and it's free. Free. And while it's not technically intended for napping, the soothing meditative vibes are very relaxing and I'm sure nobody would poke you with a stick if you were to accidentally doze off. Unless you started to snore really really loudly. Of course, should you actually MEDITATE there, supposedly the restorative effects on your body and mind would be even greater than those of a nap. So there. http://mail.opencenter.org/webdev/index.php#pt=home&se=