There’s an old joke that always stuck with me:

Person 1: “I’ve always wanted to work on the railways.” 

Person 2: “What job did you want?” 

Person 1: “I’d love to be a sleeper.”

As it turns out, I actually managed to live that punchline, though it wasn't on the tracks, but in the rafters of a South London telephone exchange

The Era of "Mystery Bills"

In the early 1980s, I was fresh out of university and working as a commissioning engineer for STC (Standard Telephones & Cables)

It’s hard to imagine now, but back then, when you received a bill from British Telecom (BT), it was just a single, lump sum

There was no itemised list, no duration of calls, and certainly no breakdown of who you’d been talking to

However, the tide was turning

The market had been deregulated, and agile startups like Mercury were nipping at BT’s heels by offering the very call-logging features the giant lacked

My job was to lead the team of wiremen and fitters tasked with dragging BT’s infrastructure (TXE4) into the modern age

The Greenwich Negotiation

Upgrading a telephone exchange was typically a weeks job

These systems were designed to be "fail-safe," meaning we could take specific modules offline for maintenance while the rest of the exchange stayed live

I’d already successfully managed upgrades during daylight hours in Nottingham, Daventry, and Brixton without a hitch

But when we reached Greenwich, the local BT Clerk of Works had a different idea

He insisted the work be done at night

His official reasoning was "safety," but the unofficial reality was clear: working nights meant time-and-a-half for everyone involved

My crew was a bit annoyed at first, it’s a hassle rearranging B&B bookings at the last minute (you sleep during the day), but the prospect of the extra pay quickly sweetened the deal

Clocking Out While Clocking In

Once the shift began and the modules were safely handed over to the technicians, there wasn't much for me to do but supervise

Seeing me hovering, one of my fitters gave me a knowing look and pointed toward the heavy-duty wire racks suspended from the ceiling

"You can just sleep up there," he suggested supportively

I didn't need much convincing

I found a sturdy piece of cardboard, climbed up into the rafters, and settled in

There I was, a young engineer at the start of my career, lying on a makeshift bed in the ceiling of a Greenwich telephone exchange, earning time-and-a-half to dream

Why it was OK to sleep on the job

In the end, sleeping on the job wasn't about laziness; it was about the unique culture of the 1980s telecommunications boom

The job got done, the Clerk of Works got his overtime, the fitters were happy, and BT finally moved one step closer to giving their customers an actual list of their calls

In a world of "fail-safes" and midnight shifts, sometimes the most productive thing a lead engineer could do was stay out of the way and catch some Zs