If a Post-Gazette poll taken last week is any indication, a lot of you are really stressed about work.

To the question, "Do you have nightmares about your job?", a full 77 percent of respondents -- 815 out of 1056 -- said "yes."

Maybe you need to take a nap. At work.

That's the idea behind Metronaps, the New York-based brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University grad Arshad Chowdhury. Metronaps offers businesses the opportunity to increase productivity by helping workers to take naps. The service includes an "energy assessment" that surveys workers to evaluate the impact of fatigue in the workplace and seminars that offer workers tips on boosting energy.

But the centerpiece of the Metronaps is the Energy Pod, a souped-up lounge chair that looks like it would fit in the Jetsons' living room. The EnegyPod incorporates a semi-spherical dome to help shut out the world, a built-in music player to help the napper slip into dreamland, and a timer which ends the sessions with lights and vibration for a gentle wakeup.

Mr. Chowdhury first began thinking seriously about naps during his stint in the world of investment banking, from 1998 to 2001.

"I saw that a lot of my colleagues were falling asleep at their desks and in meetings," he said. "We actually had to sneak off and take naps in the bathroom."

When he came to Pittsburgh to work on an MBA at Carnegie Mellon University, he brought the idea of a sleep salon, a place where harried workers could grab 40 winks, with him, and made it the centerpiece of a business plan for his first class in entrepreneurship.

His instructor was underwhelmed.

"Quite frankly, I thought the business was a real long shot," said S. Thomas Emerson, the David T. and Lindsay J. Morgenthaler professor of entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business, which was then the Graduate School of Industrial Administration. "He cited businesses in Japan and other Oriental countries where nap places had been successful, but I was dubious as to whether that success could be transplanted to the United States."

Mr. Chowdhury tested his concept by setting up a napping area in CMU's University Center, where he charged $1 for a 20-minute slice of shuteye in "outdoor furniture." He continued refining his business plan, and shared it with a friend, Christopher Lindholst, who had recently completed his MBA at Columbia. After Mr. Chowdhury's graduation, the two joined forces to establish Metronaps' first location, in the Empire State Building.

The original plan was to grow the business through franchise locations operating on a membership basis, like gyms. But reality called for a change of direction, as Mr. Chowdhury learned that "people don't want to walk 5 or 10 blocks to take a nap; they want to walk 5 or 10 steps."

That led to the current model of Metronaps, in which an employer offers naps as a perk for employees. For a monthly fee of $15 per employee, Metronaps not only provides the energy assessment and the seminar, but installs EnergyPods in the workplace for employee relaxation.

Metronaps still maintains its original salon in the Empire State Building, making it one of two companies providing naps for the city that never sleeps. Its competitor, Yelo, which bills itself as "a new kind of wellness center," offers patrons the opportunity to relax with a bit of reflexology followed by a nap of 20 to 40 minutes in length. Yelo's sleeping environment is a "treatment cabin," that includes a leather chair, pulsing lights, aromatherapy, and a selection of quiet music and environmental sounds.

Okay, we'll say it: They call it the YeloCab.

But the rise of napping goes far beyond two businesses that sell naps in New York. Since 2001, napping has been the subject of at least four books, including the provocatively titled "Sleep Your Way to the Top: The Power of Napping." Call it a quiet lashing back against late nights and early mornings, long commutes and longer workdays, and shuttling children between a half dozen locations rather than leaving them at home because no one can be with them. Call it the "I Need Some Rest, Dang It" movement.

One place where the trend is most evident is in the spa industry, according to Susie Ellis, president of SpaFinders, an Internet-based clearinghouse for spa-related information.

A study conducted by the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2004 "was sort of a tipping point," Ms. Ellis said. The study concluded that sleep deprivation contributed to obesity, and spa owners began to see "sleep hygiene" as something that could help their customers to get fit and to lose weight.

As recently as three years ago, only one spa, Canyon Ranch, with locations in Tucson, Ariz. and Lenox, Mass., offered some form of sleep hygiene, she said -- although "70 percent of people fall asleep during their treatment" at a spa. Now, "a good 20 or 30 spas have something going on with sleep, and more all the time."

All of that may be well and good, but isn't there something a little odd about all of this? Why are people paying to do something so simple as taking a nap?

Because our stressed-out lives are making it harder to do what comes naturally, Ms. Ellis said.

"After eating in the middle of the day, it's natural to take a rest," she said. But "the whole rhythm for us Americans is pretty whacked ... we're pretty off-rhythm daily, as well as yearly."

If you can't afford a spa and your employer is not yet ready to spring for an EnergyPod, just remember: there's always that end stall in the restroom.