Being tired at work is so normal now that it barely even registers. People say it in meetings. They say it in Slack. They say it while holding a coffee they absolutely do not need but are drinking anyway because otherwise their brain might fully leave the building by 1pm. Everyone is tired and “so busy.” Most of us are one bad night of sleep away from forgetting why we opened a tab.

People aren’t only complaining about being tired though. They’re also calling out of work because of being so tired. And not due to a pesky cold/flu or something dramatic that happened. But because they barely slept, feel physically cooked, and cannot imagine pretending to be a functional employee for eight hours.

Okay, that’s fair.

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The CDC reported that 30.5% of U.S. adults slept less than seven hours on average in 2024. The same report found that 15.4% had trouble falling asleep and 18.1% had trouble staying asleep. So if it feels like half your coworkers are barely functioning on any given morning, there’s actual data backing that up.

Burnout is not exactly helping either. Aflac’s 2025-2026 WorkForces Report found that nearly three in four American workers reported at least moderate burnout, with millennials reporting moderate to high burnout at 66%, and Gen Z at 74%. Heavy workloads and long hours were also among the top workplace stressors, which will surprise absolutely nobody who has ever received a “quick question” email at 6:47pm.

The Sleep Debt Is Real

The weird part is that calling out because you’re exhausted used to sound like an excuse. Now it sounds like something a lot of people are quietly doing because the alternative is showing up useless.

There are Reddit threads full of people asking if it’s acceptable to call in sick after a terrible night of sleep. The answers are usually some version of: yes, especially if your job involves driving, machinery, patients, kids, or literally anything where being half-awake could become somebody else’s problem.

Even office workers get it. There is a specific kind of exhaustion where you can technically sit at your laptop, but nothing of substance is happening. You reread the same email nine times, you forget why you opened a tab, you start replying to a message and realize halfway through that you sound like you were raised by autocomplete.

At that point, are you working? Or are you just keeping your Teams or Slack dot green?

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A lot of this is probably sleep debt finally becoming impossible to ignore. People stay up too late because it’s the only part of the day that feels like theirs. They doomscroll, answer IG DMs, and watch one episode that becomes three. Then they wake up already behind, drink too much caffeine, survive the day badly, and do the exact same thing again that night because they still never got any real downtime.

Eventually your body starts invoicing you. And once exhaustion starts messing with work, sleep stops feeling like some soft little wellness concern. Bad sleep affects focus, memory, patience, decision-making, mood, and the ability to tolerate even one unnecessary Zoom meeting. People can only push through for so long before their brains start quietly filing complaints.

The problem, obviously, is that most people can’t call out every time they sleep badly. I’d be out of work everyday if that was true. But rent exists, managers exist. Jobs still expect everyone to show up even when they feel like an unplugged appliance. Welcome to American capitalism and protestant work ethic.

Trying to Fix It Before Morning

So people are trying to fix the issue at night before it wrecks the next day. Earlier phone cutoffs. White noise. Colder bedrooms. Weighted blankets. Sleep gummies. Anything that makes the transition from wired and stressed to fast asleep feel a little less impossible.

That’s when I have to pop a gummy for the night, an Oola gummy to make me go ooh la la my ass to bed. Low-key sounds like my drug fix but it actually isn’t. Oola’s sleep gummies combine cannabinoids like THC, CBD, and CBN for nighttime relaxation and sleep support, which is the kind of thing that appeals to people who just feel awake at night and can’t shut down. Ask me, I’m the most overstimulated and tense between the hours of 11pm and 2am. Oola helps when you’re mentally unable to land the plane.

Obviously, a gummy will not fix burnout, bad management, understaffing, or the spiritual damage of being asked to circle back on something that could have been ignored forever. But if people are so exhausted that they’re using sick days just to sleep, then the problem is bigger than poor time management. Americans know they need rest. The hard part is getting enough of it before work culture, phones, stress, and life eat the entire night.

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