A California DMV employee who napped at work every day for 3 hours cost the state at least $40,000

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She was asleep at the wheel.

• DMVs are somewhat infamous for their long wait times.
• But that didn't stop one DMV employee in California from napping at her desk for three hours a day, according to a state audit.
• She kept up this routine for four years and ended up costing the state $40,000.

Talk about falling asleep on the job.

A Department of Motor Vehicles employee is reportedly suffering a rude awakening after a state audit found she was taking three-hour naps at work every day for four years, SFGate.com reported.

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The unnamed data operator will reportedly not be disciplined because the infractions weren't documented properly.

She also may have a medical condition that prompted her to sleep at work. The Sacramento Bee reported that the employees' doctor told her employer that she "could not perform the duties the job required" back in 2016. The DMV responded by transferring her to her current role, but the naps didn't stop.

Health issues like depression, sleep apnea, celiac disease, narcolepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, anemia, and insomnia can leave people feeling drowsy during the day.

The dozing amounted to 2,200 hours of work time between February 2014 and December 2017, and cost the state of California at least $40,000.

According to SFGate.com, the employee processed an average of 200 documents a day, while her colleagues were able to get through 560 documents a day. It's possible the employee's naps also contributed to the increasingly harrowing wait times at California's DMV.

The department's website said that a trip to the DMV sans appointment takes an average of four hours and 10 minutes in Sacramento, four hours in San Francisco, three hours and 11 minutes in San Jose, three hours and 10 minutes in Oakland, and two hours and 42 minutes in Los Angeles.

All that being said, the concept of sleeping in the office is actually becoming less taboo in some places.

The New York Times ran a piece advising work time nappers to "apologize to no one," although sleep research Dr. Sara Mednick told the paper that 20 to 60 minutes will suffice. A University of Pennsylvania study found that older people who napped for 30 to 90 minutes in the afternoon experienced a notable cognitive boost.

But snooze at your desk at your own risk.