No kidding! You can get paid for sleeping. The catch is you must be black, or at least half black.
An employee where I work had been taking regular naps on the job. Many of us complained – to no avail. He had been wasting copious amounts of company time doing nothing constructive. Many of us complained – to no avail. This had been going on for years and, as far as the rest of us could tell, nothing was ever done about it. As you can imagine, this had a negative impact on morale. Outsiders would see him sleeping and laugh at our department. “What kind of company allows its employees to sleep?” they would ask. But nothing was done.
Then everything changed. Said black employee chose to take his nap when the most powerful bigwigs in the company paid us a visit. There was some whispering and, shortly thereafter, the employee was fired. He was not fired for being worthless. He was not fired for sleeping on the job. He was fired for doing so in front of important people. All of the rest of us know why he got away with it for so long, and it had nothing to do with his work skills.
At least one thing can be said for him: He had a dream. Probably quite a few of them in fact.
Jewamongyou's Blog 
It’s actually kind of ironic that the famous Martin Luther King quote you alluded to means nothing today, since “color of skin” clearly overrides “content of character” in the workplace. If “content of character” was really what employers were looking for, this guy would have been gone a long time ago.
By the way, did the people you were complaining to have the authority to fire the guy themselves? Because if they did, I can kind of understand their hesitation to do anything. If the guy then turned around and accused the company of discrimination/racism, then it would have been their butts on the line as well.
That was always the intent of Martin Luther King. He was always for promoting blacks at the expense of whites, and to the extent that affirmative action was an issue in his day, he strongly supported it.
The bigwigs at your company are obviously a bunch of racists.
I really prefer these lazy types over the kind who actually try to do work or gain authority. They are always incompetent, stupid and overconfident. It’s better if they just sleep in the corner and collect their pay.
I guess this goes on in a lot of places, and it part of the cost of doing business.
I live in Washington State and was fired (nothing illegal) for sleeping on the job, among other accusations. The accusations were made by two of my coworkers (not supervisors) and are false. About a week or so after I was let go these employees filled out written statements attesting to these falsehoods. Is it illegal to be fired due to mere hearsay? I was only told of some of the accusations just recently (2 weeks after being fired) so was not even able to defend myself against them. The employer sent me an email requesting that I not use him as a reference because he will not give me a good one. Thus it is affecting my ability to find work now. Is this legal? If it is not, what recourse do I have? I don’t know if this is relevant but it is a state job.