After working five back-to-back shifts, a nursing assistant couldn’t wait to get home to have some rest, but just getting inside her house proved to be incredibly difficult because she was so exhausted.
Lizzie Barajas got home after her final shift of the week and she seemed so close, yet so far. When she walked up to her front door, rather than pulling out her keys, she instead tried opening the door by scanning her work pass.
Barajas, from Colorado, told Newsweek that she was “absolutely exhausted” and didn’t even realize that she was scanning her hospital pass on the home security camera. It was only because her husband watched the footage later that she realized her hilarious mistake.
@thelizzienicole3
The impacts of physical and mental exhaustion are plentiful, which is why getting enough sleep and looking after one’s body is of fundamental importance. WebMD says that chronic sleepiness can slow down a person’s thought process, leading to lower alertness and concentration. This is often why mistakes happen when a person is tired – they’re not able to pay attention to the details.
Not only does fatigue encourage mistakes to happen, but it affects a person’s focus and judgement, meaning they are more likely to make bad decisions.
The slower reaction time that occurs with fatigue and exhaustion means that when tired people make an error, it takes them much longer to notice it too. Being so tired was the reason Barajas made the mistake in the first place, but it’s also the reason why it took her so long to realize the error.
Once Barajas managed to get some rest following her back-to-back shifts, she shared the hilarious video of her trying to get into her house using her electronic pass on TikTok (@thelizzienicole3).
Speaking to Newsweek, Barajas said: “I realized what I did and came upstairs to my husband, and he told me to watch the video. Then I passed out after that.
“I showed my co-workers on my next shift, and I decided to post it online.”
The video has generated over 9.7 million views and 1.5 million likes since it was posted, and many fellow health workers have shared stories of their own mistakes they’ve made while exhausted.
Among the 3,300 comments, one person wrote: “I thought it only happened to me.”
Another commenter posted: “I’ve done this trying to open my car door.”
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