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Chair butt
Aug. 7th, 2004 03:57 pmYesterday my new office chair arrived. I am pleased. I sat on the floor for an hour with my legs sticking out and put it together.
Last time I was a new employee at this company, I also got a new chair. Four newbies, hired on in the same round, all trundled down to Big Office Chain together to get chairs.
Unfortunately, we had a salesperson who was determined to sell us one chair and one chair only, and in one fabric.
The chair was the Latest Chair and it allowed for adjustment in all three spatial dimensions and several temporal ones. It went up. It went down. It went farsha. It tilted in every conceivable way. It was exactly the maximum amount of money we were allowed to spend.
Every time any of us glanced surreptitiously at another model, he'd leap in front of it and say, "That's just a task chair. You need a full-day chair."
Surely the majority-- I might even dare a cliche like the Vast Majority-- of office chairs are sat upon for eight hours a day, minus breaks, if you happen to be lucky enough to have breaks. Why are there so many chairs you can't use? Why are all the good ones useless?
He was the same about the fabric. He did that thing. You know the thing. He showed us a book of two hundred fabric samples and said, "The chair comes in all these fabrics."
So then you'd pick one, and he'd say, "But only these four very drab patterns come in our superdurable fabric guaranteed for 30 000 butt contacts."
And you'd say, "That's okay, I'll take the one that's only good for 15 000 butt contacts."
And he'd say, "We recommend these four."
And eventually you'd understand that the other chairs and the other fabric are just set dressing, like the backdrop in a videogame. He is only allowed to sell you one chair and one fabric. Indeed, if he tried to sell you something else, he might very well be taken out back and beaten to death with pneumatic canisters.
Eventually we all gave up and got the same chair in the same fabric, each in a different shade of Office Drab. Mine was black. People seemed to think I was settling, but it was either that or the exact green of the eyeshadow popular in my Grade 9 class.
It's an okay chair.
After a year, I came to the conclusion that my superadaptable chair was not that comfortable. Not more comfortable, certainly, than any other office chair. And some of the adjustments, like the one that allowed you to tilt your chair so far forward that you fell out onto your knees, or so far back that you gently collapsed onto your tailbone, served no demonstrable ergonomic purpose. The temporal lever kept getting stuck and forcing me to relive the previous fifteen minutes over and over.
When I left for Vancouver, the chair was inherited by the technician who took my desk, my phone, my files (sorry about those), and some of my clothes.
I return a wiser soul. This time I was determined to have an individual chair. Not a Kooky or Quirky chair, not a look-at-me-my-chair-is-so-cool chair; just a chair that quietly said, I was Chosen, not Assigned.
It's surprisingly hard to do this. Your co-workers have all been traumatized by that guy at Big Office Chain, and all they can do is repeat the same mistakes over and over. They kept saying, "Why don't you get one like X's?" I tried X's. It is, like all the other office chairs, Not That Comfortable.
I picked out a leather chair (okay, so there was a little bit of style involved in that choice), and almost succeeded in getting it ordered before our very kind receptionist pointed out that it was a Task Chair and not Designed for Sitting In. And had I tried X's chair yet?
So I ordered a wooden chair. It is the tweed of my father's best leather-elbowed jacket from 1977, and the frame is all wood. I am quite pleased with it. I've always thought office chairs were hideous objects, and this one at least is hideous on its own terms. And it is Reasonably Comfortable.
* * * * * *
I also got another present this week; my MSP authorization came in, which means I have coverage for top surgery. Now all I have to do is get on the waiting list for the actual surgeon. It was only two years long last time I checked.
I am, if you like, out of the ticket lineup and the bathroom lineup, and am on my way to see the show.
--rf
Last time I was a new employee at this company, I also got a new chair. Four newbies, hired on in the same round, all trundled down to Big Office Chain together to get chairs.
Unfortunately, we had a salesperson who was determined to sell us one chair and one chair only, and in one fabric.
The chair was the Latest Chair and it allowed for adjustment in all three spatial dimensions and several temporal ones. It went up. It went down. It went farsha. It tilted in every conceivable way. It was exactly the maximum amount of money we were allowed to spend.
Every time any of us glanced surreptitiously at another model, he'd leap in front of it and say, "That's just a task chair. You need a full-day chair."
Surely the majority-- I might even dare a cliche like the Vast Majority-- of office chairs are sat upon for eight hours a day, minus breaks, if you happen to be lucky enough to have breaks. Why are there so many chairs you can't use? Why are all the good ones useless?
He was the same about the fabric. He did that thing. You know the thing. He showed us a book of two hundred fabric samples and said, "The chair comes in all these fabrics."
So then you'd pick one, and he'd say, "But only these four very drab patterns come in our superdurable fabric guaranteed for 30 000 butt contacts."
And you'd say, "That's okay, I'll take the one that's only good for 15 000 butt contacts."
And he'd say, "We recommend these four."
And eventually you'd understand that the other chairs and the other fabric are just set dressing, like the backdrop in a videogame. He is only allowed to sell you one chair and one fabric. Indeed, if he tried to sell you something else, he might very well be taken out back and beaten to death with pneumatic canisters.
Eventually we all gave up and got the same chair in the same fabric, each in a different shade of Office Drab. Mine was black. People seemed to think I was settling, but it was either that or the exact green of the eyeshadow popular in my Grade 9 class.
It's an okay chair.
After a year, I came to the conclusion that my superadaptable chair was not that comfortable. Not more comfortable, certainly, than any other office chair. And some of the adjustments, like the one that allowed you to tilt your chair so far forward that you fell out onto your knees, or so far back that you gently collapsed onto your tailbone, served no demonstrable ergonomic purpose. The temporal lever kept getting stuck and forcing me to relive the previous fifteen minutes over and over.
When I left for Vancouver, the chair was inherited by the technician who took my desk, my phone, my files (sorry about those), and some of my clothes.
I return a wiser soul. This time I was determined to have an individual chair. Not a Kooky or Quirky chair, not a look-at-me-my-chair-is-so-cool chair; just a chair that quietly said, I was Chosen, not Assigned.
It's surprisingly hard to do this. Your co-workers have all been traumatized by that guy at Big Office Chain, and all they can do is repeat the same mistakes over and over. They kept saying, "Why don't you get one like X's?" I tried X's. It is, like all the other office chairs, Not That Comfortable.
I picked out a leather chair (okay, so there was a little bit of style involved in that choice), and almost succeeded in getting it ordered before our very kind receptionist pointed out that it was a Task Chair and not Designed for Sitting In. And had I tried X's chair yet?
So I ordered a wooden chair. It is the tweed of my father's best leather-elbowed jacket from 1977, and the frame is all wood. I am quite pleased with it. I've always thought office chairs were hideous objects, and this one at least is hideous on its own terms. And it is Reasonably Comfortable.
* * * * * *
I also got another present this week; my MSP authorization came in, which means I have coverage for top surgery. Now all I have to do is get on the waiting list for the actual surgeon. It was only two years long last time I checked.
I am, if you like, out of the ticket lineup and the bathroom lineup, and am on my way to see the show.
--rf
