A new desk chair

Since it’s Friday and all of us are completely giddy over the prospect of frolicking gaily through a three-day weekend that semi-officially brings summer to a close, I wanted to make sure I had an appropriate topic to ramble on about today.  Maybe recount the summer’s adventures or tell funny stories from our vacation.  You know, wrap it up with a good yarn about searing my ever-more defenseless scalp to a crispy golden brown.

Yeah, I got nuthin.  Summer’s hot, it’s been dry, and I’m looking forward to fall.  So, hey, summer, hit the road.  Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!

That said, let’s instead discuss something that’s of interest to me and, well, probably nobody else: desk chairs.  Specifically, mine.

I recently decided it was time for a new chair at the office.  Now, some might argue that the deficiencies with the existing perch were possibly the result of inheriting my chair-sitting posture from my father, a man known far and wide for propping one leg over the arm of his recliner and knocking a full glass of iced tea to the floor with his foot.

Oh, sure, that could explain, maybe, the quite-evident sideways lean in my current desk seat and the worn place on the seat fabric where a shoe, um, possibly might have been placed when the occupant happened to sit, somewhat regularly, with a foot beneath him.

Obviously none of that is my fault.  I’ve totally only ever occupied my office chair in a completely OSHA-approved manner, with the conscious and deliberate intent of sitting as ergonomically as possible. Certainly no one’s ever happened upon me in my natural “software engineer” habitat and remarked that if I slanted any farther to the side, I’d upend the entire chair.

Fine, then.  Perhaps I am a smidge culpable here.  But, really, the problem with the chair wasn’t it’s age or it’s intractable lean to the left.  Nope, the key issue with it actually was that as a man stalking closer to a certain age, my lower back has apparently had quite enough of unsupportive pieces of furniture.  Indeed, it was time for the dread lumbar support.

Luckily, I’m not the type that moans and complains often, and I rarely ask for much of anything besides lunch professionally.  Also because my employer is awesome, so when I requested a new chair it was effectively rubber-stamped.

And thus came, The Hard Part.

See, I was kind of expecting to be handed a list of four or five options and told to pick one.  But no.  Ohhhh, no.  Instead, a coworker delivered an office supply catalog roughly the size and weight of a classic VW Beetle to my office (I’m pretty sure we had to contract a teamster with a forklift to accomplish the feat) and told me to go through it and pick one out.

Ok, fine, I thought.  Really, people need lots of thing to run an office.  Surely most of this was fancy notebooks and whatnot right?  Uh….wrong!

As you can imagine, after painstakingly searching, browsing, and identifying the features, size, and price of each chair available, I felt like Malcolm McDowell’s character from “A Clockwork Orange” strapped down with eyes forced open while being subjected to reprogramming.  Luckily, I was eventually able to narrow my options down to a reasonably-sized list before finally settling on My Final Choice.

Which arrived today!  Happy Friday to me!  See?

Of course, now I just have to figure out how to get it adjusted correctly. I mean, look at all those levers!

Anyway, happy Friday to all you out there too.  Have a great holiday weekend, if you work in the US, or, uh, just a great weekend in general, then, if you don’t.  Take it easy and enjoy sending summer on it’s merry way.

Pud’n