Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Seating Arrangements, plus bonus photos
part III of an apparent series of riffs on furniture and furnishings. does it mean something? should I be worried?
I tend to spend entirely too much time in my chair. At work, at supper, at large and in general, once I get myself planted I tend to stay planted. Sometimes I even think of getting up for a moment, but then I get distracted by a piece of lint or something and wind up not even shifting my weight or straightening my back. It’s another tragic case of PDI - Persistent Deskly Immobilization. If they had a telethon for it, I’d be a heartrending case study.
Exacerbating this unhealthy habit, I’ve got a pretty decent place to work. Sure, I don’t have a view, and I work in a cube with 2/3 height fabric-and steel miniwalls, and my my desk is a modular officespace workstation, but whatever. I’m comfortable enough and I like everybody I work with.
Without pointing any fingers, this was not always the case. For a while there several months ago I had a coworker who just rubbed me the wrong way. It got to the pint that I did everything in my power to avoid her, which was tough becaue my job and hers had a lot of shared duties and we occupied adjacent cubes. It took a lot of concentration for me to build my little modular walls up to the ceiling in my mind, and it took a lot out of me. I’d have been smart to have gotten out more during this era. That’s one more thing I’d have done differently, in retrospect. I can’t say I handled any of it very well. But whatever. I didn’t go anywhere. I just sat at my desk and ignored her as best I could, and I think the feeling was mutual.
This individual was of underenhanced vertical stature, and wasn’t comfortable with the standard desk furniture that the organization provided. Consequently, we ordered a special smaller chair fo rher, among other such accomodations. Well, long story short (heh), she decided to take another job elsewhere. Fine with me. Let some body else accomodate her. Let me enjoy my desk-time in peace.
The only thing was, I started to realize not too long ago that my desk chair wasn’t really my friend either. It couldn’t help how it was made, but after a few hours in it I’d start aching - my back, my head, my fundament.... it didn’t roll very well, either, and it was heavy, and the arms were too far apart.... Plus, my habit of eating at my desk, combined with my inherent untidiness and the chair’s broad geometry, had left the blue fabric of the lower cushion an unsightly map of spilled salad dressing, dropped won tons, and sundry other unconsumed comestibles. It was getting to be too gross to sit in it. My chair was actually becoming my nemesis. When I got to work in the morning I didn’t even like to see it, much less settle my delicate undercarriage on it.
In my typical way, I addressed this problem at first with serene periods of carefully ignoring it. That only worked for a short while, though. Once my mind alights on a subject, especially one that fries my scrapple, my attention tends to fix itself on it with a white-hot focus, regardless of resolution to the contrary. Within a few days, if not hours, I could barely think of anything other than the stained and merciless Seat of Antagonism. And just that quickly, the solution presented itself: the shortie accomodation chair suddenly reappeared on my radar. I hadn’t seen it for months, but suddenly someone had rolled it into our mini conference space across the corridor from me. I took a trial run, lowered my tired buns onto its barely-scuffed upholstery. It felt good. It rolled easily. My elbows automatically found the armrests - I wasn’t strangely splayed, birdlike, when I used them.
That was to say, my former chair. I hadn’t lifted back up off that friendly little deskchair before I’d committed to a trade-out. And now, as I gratify my penchant for stagnation in the office, I do so with a light heart, a limber spine, and two glutei maximi that embrace their place joyfully and without fear of discomfort or disrepute. The chair that we got on behalf of someone who caused me such stress, now befriends me. So long as I can remember to get out of it every so often, I should be okay. (After all, I’m two blocks from the ferry building - there are places I could go.) However, the new deskchair experience is working out better than I’d even anticipated. I don’t know why good chairs happen to bad people, but if it’s got casters, that sucker will wind up where it’s supposed to be eventually.
next time: the series, improbably, continues. meantime, there’s some zach in the extended entry if you would like to see him with his oma and opa:
first we hung out at home -
and then we went to the lake:
where we were serenaded by angels:
which upset zach who needed a nap anyway so we went back home. THE END. You’re welcome.
