kidattypewriter

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Economic Ergonomics

Office furniture. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Chairs which were never meant to be chairs, stairs which were never meant to be stairs, doorways which don't let you out, and pens which you can never find.

The Ergonomic Keyboard

Although this fucker is meant to suit the natural curvature of your hand, it does nothing of the sort. It forces your fingers to stretch kilometres to reach letters that would otherwise have been easy to find. The ergonomic keyboard is actually a cunning scheme by the government to give us all carpal-tunnel syndrome. That way, we won't be able to do naughty things like watching television or writing blogs or wanking. BASTARDS!

The Computer

Sure, it looks relatively simple from the front. But at the back, it's another story - it's a mess of cords and plugs that are tangled and (as if they possessed a life of their own) will become detached for no reason, causing your computer not to work. Then you have to turn your computer around, and untangle this mess of cords - a process that takes hours, and is a little like making love to a jellyfish - confusing, unpleasant, and quite possibly dangerous.

The Adjustable Chair

This chair is meant to make it more comfortable for you to sit down during the day, by allowing you to adjust the height and tilt of the back. As a matter of fact, the chair will imperceptibly sink during the day, so that by the end of the day, your face is barely showing above the surface of the desk. Alternatively, it will suddenly drop ten feet, causing you to be sitting in mid-air for a second before thumping your bum on the bottom.
The back appears to be comfortable but is actually held up by a rigid steel spine which ensures spinal injury. Moving it forward is certainly not comfortable (it causes you to lean forward like a hunchback), while tilting it back is even less so. Also, it can sometimes, without warning, slap forward again, thwacking you in the back and forcing you into the hunchback position.

If the boss really wanted you to be comfortable, he'd simply order in a couch, and you'd do all your work off a laptop - unfortunately, these encourage pleasantly unproductive sensations, such as sloth and tiredness. ie, the boss doesn't care about your comfort at all. ARSEHOLE!

Revolving Doors

They look all fancy and schmick and technical, don't they? Actually, these bastards are the means by which the corporate world weeds out the halt and the lame from the quick and the nimble amongst their office staff. If you aren't quick enough, you are not able to duck out the doors before they close up, and are therefore forced to continue around and around in the doors, like a gerbil in a wheel, until you are found late at night and disposed of in the dumpster. But I don't care, because I'm young and fleet-of-foot. It's survival of the fittest, losers!

Stairs

It's the funniest thing in the world to watch a woman in stilettos try to struggle up a flight of stairs, but after a few floors, it just gets boring. Just put in a lift, you bums.

Stationery

If there's one thing you soon learn about office stationery, it's that it ain't stationary. Pens which are on your desk one day will mysterious disappear the next. There are several theories about this - one is that the pens disappear into another dimension, along with such things as lost socks and items of underwear. The other is, that there is some mysterious lurker on the second floor of your building who possesses a strange fetish for pens and other such objects, and that all the missing pens lie on his desk somewhere (in 'penury')*. Since this leads to gross inefficiencies in big business, whoever solves the mystery of the pens will undoubtedly become a very rich and powerful person.

*Possibly the account assistant, who has already admitted to collecting coloured paperclips in your presence. As a side note, you should remember that if she ever sends you a document held together with a brown paperclip, then you are in BIIIIIIIG TROUBLE.

4 comments:

Steve said...

One of your funniest posts, Tim

TimT said...

Got the idea when I was watching Nine to Five. Great movie, that! Remember that spate of office movies they started making in the eighties? This was one of the ones that started it all.

Dolly Parton played the bosses secretary!

Anonymous said...

As for the stairs, they're fine - it's the stilettos that need to be gotten rid of...

TimT said...

Must admit, I hadn't realised how difficult walking up stairs in stilettos would be until I actually stood behind S. balancing her way up the first flight of stairs.

Thankfully, there's another flight of stairs round the back where I worked, so I nipped into the kitchen, boiled some water, made myself a cup of tea, then went up to the third floor and started my computer, all in the time that it took S. to balance her way up the front set of stairs.

If I were Sheila Jeffreys or Twisty, I'd probably be saying that stilettos were the tool by which the patriarchy dominates women, but I'm a guy. I just found it piss funny.

Email: timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au

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