why have we, as a society, settled for mediocre office chairs

why did we say "yes, these stalks with a board on them are perfectly fine"

we could have had lazyboys on castors. we could have had it all.

heIly posted...

we could have had it all.

https://youtu.be/rYEDA3JcQqw?t=58

Every time I see an office chair like this:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/055f18d9.jpg

All I can think of is one of these:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/0487261d.jpg

We've settled for many mediocre things.

My computer chair is an office chair from like the 70s. It's extremely heavy, durable, and more cushioned than my couch.

The chairs along our way were just rest spots for the one true chair

The same reason we settled for vehicles with fiberglass bumpers.

We are literally driving around in PLASTIC bumper cars that explode on impact.

Sure, they're lighter now, more fuel efficient, but they are death traps.

We care about saving money more than comfort and safety most of the time.

And basic human laziness.

The only time we care about safety, is when it would save MONEY to be safe.

Usually policies revolving around the inability for people to sue.

We truly are a bizarre species.

I wonder how much longer we'll last.

Could be worse...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/055c6022.jpg

I actually like the mesh chairs since they breathe better and my ass doesn't get all sweaty. They always turned off the air conditioner in our building after 6 and when I had to work late, the only reason I didn't have swamp ass was because the chair didn't hold in the sweat.

Now leather chairs should be banned from offices. I've been trying to find a good executive office chair for years but they're nearly all made of leather. I used to have a big leather bankers chair and in the summer I had to put down a towel because it would get so hot and sticky. It was a super comfy chair, but I'd have to peel myself out of it after just a few minutes.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9b19762e.jpg

Because we live in fear of being fired by an incompetent upper management. Cheap shitty chairs cost less, so the upper management earns more money while screwing those under them.

Another good question is why do we make cashiers stand when their jobs can be done just as well seated?
I know the answer is classism and companies pinching pennies, yes.

GreenKnight127 posted...

The same reason we settled for vehicles with fiberglass bumpers.

We are literally driving around in PLASTIC bumper cars that explode on impact.

Sure, they're lighter now, more fuel efficient, but they are death traps.

We care about saving money more than comfort and safety most of the time.

And basic human laziness.

The only time we care about safety, is when it would save MONEY to be safe.

Usually policies revolving around the inability for people to sue.

We truly are a bizarre species.

I wonder how much longer we'll last.

cars these days will actually protect you in a crash

cars back then forced you to take all the force of an impact, they are not better in any way except possibly looks.

captpackrat posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9b19762e.jpg

now that's a fuckin chair

the single stalk is shit though. we could have a much better and safer method than this. literally just instead of one stalk, you have four like a stool and just lazy susan the top for rotation

ConfusedTorchic posted...

cars these days will actually protect you in a crash

cars back then forced you to take all the force of an impact, they are not better in any way except possibly looks.

Yep. Older cars could take a hit and not deform at all, but that means all of the energy of that impact was transmitted into the passenger compartment. Crumple zones mean the car takes more damage, but it's the car taking the damage instead of the passengers.

It takes a truly special kind of ignorance to say "modern cars are death traps." There are many issues with the safety of modern vehicle design, but almost all of those boil down to them being made too big/sturdy such that they cause more damage than is necessary to anything or anyone they hit. Even a cursory glance at occupant safety stats will tell you that cars are much safer now than when they barely deformed at all after a crash.

the same reason we think Silent Hill f and Silent Hill 2 remakes are good Silent Hill games.

Kallainanna posted...

Another good question is why do we make cashiers stand when their jobs can be done just as well seated?
I know the answer is classism and companies pinching pennies, yes.

The real answer is because many cashier jobs will require the cashier to repeatedly move around from place-to-place, and therefore they'd actually be worse off having to get up and down every time.

It may not be a good answer, but that's generally why.

It depends on the cashier job though. A grocery cashier is theoretically supposed to be helping you bag groceries, and thus would need to move over to do so (and standing allows for a longer arm reach towards items on conveyor belts). A bank cashier will often need to walk to different terminals, talk to different people, or otherwise physically move around a lot . But presumably some cashier jobs could easily be done while seated (or in a wheelchair, if you want to hire someone who is disabled in some way and unable to stand, or at least unable to stand for prolonged periods).

When I worked retail and worked the counter, I sat around 90% of the time whenever no customers were around (I even set up a TV and my Xbox under the counter at one point, and spent a lot of time playing Halo with my boss' son). I only ever stood up to serve customers when they came into the store because a) I would invariably need to fetch things (it was a mostly behind-the-counter business), and b) it's seen as being somewhat disrespectful to just sit in front of a customer and broadcast your sheer apathy for their BS. Standing up at least implies you care.

not every item can be scanned easily by just sitting and there will sometimes be items out of arm's reach. Scanning various items while sitting is bad on the body. but I do agree that cashiers should have a place to sit during down time.

"Sometimes you'll have to stand, so you should just never sit."

Chair mafia keeps the actual chairs out of mortal reach.

adjl posted...

"Sometimes you'll have to stand, so you should just never sit."

ParanoidObsessive posted...

and therefore they'd actually be worse off having to get up and down every time.

Depends on how often they'll need to stand.

It's one thing if you'd only be standing up like once an hour or so, a very different thing if you'd basically need to be moving around or standing up every other minute or so. At that point you're probably fucking up your knees (and the chair) more than you are saving your back or feet by not standing.

(As an example, at my local bank the main tellers have to stand at the counter because they move around a lot - they'll wander over to the microphone/tube for the drive-up window, or have to get permission to handle a specific transaction from a higher-up, or they'll need to walk over to the side to get necessary paperwork, and so on. I don't think I've ever done any transaction where they didn't have to move around to at least one other part of their teller area. But then the branch managers or other specialized employees get their own chairs and desks because most of what they do can be done in one place - and even then they'll still occasionally need to get up to fetch something or talk to someone else or whatever.)

It's also worth remembering that the concept of the cashier started at a time when stores/businesses were small and the person working the counter would also be handling stocking duties, having to go to the back to pull items off shelves (rather than just ringing up whatever a customer puts in their own cart), maybe even mopping the floor or wiping down windows as well as working the register. The idea of larger stores where everyone has been specialized into singular roles is mostly a product of the car age (and took off around the 1950s). So when most stores were designing checkout lanes or other cashier stations, there was already the unspoken expectation that cashiers would be standing, so there wasn't necessary a powerful impetus to change that.

Even after people started understanding that maybe all that standing wasn't necessarily a great idea for people's bodies, it was always going to be easier to just throw down a padded mat on the floor, or to establish limits on how long anyone can man a lane for, rather than having to completely redesign how everything is laid out.

And at this point it almost feels like it's barely worth changing because so many smaller brick-and-mortar stores are being phased out as-is, and so much cashier-ing is being done as part of an electronic transfer anyway. Which mostly leaves you with stock-people (who absolutely need to stand and walk around most of the time) rather than stationary cashiers.

It's just one of those things there's likely to never be a strong impetus to completely change. Especially when most employees complaining about it are just going to be seen as lazy (by both employers and customers) anyway.

aldi gives their cashiers chairs

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Especially when most employees complaining about it are just going to be seen as lazy (by both employers and customers) anyway.

That's really the crux of it. Plenty of other countries have normalized giving cashiers stools/chairs to use then they don't need to stand. The attitude of "if you're not standing, you're not working" that has pervaded America, however, has prevented that.

Yes, there are legitimate concerns that mean being able to sit might not be ideal, but all of those are generally possible to work around if you value employee comfort and welfare. American laws do not, so those workarounds have not been implemented.

there's some cashiers at the walmart here that sit

my friend bought a 57 chevy and i joked with him in the event of an accident, HE is the crumple zone.

i was gonna make a refence to the song where have all the cowboys gone by paula cole, but the lyric in question is a 56 chevy

Anti office chair propaganda, I will not stand for it

Millions of dollars are spent every year researching the perfect chair for office workers to stay productive, that ain't your back breaking lazyboy

adjl posted...

Yep. Older cars could take a hit and not deform at all, but that means all of the energy of that impact was transmitted into the passenger compartment. Crumple zones mean the car takes more damage, but it's the car taking the damage instead of the passengers.

It takes a truly special kind of ignorance to say "modern cars are death traps." There are many issues with the safety of modern vehicle design, but almost all of those boil down to them being made too big/sturdy such that they cause more damage than is necessary to anything or anyone they hit. Even a cursory glance at occupant safety stats will tell you that cars are much safer now than when they barely deformed at all after a crash.

Yeah I always think back to my friends accident in his 2009 Corolla. Head on 80kph.
He walked away, slightly sore chest from the air bag hitting him there. The other guy was in an older SUV. He had to be air lifted to the hospital.

SinisterSlay posted...

Yeah I always think back to my friends accident in his 2009 Corolla. Head on 80kph.
He walked away, slightly sore chest from the air bag hitting him there. The other guy was in an older SUV. He had to be air lifted to the hospital.

Accidents involving newer cars tend to look worse, but if you look underneath the shredded crumple zones, more often than not the passenger cage is intact. That's not to say passenger cages always remain intact or you can't still have serious injuries with modern cars, because that's very obviously not true, but the designs you see now are a consequence of tons of research into increasing the likelihood that everybody walks away from a given crash. "Bumper squishy lol" does not override that.

we have a modern example of this thought topic, albeit with an exception

a cybertruck absolutely demolished a toyota corrola

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/69f9d482.jpg

the driver was unharmed entirely, despite the car looking like a pancake.

the exception, though, is that it was the cybertruck, and that thing is big enough that the force impact on the driver is minimal, because the driver of it was also fine. but that's the exception, because the thing structurally is built like a fucking tank, even if everything on that frame is built like shit

We had expensive chairs at my government call center job. Even better, they got rid of a bunch for some reason and people could take them home for free. I took one home but sadly didn't have space to take it with me when I moved out. I still miss that chair, it was basically perfect

Did you also sign the petition to extend Reggie's lifespan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VyEWlvLVYQ