2022, Business, Mysteries, Technology, Uncategorized, work

Why?

50 Comments

My company is still on “work from home” protocol.  For another week and a half.  You can work in the office if you want or you can work from home.  Most of us have been given an additional big monitor so that we can have one at the office and one at home so working at home is a pretty sweet deal.

There are people going in but not many.  I had to check on a mailing yesterday in Building 5 and it was quite deserted.  Echo-y even.  In cutting through the back hallway to get to the mailing center, I turned a corner and found a little nook with a printer on a table, a rug and five chairs.  There are no offices nearby.  And with hardly anyone in the building, the nook had an eerie, otherworldly feel.  Kinda like a surreal set in a Man Ray movie. 

I thought about this funny little scene all afternoon.  Why a printer there?  Why a rug?  And for heaven sake, why all the chairs?  Does someone really think there will be enough paper shooting out of this printer that there needs to be a waiting area?

Do you have a favorite chair?  To snuggle up in to read?  Or to watch tv?

50 thoughts on “Why?”

  1. I have this image of people seated around the printer awaiting instructions, or guidance. If you could establish a link to that specific printer and place a little webcam somewhere to monitor the space, you have the makings of a cult.

    We used to lounge about in a pair of chairs from Ikea. They were marginally comfortable but they kept breaking. For our 50th anniversary, our kids and their spouses gave us a pair of leather-covered Norwegian lounge chairs with footstools. Very very comfy.

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  2. Our cat has claimed the leather cushioned Stickley chair in our living room as her own. She likes snuggling in the wool blankets I put on it to keep the leather safe from her claws. We have a love seat and a sofa in our living room. I sit on the sofa. Husband claims the love seat. Neither of these pieces will move with us when we leave here in a few years. The cats have taken their toll with their scratching, and they weren’t the best quality furniture to begin with. Our TV is in the basement, and the family room full of things we had to take out of a bedroom down there when we had a water leak leak in the bedroom ceiling. My next task is to contact a drywall guy to fix the holes in the drywall left by the plumber.

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  3. That is odd. Maybe they just needed a place to put the chairs?

    I do have a favorite chair, though Husband has claimed it since coming home from rehab. I bought it from a woman who officed with us in the consulting group I worked with in the 90s – it would be called a side chair, very low arms, and I can curl up in it. There’s also a fairly comfy platform rocker that I’ve recovered a few times – but I can’t curl up very well in that.

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    1. I thought about the chair storage as well. Two things… my company has a massive area (in my building actually – Building 4) with all the extras and they are always good about moving stuff in and out of there. The second mystery is the types of chairs themselves. My company is a solid black mesh chair company. If there are other orange and blue mesh chairs in any of the buildings, I have never seen them.

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  4. I have a wooden rocker that fits me perfectly. It’s in the corner of our living room under a lamp with a sideboard to the left of the rocker. It’s my reading chair. Most weekday mornings I’ll read there for 30-60 minutes while listening to Classical MPR in the background. Probably my most “civilized and refined” habit.

    And, unfortunately, I have a leather reclining rocker in the family in which I sit to watch TV. It’s way too comfortable in the reclined position so I often fall asleep at night in the middle of watching a not so exciting game or “Big Bang Theory” reruns . . . or sometimes just whatever the channel surfing leads me to.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. I have a big comfy armchair–I bought it from This End Up in 1997, IIRC. It’s extra wide, so it’s easy to curl up in, and is covered in a lovely autumn leaf tapestry fabric. There was a big ottoman that matched, but the chair was so expensive ($700!) that I didn’t feel I could afford the ottoman. It would have taken up way too much space, especially in the studio apartment, but it would have been nice to have. The cats have done a lot of damage to the poor thing, but it’s holding up fairly well. Unfortunately, This End Up closed years ago, so I’ll probably never be able to match the fabric when it has to be recovered. My old tortie, Polychrome, blended into that pattern so well, she got sat on at least twice!

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  7. At my last job, we had an area designated as the ‘chair graveyard.’ If someone got a new chair (a luxurious rarity!) but their old chair was still serviceable, it went there. Kind of a ‘chair purgatory’ between being used and being tossed. My ex left me most of the furniture, whom we’d gotten from her mother when she had upgraded. It’s well-built, quality furniture, so we haven’t been in a rush to replace it. That being said, it isn’t stuff that we picked out or purchased ourselves, so I guess I see it as pretty ‘utilitarian,’ rather than have a ‘love’ for it.

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    2. The last time I worked in an office, whenever someone left, there was a rush to scavenge their furniture if what they had was better than what you had. Whoever new came into that office would inherit everyone’s cast-offs, at least until someone else left.

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      1. Yes! I found this as well, especially in Southern MN. People descended on my office furniture like vultures even before I was out the door.

        The administration was not pleased and issued a memo…

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      2. This happens where I work as well. But not just the furniture. People go through the drawers looking for good pens or binder clips or rubber bands or who knows what else. The longer a cube sits empty the less likely there will be anything left when the new person comes

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    1. …or alternatively, blue chairs against end wall and orange ones facing the printer. But to create a spot conducive to creating a homey atmosphere, they need a large plastic plant stringed with white Christmas tree lights, a couple of pieces of “office” art reproductions on the walls, and a coffee machine, and voila! Hygge with a capital H.

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  11. (Sort of in the same vein as the dancing shopping carts – see end of Corralling post.)

    The chairs come from several different office rooms. They have become lonely over the course of the pandemic, when few if anyone at all comes to use them. Via the little know phenomena of Chair Telepathy, they decided to find a spot where they could meet, and specifically arranged them selves asymmetrically so no one would be suspicious. The carpet got wind of this, invited the printer, and you se the result.

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  13. Oh, yes! My dear over-the-top friend who must mother and care for everyone and give more than she has took care of my recliner problem years ago. I never had a recliner. I admired them. Every time I ever sat in one, I could feel the tension leaving my lower back. I knew someday I would spend some money on one but back in those days, money was a big problem for me.

    My friend hired me to babysit her dog for weeks at a time back then. She would go go Arizona for three weeks, then return, then go back. Her partner didn’t allow the dog to go with them. She told me she wanted someone she trusted for her dog, so I began babysitting Misty. Misty was most comfortable if I took her home to Pam’s during the day while I was at work. After work, I’d go and let Misty out and feed her and play with her, then sit in one of Pam’s recliners and watch the news. It felt so good on my back. Then I’d bring Misty to my house and take my dog and Misty for a double dog walk.

    I made the mistake of mentioning how comfortable her recliners were just once. One day in the spring when she’d been home for awhile, I heard the doorbell ring. Pam was there with three of her teenage grandsons. She asked if they could carry my new recliner up my stairs to my living room. What recliner? She said, “The one I found in a ditch!” We laughed about that for years but she never told me until just a couple months ago where she actually got it and how much it cost. I still have it and I swear I couldn’t live without it. It does ease the tension in my back. When I can’t sleep in bed, I can usually sleep in the recliner. I’m still so grateful to her for it.

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  14. The printer’s lament…

    “I am,” I said
    To no one there
    And no one heard at all,
    Not even the chairs.

    “I am,” I cried
    “I am,” said I,
    And I am lost and I can’t
    Even say why.

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      1. I can’t imagine what anyone thinks if they would watch my face while I’m reading some of these comments. Luckily no wine or coffee for me right now or it would be up my nose.

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  16. A girlfriend of mine called me up and said that her company was getting new chairs and that they were allowed to take the old chairs away. Did I want an office chair for my studio? I absolutely did. The new chair was in very good shape and on wheels but the first day I stood up to get something I didn’t realize the chair had rolled five or 6 inches back. I did of course figure it out as I was sitting on the floor. Luckily that only happened three or four more times before subconsciously I realized I needed to make sure the chair was there before I sat down.

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  17. i’m not a chair guy
    the seat in my vehicle makes a huge difference
    i recently had to retire the van i’ve been driving and the replacement is killing me
    it’s a huge difference and i’m hoping the new solution to my vehicle needs will be ok
    it arrives in a week or so
    for office chairs the black mesh german miller areon chair vs is talking about is the best there is

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