The Lowdown

Our cubicle walls are just under four feet high. The desks are about thirty inches off the ground. I'm six-foot-two.

My surroundings strike me as rather low-ish.

Back at the old job the cubicles were five feet high, desks almost forty-inches tall, and we had big, comfortable, high-tech chairs. The chairs were ridiculous.

First, they were big, heavy, black plastic, and bright orange fabric. And everything was adjustable. The armrests swiveled on dual hinges, the height was adjustable; lumbar tension was adjustable; seat depth, edge angle, chair height, recline-resistance. Everything. They were like the Robocop of chairs.

Now I've got some toadstool-like chair with no support and one lever. It adjusts the seat height. That's it.

So in my first few days here I kept the seat way up. I've got long legs, I don't like to be cramped, and I liked keeping my head above the divider so I could see what was going on.

But I've learned since then. Keep the chair low.

With the seat a paltry six inches off the ground my desk becomes the cockpit of a Lamborghini Diablo, rocketing through cyberspace well below the level of manager-radar.

Low cubicles force low seats to enable low profiles. Great heights of do-nothingness can only be achieved by getting as lowdown as possible.

-t

I would have posted this about two hours ago, but spent the time searching (vainly) for a picture of my old chair. It was a tank.