There aren’t any stools around, and all you need to do is reach the can of white-out that’s currently perched on the top shelf. You pull over the office chair, ignoring the threatening rustle of its wheels rolling across the floor, even though you know that people can fall off of office chairs.
“Other people,” you tell yourself.
You reach for that white-out, stretching your arm across the length of the full size desk below you. The chair sways gently beneath your feet as you unconsciously correct and re-correct your balance, your entire life balanced on a set of six Master Caster Futura Series soft wheels.
Some small cuts and bruises, a broken arm, maybe even death, if you fall on something sharp-these are the worst possible side effects of falling off an office chair, right?
Wrong.
Maybe you are a friend or relative of somebody who has fallen from an office chair, but for those of you who have been untouched by office chair injury, know this:
Office chairs aren’t like other objects. Designed to produce maximum efficiency in office environments, but one quirk of this design is that they will always topple in worst way possible.
I used to work at an office job. I walked home on my beautiful, functional legs to my beautiful wife and my two beautiful children. I would hug them with my beautiful upper-torso arms and we’d talk about just how damn beautiful our life was.
As you can see from my picture, this isn’t the case. When I feel from my office chair, everything changed. The surgeons told my that my internal organs were entirely discombobulated, and after a failed twelve-hour recombobulation surgery they were ready to leave me for dead.
I survived only because my beautiful, beautiful family was able to change their minds. “Do anything,” my genetically perfect children cooed in unison, and the doctors obliged.
When they saw what came out of that operating room they left. Who could love a man with legs for arms and arms for legs?
Now I live in a trash can beside Alder, eating whatever scraps I can kick-punch away from neighborhood dogs. Precious few people will acknowledge I exist, and those who do are almost all scofflaws serving community service, throwing sheets of burlap over me to for “community beautification.” I didn’t even write this article- I had to dictate it to my hideous girlfriend, the only human who can stand my presence after the accident.
So please, listen to me while you still have something left to lose. As you leave college and begin to work in the real world, just remember this one thing:
Never stand on a chair with wheels.
[PHOTO COURTESY/DAVID PENDLETON]