Chair fascism

Today a woman from my HR department made me cry. I cannot remember the last time anyone made me cry at work. My chair is in contravention of a UN Resolution. It has been banned.

The conversation went a bit like this:

her: Can I ask what kind of chair you have?
me: Um, it's one of those kneely ones.
her: They have been banned. You can't use it anymore.
me: What do you mean, banned?
her: They have been banned. If you keep using it we will be fined.
me: But I have a letter from a doctor you sent me to when I started working here saying it is a fine chair and good for me!
her: They have been banned. You can't use it anymore.
me: But why?

I didn't get an answer to the question why, she just got screechier about the being banned part, despite my aforementioned letter from bona fide occupational health doctor. The best I could do was insist on seeing the paperwork describing the exact nature of this ban.

What can be so evil about my poor little chair? It is a Stokke Variable and my mother bought it for me in 1994. I have taken it to seven desks in four offices since then and nobody has ever minded.

I love my chair. I don't like office chairs, I never have. They don't fit me, they make me fidget and make my shoulders hurt and legs ache. And it's not just offices: I always did my homework lying on a beanbag on the floor, and my college work like that too.

It's my chair, I want to keep it. Nobody else has to use it, I am an adult and happy to take full responsibility for anything that happens to me while I am sitting on it.

And why did I cry? Because I am feeling vulnerable today, it's my vulnerable day of the month when the world feels like it's falling apart even if nothing bad happens. And then I got grief down the phone from someone who doesn't understand about me and my chair and doesn't want to. I spend thirty seven and a half hours a week working for an organisation that has a fucking diversity policy, and they want to make me have the same chair as everybody else.

joella