Tale of the Office Chair

Once upon a time a young woman went to work in an office. She found her desk, sat in her chair, familiarized herself with her surroundings. The young lady went diligently to work producing documents, typing, helping the public and a variety of other tasks. As the weeks went by she slipped into a routine that included sitting at her desk in her chair. She began to notice that her shoulders hurt every day during and after work. She tried to adjust her work space, but no relief could she find.

One day she asked the office manager about ergonomic assessments for the work place. The young lady had heard somewhere in the office that they were available. These assessments seemed to be all the rage throughout the work world so she figured she'd try one on for size in an attempt to easy the pain in her shoulders. The office manager scoffed and made snide remarks but finally relinquished the information about getting an assessment. Forward thinking as the young lady was she made the mistake of asking about replacing chairs or purchasing her own. The office manager again laughed and scowled as she responded that the chairs for the upstairs office must match all the others. It was a blatant no that the young professional could not purchase her own chair for fear the public would notice that it did not match the others.

Contemplating her next move the young woman, mulled over her options, jumped through the hoops of bureaucracy to receive her ergonomic assessment, but when the day finally came, the young woman had two days before switched offices, desks, and chairs. Nothing was the same, nor was the situation better. The assessment was given, but no real answers for relief were divulged. Having enough of the run around the young woman did her own research on chairs; she found what appeared to be the answer to her pain.

With the new chair purchased, she brought it to work one day. Eyes and skeptical looks followed her as she walked in with the chair. She ignored them all, went to her desk and started work as usual. When the day came to an end, she assembled her new chair, tried it out and went home. As the week progressed the young woman heard murmurs and chatter about the new chair. She ignored them, wanting only to do her work. Finally a fellow office worker approached her and asked her about the chair and the young woman simply replied that she had solved her shoulder pain problem and found a chair that allowed her to stretch and work on her posture. More questions followed, more skepticism; eventually the murmurs quieted, people left her alone and life returned to normal.

The young woman thought to herself about the strange occurrences and realized:

• Office people are bored and find anything not routine vastly interesting.
• Challenging the long term office manager makes for good personal as well as office entertainment.
• Does it really matter what you sit on as long as you are getting your work done and not in pain?

Moral of the story - A simple chair can cause quite a ruckus in your work place. You have been warned.

What's Going On In The Neighborhood

Economic recession, be lucky you have a job. Common phrase that you hear almost everyday one the news on at work around the water cooler. I wasn't really concerned about it until just the other week. Montana is-was predicted to be a few months behind the curve on all these national down turns (housing, recession, job loss) and that seemed to be holding true until about a month ago that is when the local papers started running stories about the few local employers who provide good living wages, started laying people off. Add to this a recent walk around downtown, but let me premise this: Missoula has a pretty solid and thriving main street filled with small independently owned businesses. In the last few weeks I have seen a few stores close their doors. Not a good sign, but a sign.

The up side of these businesses closing or moving locations (some of whom have) is that it opens up the spaces for new business, if folks can afford to take the risk. One area of business that could use some competition is restaurants. Indian, Persian, Greek, anything ethnic and not taco or pizza related or chain oriented would be very much appreciated in this community. Seriously folks we don't have an Indian restaurant here and I am dying for some naan and good spicy food. Not sure why we don't have one of any of the aforementioned ethnic eateries or why we have like 15 taco places in town (really-taco oriented food this far north?) I would settle for a good Norwegian or German place at this point, something to break up the monotony.

With that I am scheming up a plan to convince my boyfriend to move here and open up a world food restaurant that would cater to these varieties (more likely what we can cook: Persian, Thai, Italian, bread and sweets) and just be different. For some reason folks in this town like to eat out and when they do, they enjoy themselves. Good mix right?

Realistically it is probably better that another generation gets to experience the economic crunch in the hopes that it will put things in perspective. Let's hope. I know that what I learned from growing up on the tail end of the 1980s and the early 1990s is that you should save your money, put it in safe (conservative), good returning rate accounts and be happy with what you have.

I think it is time to get with it folks and realize that you can not, no matter how good the deal looks, live above your means.

The soap box is officially put away.
I have dismounted the high horse.
Recognition that I don't know it all, recognized.