Slashdot Mirror
Aeron Chairs As Stupidity Barometers
McSpew writes: "This article at Salon describes how much startup venture money went to buying $700 Aeron chairs. Personally, I think Aerons suck. I'm sitting in one now and my back is killing me--I can never get this damn chair adjusted right, or to get it to stay in a configuration close to comfortable for very long. The wonderful high-tech mesh fabric acts like sandpaper and wears holes in my pants. I honestly miss the boring chair I had at my last job. Am I the only person who hates Aerons?" Aerons are stylish, but not everyone finds them the comfortable work chairs they're supposed to be. Here's one that looks truly comfortable.
A little Aeron Chair humor for everyone... it goes on for about of week of comics...
It occurred to me though that a management staff who found that their workforce likes the chairs can probably eke quite a bit of extra hours out of their employees by providing simple luxuries like this. I haven't used one long-term, so I can't address the "sandpaper" issue, but I did find that my back wasn't sore after sitting in one for a day.
Also it should be noted that with all the formerly VC-saturated companies going out of business lately, the average going price for an Aeron on Ebay is around $3-400
compaq's call centre in dublin has Aeron chairs at every desk. 4 floors with hundreds of desks on each floor..
.com thing.
it was one of the things they tried to impress the DECies with when they were integrating us into the Q. Strange... most of the DECies have left, Q has dropped Alpha..
Aeron chair stupidity -> not just a
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
The Office Depot/Ikea chairs don't qualify as being 'ergonomically correct' You cant find a real office chair for under $500 and those are the barebones models.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Many many years ago, there used to be a shop near my University that sold these. They had one of the fully reclining balans chairs (which, from looking at the web site, they don't seem to do any more). It's the wierdest sensation to sit in a chair and throw your weight backwards until the chair tips onto the next rail, and keep going until you end up nearly horizontal. You have to have blind faith that the chair is going to take it, and you won't end up landing on your head. But once you get there, it's the most comfortable chair you'll ever sit on.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
There is only one True Chair Vendor: Lay-Z-Boy While it may not always be practical, NOTHING compares to a Lay-Z-Boy. Period. The armrests work great as optical mouse pads, you can sleep in it if necessary/desired, you will never, ever have back problems. Granted, they are a little expensive and require a creative solution to monitor positioning, but they're still a good deal cheaper than an Aeron.
I lied, they do still sell them. Take a look at http://www.stokke-furniture.no/rot/html/h_gravity. html
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Second. If you're in the Boston area, there's a shop called Back Care Basics that sells them. Very hard to find in the US. Expensive, but worth trying out.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Yeah but compaq could probably afford to do something like that. They've been around alot longer then companies like Pets.com and etoys.com. Etoys spent money on court cost's and lawyer fees as well when they tried to sue etoy.com. Some companies CAN afford these chairs. It's not a total barometer for everyone, just for companies who should have used the VC for their business gols instead of perks. Case in point, the hospital my wife had a surgery in about a year or so ago had Aerons for the nurses at the nurse station. Same thing with the hospital my nephew was born in. Do you really think that it costs the hospital 5 bucks for an asprin? That's what they charge the insurance companies.
Gorkman
As a former Herman Miller employee up until recently, I have worked on the Aeron and Equa II (most customizable and my personal fav.) line. You would be surprised to know how much workmanship and hard work is put into these chairs. Every single chair is assembled, customized, and inspected by a person. No robots, no automation.
You would be surprised how much attention is given to a perfect chair. Not one chair leaves the plant unless it's absolutely perfect. Not even the tiniest scratch or ripple in fabric is acceptable. They don't "touch up" their chairs if something is found, it's totally disassembled and the effected part is disposed of. No touch-up paint, no stain removers.
My point is, you pay for the quality, workmanship, and sweat put into making the chairs absolutely perfect. Herman Miller isn't a company that screws around when it comes to doing it right. And believe me, it drove me nuts the first few weeks working there at their high standards of workmanship; but now I truly understand why.
- DanI agree with this to a certain extent. At work, we have these chairs. The mesh is GREAT in the sense that you don't get the sweaty-ass (tm!?) and sweaty-back. My last job involved about 4 hours of sweaty-ass/back daily.
;-)
But $700!? I work at a start-up SIPS company, and we have about 120 of these in the office. Now I wonder how much the DESK costed... and I wonder why those in the corporate group that only use Word and Excel have the same $4000 laptops running W2KPro as us consultants... Yes, there are about 120 of these laptops that come standard with the desk, in addition to whatever other computers us "consultants" REALLY need.
Honestly, I love the chair, I love the desk, I love the fancy designer lamp on my desk, and I love the laptop (minus the OS). But this article sort of makes me worried over what I'll be doing in a year or so....
But back to the point. I like the chair. It's a pain in the ass to adjust, sort of, but honestly speaking, how many of us just loved to play around with all the adjustments for the first week or so after we got them? Within that first week of tinkering with it, I got my settings right.
Everytime an Aeron story comes out Im reminded of how much FREEKIN cooler these chairs are. Sure they're almost as expensive as a luxury car, but a Mercedes doesn't have inetrnal fiber ports or room for four moniitors!
www.poetittech.com
- Quokka had "hundreds" of Aerons.
- Quokka burned through $200 million.
If we round "hundreds" up to 1000, we have $700,000 investment in chairs, or roughly 1/3 of 1% of $200 million. Two days of a programmer's salary cost more than his chair. Cubicles cost vastly more than chairs.Many things contributed to the dot com failures. Expensive chairs did not.