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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.
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
ironic dont you think that it was posted by tim
wasnt he the man who bought slashdot and took it public
hmm investors
dont like them but their money buys lots of sweet toys like cowboyneals chair (-;
regards
john jones
Well, there seems to be a decent amount of people who disapprove of the Aeron chairs.
;) Of course i'll pay shipping! And us poor fools who can barely afford the $35,000 a year tuition (yes, we got a $360 million dollar grant, and they hike tuition anyway), can have one of these chairs. (Lets not go into how much books costs!)
;) So act now and help save a poor suffing boy's behind.
I would like to offer a solution. To help us po' college boys who cant afford a $700 chair, but have to sit in a chair for 12 hours a day trying to code to finish while skipping all meals (well, mac and cheese is TECHNICALLY a meal). *takes another deep breath* I would be willing to offer to take the chairs off people hands
For the bunch of us who dont like to go into the fancy management rooms and steal them (I know ppl who have done that), we are sitting on what might as well be concrete.
For all those who sponser a po' boy, you will recieve a photo with your new donation, as well as a life story
True, but spending $700 on chairs when perfectly acceptable ones can be had for a fraction of that price
a) wastes money that could be better spent elsewhere; and
b) indicates the sort of attitude towards money that should have had investors running for cover
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The chair's are a BAROMETER.
That's like blaming the weather on the BAROMETER.
The article is pointing to these chairs as a useful guide to how much a company is wasting the venture capital they get.
i.e. a BAROMETER
Boy it's hot in here, stupid thermometer.
Krispy Cream is people
regardless, the aeron will work for people who are 1) of average size, 2) select the right size of aeron (there are three - maybe you should look into the large version?), 3) want to maintain proper posture while being comfortable and 4) will put the time and effort into adjusting it. i never said it was the end-all be-all of good chairs.
the "sweaty-ass" is a product of sitting in a warmish room in a well cushioned chair for far too long. not sitting on my legs or feet - just sitting. i know people of all different body shapes that experience it. it seems to be a factor of the environment, the chair and the way you sit. obviously, if you're giving your skin some room to breath (like, for example, sitting on the aeron's mesh), you shouldn't have any trouble. if it's parked in a cushion and can't get air too easily, it's more of a problem.
anyway, yes, i know that people are different. that's why the aeron is such a good chair - you can customize it to fit you. yes, it won't work for everybody. but with proper time and effort, it can work for a majority i'm sure. i'd venture to say that more people would find a properly adjusted aeron comfortable than would your standard $70 office chair.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
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
Oh yeah, and anyone who spends 700 fucking dollars on a chair deserves to go broke. IMHFO. For that price it had better massage my back, do my taxes, and wipe my ass automatically. :-) - it does do all that - and it sucks on your toes too! if you're into that kinda thing, anyway...
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
Of course, there's no way in hell I'd pay the $700 for one of these at home . . . but the laid-off VP whose office I lifted this one from doesn't seem to mind.
anyway, it really isn't as bothersome as i originally made it out to be. it takes a little time, but it's well worth it.
hope this helps, should you ever have the chance to sit in one.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
Everyone here agrees that the chairs are less a cause and more a symbol of the .com fall from grace, but it's more important to evaluate why the money was spent in the first place.
It seems to me that the relitively young executives who recieved hundreds of millions in Venture Capital - since they didn't have to really earn it - failed to value it properly, perhaps due to youtht and inexperience (certainly not the fase for all) and perhaps simply due to market conditions which presented the delusion that money grew on trees, since there was no incentive at the time to make a proffit. Let's look at that for a minute. It's the CEO's responsibility to manage a company for success, usualy determined by it's stock price. The market seemed unconcerned with profit, or even revenue so why should the CEOs. Why not buy $750 chairs for every employee? It's not like we need to spend the money on technical infastructure, or support or production, after all the market thinks we're doing just fine. Look at our stock price! (circa July 1999).
My point is, while the blame for the fallout can be placed on CEOs who allowed their companies to make frivolous use of VC, they were only responding to the market, which told them they were doing fine. I blame stock analysts who started gaining celebrity status by whowing up on CNBC with wild preditions which were of course self-fulfilling prophecies, particularly in light of the tremendous number of uninformed indevidual investors - willing to follow anyone who stood up to lead - that flooded the markets durring those years.
Come on, we can't blame the chairs.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
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
Why is it so difficult to believe that other people's experience is different than your own?
I've never in my life experienced anything remotely like "sweaty ass". Perhaps you had all your previous chairs adjusted wrong?
I doubt it. More likely, you have a very different body type and behavior from me. I'm tallish (6'3"), and the back of the Aeron bit into my shoulder blades, for example. It gives no neck support whatsoever, so is tiring over long periods, and the armrests didn't come up high enough that I could rest both elbows on them without slumping my shoulders, stressing the muscles in my upper back. You can't sit cross-legged in the damn things without a cushion - that sandpaper material shreds your ankles. Do you get the idea? I'm different from you, and no amount of fiddling with ergonomic levers will change that.
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.
- DanEverytime 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
"$700 Aeron chairs."
Try $1200. My last employer (The now bankrupt consulting firm marchFIRST.) had 10,000 of them in a Chicago warehouse, because there was never enough money to send them out.
The real loser in this is Herman-Miller, maker of the chairs. When Herman-Miller and its vendors sold these chairs in bulk to all the dotcoms, they sold on credit with NO SECURITY. That means there is no collateral, including the chairs themselves. Now the chairs are being sold out of bankruptcy to other firms for pennies on the dollar, hampering further sales.
My Aeron is fantastic. As another poster pointed out, you can't just sit down and expect miracles. You've got to adjust it to your own body. Not that I'm claiming they will work for everybody. I just know that my whole office has one, and everybody seems to like them.
If you've got ergonomic issues, it's critical that you get the problems fixed. Otherwise you're looking at life changing permanent damage to your back, hands, or whatever. I've just been through hand therapy, and believe me, nothing scares me more than the thought of losing the use of my hands. I'm a programmer, systems administrator, and piano player. My hands are a critical part of my livelyhood. Plus I want to be able to pick up my kids someday!
Check out www.tifaq.org. It's a great resource on general ergonomics, as well as a central place to find things like chairs and keyboards and pointing devices.
This is the best and most expensive ergonomic chair you can buy, period.
i use and aeron at home. when i first got it, i spend a considerable amount of time getting it adjusted to suit me perfectly. that means setting the height so your feet rest on the ground, setting up the lumbar support properly, getting the correct tilt both forward and backward, getting the armrest height set properly, etc. it can be a chore, but if you take the time to do it, it truly is one of the most comfortable chairs.
one thing i've always hated about being a computer geek was what we here at work refer to as sweaty-ass . you know - you've been sitting in the same chair for 6 hours coding or browsing or quaking or whatever and the heat and humidity make for a relatively uncomfortable rear. the aerson's mesh works wonders for this - i can sit in that chair for an hour or two or ten and not have any trouble whatsoever. and i've never had any problem with it wearing out my clothes or anything. i'd guess that the poster doesn't have the chair set up correctly and therefore fidgets quite a bit, meaning extra wear on the clothes.
anyway, if you can invest the time and money, you can have a comfortable and healthy chair with the aeron.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
They come (or at least when my company bought them they came) in three different sizes. If you have the wrong size, it's impossible to adjust it to be comfortable. I use the large -- with the small or the medium, the front edge of the seat hits the back of my thighs at an uncomfortable place. I'm only 5'10" (177 cm) and my legs aren't particularly long -- I suspect that tall people might have a problem all the sizes.
- 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.