My chair blowed up

For the first time in my life, I have broken an office chair, and unfortunately, it comes late in my career where every dime spent on office equipment comes out of our pocket, not someone else’s. I don’t think it was due to the chair being a bad chair, for it has done its job well for almost 6 years. The issue of how it broke, or “blowed up” as my brother would say, is my fault.

You see, I am a rocker.

Now, your first assumption may be that affection for—and connection to—rock music, and you would be right. I am a rocker in that sense, but this is about me being another kind of rocker. You see, I grew up in rocking chairs. I could not deal with being still much as a young boy. If I had a choice, and I always did, I would sit in a rocking chair vs. a lame, boring still chair. Why just sit there when you can move?? Let’s introduce a little fun into sitting shall we? Atleast that was my motto back in the day.

Over the years, my need to always be rocking in a chair that does so has caught on to countless co-workers and has resulted in more teasing that I could possibly recall. I’ve taken it all in stride though, and have handled all verbal assaults with grace and a small chuckle. So this week as I was working on a slew of deadlines, I was doing that very thing—rocking— when all of a sudden, POW! THUNK GAHBLMBLM!! The entire back of the chair broke off, leaving me sitting on the seat of it after nearly falling off backwards due to the plastic avalanche falling onto my office floor. I was startled—no shocked is more like it—that this had happened. It’s not like I was doing some extreme sports sort of thing in my chair! Just a simple rock with a soft lean, and then it happened. Crazy, I know . . .

I worked the rest of the week with a backless chair and let me tell you, it is a challenge to someone like me who has Jabba the Hutt posture at times. If I have the chance, I’ll start looking for a new chair this week, and hope that it lasts me a tleast 6 years like this one did, but we’ll see what happens. Regardless of the length of time I own the next one, hopefully an event like this will not be repeated. I’d hate to start having to wear a crash helmet all day just to sit at my desk and work.