After work on Friday I went out for a couple of drinks with Laura and some oxymoronic nice bankers. One of them casually mentioned that someone might be quitting our office and I seized this opportunity to enquire about stealing the leaver’s Aeron chair. Aeron chairs are debatably the most comfortable office seat on earth. I first became aware of them when I read about their evolution in The Wisdom of Crowds (recommended) and first saw one in the flesh/webbing when I started working here in March. There are a few Aerons smattered around the trading floor but supply is limited to around 50%. The rest of us are forced to make do with Eighties chairs with limited lumbar support that cause me to slouch down into a semi-reclined state, making me look both permanently hungover and fat. Not a look I want to cultivate.There followed a lengthy discussion about the best procedure for bagging oneself an Aeron. Naturally, the simplest method would be to order one from the catalogue but things are never simple and due to current internal cost-cutting attempts, such profligacy is inadvisable. The only solution is to keep one’s ear to the ground and, the moment someone quits or is forced to leave, politely pounce upon their chair before their buttock indentations have faded.
Complex Aeron-related sagas are the cause of much office bitterness. My companions had a wealth of stories to tell about their own Aeron grabs – in one case, precise dates and times from 2005 were provided when someone went on three months’ leave and their chair was stolen while they were away. Another gentleman on his way out was packing a few belongings into a box when a colleague brazenly wheeled away his chair and then returned a few moments later to drag out the five foot pot plant that had been sitting in the corner by his desk. With such hard-nosed tacticians surrounding me, something tells me my wait for an Aeron may be a long one.
Following post-work drinks on Friday I met my friend, Nick, at the National Portrait Gallery, where we felt uncomfortable among those enjoying brightly-lit end-of-week jazz in the ticket foyer and then improved our minds in an exhibition of twentieth century British press photography (also recommended).
Over dinner later on, Nick reminded me that I had once interviewed the ex-pop group, A1, and had asked the band’s alleged hunk, Ben, whether he would genetically modify kittens and puppies to stay baby sized if he could. I had completely forgotten ever writing or asking this insightful question but I wasn’t surprised: it is clearly a recurring theme for me as it’s an issue that still troubles me today.Of course, on a practical level, I would go mental if someone tampered with nature in that way, but I do feel strongly that, given that around 98% of the motivation for acquiring a cat or dog is that they start off as a kitten or a puppy, and given also that the ratio of kitten/puppyhood to grown cat/doghood, over the course of a lifetime, is approximately 1:16 in cats and about 1:18 in dogs, it would arguably be for the greater good if they could stay small and fluffy for a bit longer. Surely this isn’t beyond the reaches of modern science? It would certainly slow the incidences of pets abandoned after a few months. The slogan isn’t ‘A puppy’s for life, not just for Christmas’ because no sane person abandons puppies. But the moment their legs lengthen, the little tail wags less, the head to body ratio shrinks and the skin fits the body, we lose interest. Which is sad – yet maybe it will be the catalyst for something really wonderful. Perhaps those scientists could use their knowledge for good, just this once. Forget working on disease cures that are clearly pipe dreams and put their time to the modification of domestic pets into a permanently juvenile state. Now that would be time well spent – and, in a major PR coup, I already have the backing of Ben from A1. Who’s with us?
The chair didn't grab me but then I read about your friend whose wife disappeared into a cult. That's sad. I wonder if her parents made the money themselves, and how they felt when their daughter was targetted because of it? There's a horrible irony in the story, isn't there? Feel free to visit my on my blog, if you have a moment.
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