I am confident that if a corporate-style self-help book were to be written for lab scientists, it would be entitled Who Moved My Chair?
Most of you are familiar with the setup. You spend a significant part of your day at the bench, microscope, or culture hood.
At this station there is a Chair. The Chair has five wheels, is covered in vinyl, has at least eleven levers underneath, and was sent from Satan, or facilities management.
One of these levers controls the height of the Chair. When you want the Chair to elevate, you stand slightly and pull this lever, at which point the Chair fails to do anything, until after repeated yanks it shoots upwards and hits you in the butt, causing you to topple forwards.
When you want the Chair to sink, you pull up on this lever while bouncing on the seat like a fun ride, or a small child struggling with sphincter control. If you are very thin or the Chair is particularly recalcitrant, sometimes you have to perform a more complicated maneuver, like putting your knee on the seat as though restraining a struggling crime suspect, and repeating the pull lever-bounce action.
At least this is what you would do, if you could ever find the right lever. Instead, you inevitably pull the wrong lever, which has the effect of tilting the whole seat forwards and depositing you on the floor. When, rubbing your tailbone, you get back up to fix this problem, you will never be able to find this same lever again.
Instead, you will find the BarcaLounger holdover lever, which causes the back of the Chair to give way behind you, causing you once again to slide to the floor.
At this point, you take advantage of your location on the linoleum to gaze at the underside of the Chair, hoping to take a scientific approach to figuring out the levers once and for all. You spot a strangely shaped lever, more pole than paddle, and grab it triumphantly. This must be the up and down lever! you think. You straddle the Chair, since it is now too tilted to actually sit on, and yank confidently on the new lever.
Nothing whatsoever happens.
In your frustration and rage, you stand up and start shaking the Chair by the armrests. In the process, you accidentally press new levers that cause the armrests to detach entirely, leaving you waving them about concernedly as though you just ripped the arms off a baby, while the Chair watches with amusement.
For a while, you utter profanities that, if there were any justice, would melt vinyl.
Eventually, you calm down, sullenly reattach the armrests, and wait until the lab is empty. Then you scoot your Chair over to the bench of someone junior to you and make off with their Chair, which looks positively angelic by comparison. You discover that their Chair is in fact a little too short for you.
You decide to live with it.
15 years ago
8 comments:
I completely agree... Though I am normally on the stealing in since my lab is currently short 2 chairs after a move to a new building.
ROFLMAO. (seems appropriate)
HAHAHA. This all sounds like some instructions for a kinky sex act! Make that chair your bitch.
My favorite evil chairs are the ones you have to turn and turn and turn to raise up and down - there's no satanic levers, but it's like a carnival ride spinning and sitting, spinning and sitting, to get it just right so your knees don't bang the bench.
OMG, I'm laughing so hard right now. It's all SO TRUE! Stupid chairs.
In my PhD lab, we had chairs where the back would randomly fall off...
In my postdoc lab, I just have to deal with chairs that don't hold their height; slowly lowering you down as you sit and pipette away...
Once my chair shot up so high, one of my colleagues had to come push the lever to lower the chair so I could get off of it.
One word: WD40
A liberal dose on the main shaft, on the casters and the wheel axels, and you've got yourself nearly a brand new chair.
Sometimes it helps to use a forceps to remove the hair caught in the wheels.
But I have definitely seen my share of chairs that should really just be donated to "MythBusters" for summary detonation.
I don't use a chair at my bench bc I am very short and at no height position our lab's fleet of identical demonic chairs is this a functional position for me to be working. On the other hand, when working on the microscope, a chair is absolutely necessary so i have placed my (demonic) bench chair in the scope room which is also the repository for all the old chairs that were replaced by the new fleet. However demonic the new chairs are, they are infinitely more comfortable/adjustable than the old ones so MY bench chair that resides in the scope room is frequently occupied...did I mention that the old chairs are as incompatible with my height + height of scope as the news ones are w/ my height + height of bench? So I have resorted to the bitchy and obnoxious and prima donna technique of permanently labeling MY chair with this: "This is Balls's chair...You may use it when I am not but I may take it from you when I need it." And I oust people from it regularly without apology. Folks around here have gotten used to it...although Advisor-guy occasionally wanders into scope room and wonders what Balls's chair is doing there and considerately moves it back to my bench. Much to my consternation - it's just in the way there.
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