We have two offices in our house. Mine is on the third floor and also contains the home gym (a hand-me-down elliptical machine). I’ve been using it as an office since around 2015, when I started working from home frequently and then exclusively. I’ve started two jobs in that office, completely remotely, and it is really a very nice room. My husband’s office is on the second floor and is also the guitar-playing room.
During our puppy-raising times, I mostly abandoned my office in favor of being in a room with hard-surface flooring. Our bigger dog would be fine to hang out on the beanbag in my office and sleep most of the day, but the puppy is still an idiot and can’t stop herself from being destructive and annoying anytime she is awake. So on days when the dogs are home I am mostly downstairs in the kitchen, where the internet sucks, or upstairs in the second-floor sunroom.
This of course created a vacuum in my beloved office and my husband has filled it, even on days when the dogs aren’t here. Last month I told him I need to start working in there again. I need at least one of the two external monitors he’s commandeered, and I need to sit at a desk instead of a dining room chair that is destroying my back. I solved this problem the same way I solve a lot of other problems, which is to buy stuff and force the issue.
So far I’ve ordered an additional VGA to USB-C adapter, a chair mat for the carpeted floor, and a cheap-ish office chair. Office chairs, if you didn’t know it, are a racket: You can get a probably-kinda-shitty one for less than $100, or a less-shitty one for about $250, or a good one for (wait for it!) ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Listen, I’ve spent some money on furniture, but I am not spending that much on an office chair, especially when they are (by law it seems?) very fugly.
When I worked at a trade media company in the early aughts, they had just upgraded all of their office furniture, including what had to be hundreds of Aeron chairs. I am guessing those chairs have been retired or sold on, being about 20 years old now, but I would gratefully adopt one into my home office, regardless of the number of butts they’ve seen since the first Bush II administration.
Office chairs must be one of those things like toilet paper, chest freezers (just try and find one!!), disinfecting wipes, and jigsaw puzzles that everyone is buying these days. I think one of the weirdest things that will come out of this pandemic is ubiquitous mall clothing conglomerates declaring bankruptcy while a new class of hand sanitizer millionaires emerges.