31 January 2015

Chair Today - Gone Tomorrow


Funny how things start out so innocently.

“I need a new office chair,” I said to hubby.

“Fine,” he said.

“Because mine is 40 years old and worn out,” I said, determined to convince him.  “It also doesn’t fit me anymore.”  Bottoms can change after many years.  My tush might have been a tad smaller back then.  Now it is a lazy, adult tush that needs more seat padding.

“You don’t have to convince me.  You’re in that chair all day long, writing.  It’s only a steno chair and it was old when we got it,” he said.

Well, that was easy, I thought.  Piece of cake. 

Cake, it appears, can be deceiving.  (This is where the idiom starts to go totally astray.)

Day 1: CHAIR NO. 1

By this subtitle, you might have caught on that project “Find a Chair” did not go as planned.

Like every good Canadian, we went to Staples to look for a chair.  Like every good couple with a Scottish last name, we went right after Christmas.

Chair No. 1 was not on sale.  It was the only chair in the store that I really felt comfortable in. 

“It has arms,” I said, sighing with delight.  “I’ve never had a chair with arms.”

Hubby showed his generous side.  “You can have it, even though it isn’t on sale.”

Of course, it came in a box half its size.  Which meant we were really buying a bunch of chair pieces.

Back home, Hubby started putting the pieces together.  Two hours later, he handed me the assembly instructions. 

“Can you read this?” he said.  “I can’t, even with my reading glasses."

I peered at the wee instructions.  They appeared to be written for Barbie Dolls.

An hour later, we had a chair.  Unfortunately, it was too short for the desk.

“I can’t work the keyboard,” I wailed.

Stoic Hubby said, “I suppose I could cut an inch or two off the desk legs.

We set out to return the chair.

Day 2: CHAIR NO. 2

Because the chair hadn’t been on sale (yay Hubby!) we could exchange it.  I was back in Staples facing 30 chairs.  Now the mission was to get one tall enough.

I became Goldilocks for an entire hour looking for the chair that was ‘just right.’  Finally the sales clerk got off her cell phone and came over.  I explained the First Chair Dilemma.

Clerk:  “You need one of our totally adjustable chairs.  It’s even on sale.”

She pointed me to it and I tried it out. 

Me: “It seems okay.  But it doesn’t have any padding.”

Clerk:  “These new chairs have webbed backs and seats.  They adjust to you.”

Hubby (getting antsy):  “We’ll take it.”

Clerk:  “Oops. We’re out of them.”

Me: “Can we order one?”

Clerk: “I don’t know if we’re getting any more.”

Me:  “Then we’ll take the floor model.”

Clerk:  “Oh no!  You can’t take the floor model.  We need it.”

Hubby:  “How can you need it if you have no chairs to sell?”

A battle ensued.  It involved the clerk, the manager, Hubby, and another frustrated male shopper who popped over to say something like: “You sales people have the brains of a long-dead lake trout. Let them take the blasted floor model.”

We loaded the floor model into the Outback.

Back home, I tried out the new chair.  It was the perfect height.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the perfect seat.  Within twenty minutes, my butt was asleep.

Me:  “I can’t move!”

Hubby:  “Try falling out of the chair and landing on your hands.”

Day 3: CHAIR NO. 3

Chair Number 2 had been on sale so we couldn’t return it.  Luckily, Hubby has an iron butt and agreed to take possession.

But Chair Number 3 is a happy story.  In an adjacent city, we found a store that deals only in office furniture. They had leather desk chairs with all sorts of padding.  We chose the cheapest (still Scottish here, after all) and brought it home.  Goldilocks had found her cake.

Unfortunately, Goldilocks left her wallet in that store, which is why we’re headed back there today.  Which only goes to show, even having your cake can be a pain in the butt.

Melodie Campbell writes funny books with her butt in a new office chair.  You can find The Goddaughter mob caper series at Chapters, B&N, Amazon and all the usual places.



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11 comments:

  1. I can't decide if the best lines are about the Scots or Goldilocks. I love it.

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  2. Melodie, glad you solved the situation even if it had to have been as aggravating as it was hilarious. After all, we all know that the proper chair is as important to a novelist as the perfect song-writing pen is to a musician.

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  3. Leigh, thank you! It is really a wonder that man still puts up with me. Good thing I'm cute.

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  4. Fran, you said it. The butt-freezing chair did not inspire me to be erudite. Rather the opposite, if you know what I mean.

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  5. Wonderful! I, too, have hunted the perfect chair in its supposed haunts (office supply stores), and I've decided that office supply stores are primarily interested in selling lots and lots and lots of paper and toner. The fact that you want a chair is totally irrelevant, and besides, you should have one already. Don't even get me started about the desks...

    Thanks for the morning laugh!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Eve, thank you. You should read the column I did on shopping for a bra.

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  7. Great laugh for the day. Yep chairs and butts are made to be comfy and proper. Glad you took care of both. Thank goodness you have a nice calm hubby.
    I'd love to read your shopping for a bra column. Where's a link to it?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I could picture it, very playful. Count me in for the bra article.

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  9. This cracked me up and made my day!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Jan, Thelma and Catherine: Thanks for your kind words. I've decided to break all sorts of rules here (including that of good taste) and run the bra column in my next post here, which will be Feb. 28.

    ReplyDelete
  11. A chair at Staples? It would never have crossed my mind. Like Eve, I think of Staples as a purveyor of paper and print jobs.

    Ikea. (Where you would still have much assembly required.)

    Or the side of the road on garbage day. Though I guess not so much now that bedbugs lurk in everything.

    ReplyDelete

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