In my last job we all had serious, and I mean serious, office chairs. In fact, they came with a training DVD and we actually had to attend half an hour of chair training. I kid you not. Why, you may ask, would a company shell out roughly $800 per chair and buy in the neighborhood of 10,000 of them? You guessed it - the combination of Workers Comp claims and the company's insurance carrier. Seems there were lots of repetitive motion injuries. Enough so that the company had to do big league damage control.

Fast forward to my current job. During the process of deciding if this job was a good fit for me I noticed that the chair I would be using was horrible. OK, maybe it was tolerable for someone with no arthritis, back issues or rotator cuff problems. But it didn't even have arms. Regardless, I made a proper office chair a condition of employment. Then, when reporting for my first day the boss told me to go speak with purchasing and pick out a chair. Purchasing had a fit! I mentioned condition of employment and the Purchasing Manager acquiesced with a comment that everybody was going to request a good chair once they saw mine. Ya think? I became the chair snob. That was good with me. Needless to say, there are far less repetitive motion injuries around here. That saves everybody money. That keeps people at their desks working. If a company is going to make a profit they need to look at the whole picture, not just the upfront costs.