I’ve been meaning to look into buying a new chair to use at my computer desk as the chair I currently use is a freebie we got when we got together with Anne’s siblings and bought my father-in-law a new TV set a couple of years back. The chair is functional, but meant to be used for watching TV so it’s not the greatest computer chair I’ve ever owned. Plus it’s falling apart after several years of abuse during marathon Call of Duty and Counterstrike battles.
As a result I’ve been paying attention to the sales at places like Office Max or Staples whenever I happen into their confines and I’m amazed how much they want for a chair that looks like it’s ready to fall apart right there in the store. Granted I don’t do a lot of furniture shopping, but I’d have thought that for $69 you should get a fairly decent chair. Apparently I was wrong. To get a fairly decent chair you have to spend several hundred dollars it seems.
Listening to NPR as much as I do I often hear about an online shop called Sit4Less.com and so I checked them out. The cheapest chair they offer is one of those kneeling non-chair chairs and it costs $89.99. From there it jumps up to $249.99 for a standard office chair that doesn’t look all that different from what Office Max is selling for $69.99. Most expensive? This Herman Miller Eames Lounge Chair going for “only” $3,125. My couch didn’t cost that much money. Hell, I’ve bought cars for less than that. For that much money it better have a secret compartment filled with diamonds or crack cocaine.
After perusing what a good chair will cost I’m once again back to considering the cheap (in more ways than one) crap they peddle at the local Office Max, though I’m sure they don’t appreciate me describing it as such. Anne bought me an “executive style” chair from an office supply catalog— thus ensuring years of receiving catalogs from said company despite not buying a single other thing from them since—back when I first moved into the apartment we just vacated that cost around $79 or so and it worked pretty well until one of the arms decided to break, which is a problem mainly because the arms are the only thing holding the back of the chair on. Even then we continued to use it up until we moved out when we finally threw it into the trash. To tell the truth I didn’t really feel like we’d gotten the full $79 worth of it… until I started pricing a new chair.
This has made me very nostalgic for the computer room of my youth which had two official Michigan Bell Operator chairs my mother brought home one day when they were getting rid of them for newer furniture. They weren’t particularly special, your typical caster chairs with no arms on them, but they were comfortable enough for extended periods and they were built solid enough to commit murder with. My mother still owns at least one of them some 25 years later and it’s still working great. If I knew something I was going to buy now would be that comfortable and last that long I might be willing to invest a hundred, or perhaps even two hundred, dollars into it. Maybe. I’d feel guilty about it though. So I suppose I’ll have to wait until spring and start hounding garage sales to see what I can find.
Posted on 01/10/2006 at 02:32 PM 
Now, to be fair, the Eames Lounge Chair isn’t a desk chair - it’s a fall-asleep-watching-TV chair. As for the cost of a good chair, well, Uncle Herman (my noble employer) does make a heck of a better product than the Office Depot chairs, and they don’t do it in China, and the warranty is 12 years even if you use it 24/7 for multiple people. I can’t get you a discount on a new one, but if you’re ever in West MI, I can take you to the HMI Company Store, where they sell warranty returns and the like, and get you a proper chair there, at my discount. Your back will thank you…
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