Common Misconceptions
While slumped into your conventional sitting desk generally not doing a great deal bar occasionally updating your Facebook status or trying to beat your personal best score at solitaire, you muse that there must surely be a way in which you can tackle your daily tasks with tad more productivity and zest to your proverbial work stride.
You’ve just finished lunch, you’re full to the point of slipping into a cheeseburger and French fries induced coma and are basically not ready to meet the challenges of the afternoon in a motivated manner. You are in fact completely void of morale and no matter how many cups of thick black coffee you imbibe, you are still unable to retain the work ethic that the hierarchy requires. Sporadic snoozes appear to be the order of the rest of you working day.
However, help is at hand and it comes in the form of the latest in office equipment – essentially a piece of gym apparatus which will see you regain the momentum required to go about your working day with efficiency, professionalism and greatly increased productivity – ladies, gentlemen and office drones – it gives me an enormous amount of pleasure to introduce to a physiological and psychological breakthrough in the office environment – The Standing Desk.
You cast your eye over the workplace, but all you see is a mass of heads and shoulders, bowed down lethargically at their workstations – there isn’t a Standing Desk in sight!
You immediately approach your boss and inquire into whether or not they have a budget which could accommodate an assignment of Standing Desks. Of course initially after the resounding ‘No way Jose’, you start to reason that introducing Standing Desks to the office would save a considerable amount of money in the long term, not to mention a improved productivity throughout the office. Healthier employees make for lower insurance costs – and of course, a healthy body promotes a healthy mind. Suddenly the mood of your superiors change dramatically as they start frantically thumbing through the Yellow Pages in order to find a Standing Desk provider.
But won’t our employees get tired having to stand up all day? One of the powers that be puts to you.
Of course, but this is merely a temporary obstacle to negotiate. By slowly increasing the increments of time you utilize your Standing Desk, you will slowly but surely become highly accustomed to standing for lengthy periods of time which is splendid for mind, body and soul. Also, during the transition (and in the future) a standing desk chair and a standing desk mat help to relieve the pressure put on your feet.
But hold on a minute. Are you sure that our employees will actually want to the use these Standing Desks? After all, they do come across as a little ‘whacky’ for want of a better word.
Of course initially, one may find that they stick out like a sore thumb while using their new Standing Desk, but at the end of the day you must consider yourself to be something of a trendsetter. You won’t be nestled in your lonely booth and therefore your social skills around the workplace will improve as pleasantries with passing members of staff will be exchanged with ease. Give your new Standing Desk a bit of time and you will soon find yourself standing proudly at the helm of the office, and the most popular employee of the workplace.
But surely our employees will need at least some time to put their feet up, so to speak, I’m not sure that it would not be possible to stand for the 10 hour shifts that our company demands of its workers.
You are of course quite right. Nobody can be expected to stand for 10 hours at a time without their legs turning into animated lengths of jelly. There are several ways you can combat this yet still maintain the utilization of the Standing Desk.
One could, a) acquire a tall stool and use it on the sporadic occasions during which your legs and feet may feel somewhat sore or fatigued, and spend maybe 30 minutes or so sitting down to relieve any aches and pains you may have accumulated throughout your prolonged standing sessions, or b) fashion a standing desk of which the height is adjustable. This way if you are starting to feel a little physically drained, you could lower the desk to the height of that of a conventional sitting affair and use it as a normal desk for as long as it takes you to recuperate.
Standing Desks naturally have advantages and disadvantages but their attributes grossly outnumber their faults.
Image: Flickr / Matthias Ripp