#offices

love this!

Whenever I look up ergonomic info for setting up my home desk, I run into the same thing: “Make sure monitor is at eye level.” I just measured and my monitor screen itself is 14″ tall. So… “Top of the screen”? “Middle of the screen”? “Bottom of the screen”? 

(Or this, from WebMD: “If you can, place your screen on a surface that’s arm’s length away and eye level.”  Um… at least you were specific this time? Because you just told me to put my desk (or at least the bottom edge of the monitor’s foot) at eye level… and I’m pretty sure that’s not what you meant either.)

Ergonomics is supposed to help you by lining you up just right for best, least-strained body position. Yet over the years, this wording persists. I already wasn’t going to put it over my head or under my desk, thanks. I already got that. 

Really, I already had the concept of “somewhere in front of your face”. Would anyone,anywhere like to be a little more specific??? Or does it really not matter where in my eyeline that 14″ falls?

Especiallysince you’re always very specific about the useless advice:

“wrists slightly lower or even with elbows” (I must be an orangutan, because that would require my keyboard be literally on my lap, with no room for a desk surface at all. Am I really the only one whose elbows hang naturally several inches below her waist?)

“knees and hips level, feet flat on the floor”(Because I own my own desk I can do this without carving up my legs as they’re jammed up into the mounts for the keyboard tray I made them take off because I physically can’t get my knees under a standard desk with one of those there. Yes: my shin length is too tall to fit well under a standard office desk, even without a tray. So if you want my feet flat on the floor, even barefoot, instead of tucked up under the chair seat…)
(O.K., Great, now we have my level forearms such that there’s nearly a whole inch between my palms and thighs. It better be a very thin, verywell positioned desktop.)

“arms close to the sides” (Every woman out there with a bra cup larger than “C”? one collective eyeroll on my mark: 1…2…3…. ༼ ◐_◐ ༽ ༼ ◓_◓ ༽ ༼ ◑_◑ ༽ Everyone else? Imagine your elbows are pinned to your sides and cannot move  across your chest at all–only straight forward or back, and you can angle your forearms such that maybeyou can juuuust get your thumbs in front of your nipples, max. Now try to type like that… See how there’s a good foot between your thumbs? Now try to do the proper ‘wrists in, fingers out’ angle for touch-typing…) 
(Better yet, do what my wife did on a very slow late-night shift when a male coworker friend started playing with the yarn balls she had with her for knitting: He stuck them under his t-shirt to make big “boobs”. She said, “Yeah. Now try to type like that.” He was game and quickly gained a new appreciation for something he’d always taken for granted.)

< /longstanding, self-indulgent rant >

Canary Wharf. Glass and steel forest.

9 to 5 (1980). Three female employees of a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot find a way to turn the tables on him.

God, this movie is just wonderful. There’s such a bounceto it in humour, in character, in plot, which carries it through even the more absurd plot points. It captures the way women are pitted against each other professionally and ground down by the heel of both the patriarchy and capitalism, while finding hope and joy in community and solidarity too. Magic stuff! 8.5/10.

rosalindthe2nd:

I’ve got a new tactic at work, in that every time I need help with something I say to my manager “I’d be really grateful for some help on x [insert area of law in question], x is a bit of an Achilles heel for me” to allow me to retain a persona of general competence despite the fact that by this time she must have realised I have a LOT of heels compared to Achilles or indeed any other human being. I’m 90 heels in but invoking a hero each time.

“I’m 90 heels in but invoking a hero each time.”

Excellent!  I’d steal this if I hadn’t been at my workplace so long.