An ergonomist is coming to our office today. I can’t tell you how non-excited I am about this. Well, I guess I can try. So: I am fully unstoked and highly nonmotivated to have this yutz jabber about “micro-exercising” and “living our breaks.”
This bologna-head has visited us before. In fact, I was the poor bastard who got to be the object of his demo; I sat at a workstation and typed while he grinned through an unfortunate moustache and made pithy comments re: my life-draining work habits. “Watch your wrists! You’re causing micro-pressure on your capillaries!” Jesus, so fucking what? I drink and smoke. Oh heavens, my capillaries! “See his posture? Let’s adjust your lumbar bulge.” I panicked for a moment, thinking I was living some hallucinatory pornographic film script, but then he pulled a lever on my chair and wedged something terrible into my lower back. Maybe I was in a porn film. “HANH!” I yelled. “Isn’t that better? Now you’re sitting up.” Of course I’m sitting up, you dick; it feels like there’s a medicine ball pressing on my ass. You’d sit up too.
The thing is, there is no such thing as an ergonomist. It’s just a bullshit term for people who are manically and unnaturally interested in things like chairs. Basically, they are people who just want to tell you what to do, even if they (and we) know that once they leave, we will immediately forget everything they just told us. Because people like this never tell us anything that makes a fucking lick of sense. “You have to remember to take breaks from your workstation to avoid strain.” Let me get this straight: you get paid to instruct office workers to take breaks? I want a job like this. Maybe in the porn industry. I’ll wander around to film sets. “You have to remember to perform fellatio on me.” Or they ask inane questions: “Do you use a wrist pad with your keyboard?” “Yes.” “What’s it made of?” Oh, the usual: badgers. Yes, live badgers. Connie over there prefers a bar of white-hot metal, herself, but I favor the gentle touch that you can only get from live badgers.
Feh. The ergonomist will be here soon, and I’ll probably be the show ape for the damn circus again. “You’re striking the keys way too hard, pal!” he’ll croon, and I’ll be forced to breezily reply, “Oh, I’m just sublimating my desire to fuck my mother and kill my father!” And then I’ll tear my eyes out. “Eyestrain is a very common problem in the workplace,” he’ll observe. And the rest of the office staff will numbly nod their heads in agreement, not listening, just waiting for their next break.