Sheila's New Office Chair

Since Sheila is back working from home for the foreseeable future again due to the devastating flooding in Montpelier, she decided we need to do something about her office chair.  She's been using an upholstered side chair since the beginning of the pandemic but she found that chair uncomfortable and it was bothering her back so it was time to do something about finding her a more comfortable chair.

We briefly looked at options for a "standing desktop" but those would raise her monitors too much when in the sitting position at her desk so we nixed that idea rather quickly.  

We were back to trying to decide on a new office chair that Sheila would find comfortable.  It didn't matter whether nine out of ten people found a particular chair comfortable.  We needed to find one that Sheila finds comfortable.  Buying online is our primary option here in Vermont and has been for decades.  The choices locally are extremely slim and always have been.  This applies to just about every type of product not just office chairs.  

Before online storefronts were a thing, I often had to travel to other states to find the products I needed and wanted.  Of course, if I had chosen to settle for lousy and cheap products that everyone else was settling for here in Vermont, I would not have needed to travel out of state.  I don't settle for products I need or want though.  I do compromise, but I never settle for something simply because it is all I can find available so shopping out of state was something I did quite often...  which was frustrating, tiresome, time-consuming and a wear on my car. 

Once online storefronts started becoming more available, then some "big box" stores started opening in our area.  This provided us with a larger local market.  Our local market was still limited to what the local merchandisers would purchase to put in their stores though so things didn't really improve drastically.  If a retail purchaser has poor taste or grossly underestimates the local market, then things don't improve much at all!  Things did improve for us but I still needed (and need to) shop out of state and online.  

Purchasing furniture that has a priority of comfort is almost impossible to do online though.  We decided that perhaps we should see what our local Staples store had in stock so we drove up to the Burlington area to put some butts in some office chairs.  

We both really liked a very large and plush leather upholstered La-Z-Boy executive chair.  The price was a bit higher than we wanted to spend but you can't put a price on comfort (especially as we get older).  The one major drawback of this particular office chair was its footprint.  It would eat up far too much space in our small home and small office.  It was a BIG chair.

Until we can finish renovating the house, Sheila's office is shared space.  It is really designated as our "train room" for my model railroading but it has also been home to all of my astronomy gear as well as some building supplies for our renovations.  Space is tight.  

Once our master bedroom suite is built, then Sheila's office can move to the room where we currently sleep.  Our current temporary master bedroom will be the new office.  Once I build the observatory in a separate small outbuilding, all the astronomy gear can be moved to the observatory (which will be secured and have security cameras).  The pandemic put everything on hold at first.  Then the tripled cost of lumber made any renovations impossible to afford.  This calendar year has hit me with significant and debilitating health problems so we are still just "making do" with what we have.  There is a master plan though but it has been on hold for a number of years now for a number of reasons.

In short, we don't have the space for this large, plush executive La-Z-Boy office chair.  We did, however, decide to use it as a comparison to the other office chairs on the showroom floor.  Every office chair we sat in was immediately compared to the La-Z-Boy chair.

We narrowed the compromised options (eliminating the La-Z-Boy executive chair) to two office chairs.  Sheila would have settled for the less expensive one but I found it extremely uncomfortable and, worse yet, it was so ugly that it would turn my stomach every time I saw it.  Consequently, once Sheila went back to her Montpelier office full time, I would immediately toss it in the trash.  There was one other chair that we both found comfortable though.  

It was still a bit fugly but it had support in all the right places and we both found it to be surprisingly comfortable.  There was no price tag on this particular chair though so we were a bit wary.  Sheila got online on her cellphone to check the Staples website and found that it was on sale at around 50% of its usual cost.  This was good!  Maybe we would head home with a new office chair!

We made the rounds sitting in each chair on the showroom floor two or three more times which made this chair seem even more comfortable.  At this point we decided to that this was the chair.

At the cashier, the chair rang up about $40 higher than we saw online.  I pointed that out so the cashier honored the online price without any fuss whatsoever.  I was actually shocked that he gave us no grief.  We slid the new boxed office chair into the back seat of Sheila's car and then headed home.  

Once Sheila is finished working from home (if ever), then I will probably remove the headrest.  That headrest makes it look sort of like a car seat rather than a piece of furniture.  Sheila found the armrests to be in the way and even a bit uncomfortable so I removed those within a few days.  

Anyway, Sheila now has a comfortable office chair at home which is making her home office space far less painful and more comfortable!