I blame being a pen pusher. My life has seen me take on a alot of roles. I’ve been a lazy, but active, student, a building site labourer, a corporate trainer and speaker. During those phases of my life back problems were never an issue.
On the building site I had plenty of back breaking work and the occasional dangerous object falling on my toe but apart from my own grumblings no lasting damange was done.
Unluckily for me the majority of my career has been spent riding a desk and this has led to back problems for me. Whenever I have to sit in an office chair repeadtedly over long periods of time my lower back starts to complain.
Political Problems
Depending on your office situation there are solutions. I’ve worked at companies where they have ergonomics advisers who make sure you have a proper chair adjusted corectly, with a heightened food pad if necessary and everything laid out correctly. That’s ideal.
I’ve worked for long periods of time at home. I started off working on the kitchen table sitting on a standard kitchen chair. After the first few weeks the back pain started.
Of course, working from home I was completely free to choose my own furniture so I rigged up my own ‘back pain free’ office. I took a 3 piece sofa and old table and wired up my computer. I’d work away while resting on the comfy seating. All the back problems went away. I would get the occasional comment about my strange working area but it was worth it.
When You Don’t Have a Choice
Unfortunately I don’t always have complete control over the sitting options available to me. I spent a long period of time being billed out to a client once. The money was good and I was in no position to turn it down.
There was a bit of a political issue over office desk space though. As I wasn’t an employee of the company I was based at there wasn’t any budget for desk space for me. So I had to make do with whatever I could scramble up. No chance of an ergonomics assessment here.
So I ended up battling to get in early to nab one of the few hot desks. Proper office chairs seems to be at a premium. Which is depressing when you consider the cost to vlaue ratio. A company can skimp on chairs but they get sour faced workers with back problems.
The good chairs would often ‘have gone missing’ when you turned up so you’d have to take one of the ‘bad chairs’ out of the conference rooms. These were basic uncushioned chairs which didn’t seem very supportive for long hours of bum on seat.
My back problems started to get terrible after a time there. Politically it wasn’t a time to rock the boat. I was on a contract that could be cancelled with little notice. We were told to do everything not to upset the client. The situation was precarious.
I focussed on other ways to alleive the back pain. Such as exercises, heat therapies and massage. I kind of thought of it as an extra business expense.
I don’t have a particulary happy ending to this story. it’s just an illustration of one of the strains of modern life. Sometimes the things we have to do to put money on the table can lead to problems with our health.
