It all started with my sitting desk. It was just a regular desk. I was just sitting at a regular desk.
After a few years of this, I noticed that I was getting really out of shape. So I hired a personal trainer (Cinnamon). Cinnamon said that sitting is bad for my back. She got me a standing desk.
Now I'm standing at my desk, doing work. Look, mom! No chair!
Then Cinnamon said, “It's not good for your circulation to just stand in one place for hours at a time. Your feet will swell. Also, if you want to get in shape, you have to do cardio. You need a treadmill desk. That way you can walk while you work. Get that blood pumping.”
It was great! I was walking and working!
But Cinnamon thought that I was walking too slowly. She told me about this new thing called a “sprinting desk.” Basically, the desk rolls away from you and you have to catch up to it and keep up with it if you want to get any work done. It was fantastic! In the first week, I knocked over the office water cooler 36 times! Suddenly, I am water skiing without skis! I didn't know that could be done. Luckily my office is open plan, so I was able to say “Hi!” to everyone on my floor every 16 minutes. My co-workers have really started to notice.
Then, Cinnamon decided my sprinting desk wasn't challenging me enough. She introduced me to the “sulky desk” (patent pending). That's a desk that Cinnamon has harnessed to a standardbred racehorse. I can't run as fast as a standardbred horse, so I got a bicycle. If the horse trots, I can just about keep up to my keyboard if I pedal flat-out on my bike. As you can imagine, even in my open-plan office there isn't enough room for this to go on, so I've had to start working outside. Healthy fresh air! Members of the public have started to notice! I placed third in the 6:35 at Flamboro Downs!
My boss started to notice too. “Why is there horse manure on this report?” he said.
But Cinnamon figured that I was getting complacent, so she made me a Ben-Hur desk (patent pending). Basically, she hitched four standardbred horses to a chariot/desk. When I told her I thought that this was historically inaccurate, she said it didn't matter if it was historically inaccurate, because it was “historically ergonomic.” She's a personal trainer. I figure she knows what she's talking about. She also introduced a “competing gladiator” into the mix, to keep me honest.
My coworkers have really started to notice the effects of my new exercise regime.
“Have you lost weight?” said Bob in Accounting.
“Yes,” I replied. “I lost an arm. The other guy had spikes on his chariot wheels.”
“A whole arm,” says Bob. “That's gotta be like, five pounds.”
Bob is good with numbers. This is why he's in Accounting.
My boss noticed, too. “Why is there four times as much horseshit on this report as there was last time?”
“Because there's four times the horsepower,” I said. My boss is no Bob, but it's simple mathematics. He should have been able to figure that one out.
“And what's with the blood on these pages?” he said. “And the intestines?”
“You don't understand my desk,” I replied. “And those aren't my intestines. Those are the other guy's. He had spikes on his wheels—I had to retaliate.”
By this time, Cinnamon thought I wasn't working hard enough. “After all, the horses are doing most of the cardio here.”
She introduced me to the Shinkansen desk (patent pending). Basically, Cinnamon hooked my desk up to a Japanese bullet train. I can't bike fast enough to keep up with a Japanese bullet train, so I got myself a parasail wing.
My boss seemed impressed.
“What you are doing in Tokyo?” he said. “I haven't approved you for business travel.”
“I will be back in four hours,” I said.
And I would have, too, if I hadn't accidentally entered restricted airspace without ATC clearance. One two-hour conversation with the FAA later and this small misunderstanding was cleared up.
Cinnamon was furious, though. “No wonder you have no muscle tone in your quads. You're not doing anything with your legs. You're just letting them dangle!”
Cinnamon also thought I was cheating, because I was letting my robotic arm take most of my weight while I was hanging from the parasail. So she took away my robotic arm. “You'll thank me for this later.”
Then she hooked me up to an F-16 desk (patent pending FAA approval). “I want to see those legs pinwheeling!”
I broke the sound barrier! Even the military started to take notice! But again: restricted airspace. No ATC clearance. Yadda yadda. They shot us down over Acron, Ohio. I lost a few toes. That's gotta be, like, two pounds, right? I'll have to check with Bob in Accounting.
So I'm lying in bed in the hospital.
“You're not doing enough cardio,” said Cinnamon.
So she gets me a standing bed (patent pending).