Well, this sucks. I just bought an ergonomic keyboard and before it even arrives the whole field of ergonomics is revealed to be a skeevy wangboozle as crooked as mouthful of Dickensian urchin teeth.
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I don’t much care that companies and governments might be wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year on dodgy “ergonomic chairs, keyboards and consultants”, as reported by Fairfax Media yesterday.
But I care heaps that I might have just wasted $39 on a discount Microsoft ergonomic keyboard from the Beast of Bezos and it may not immediately cure my crippling minor discomfort from typing too much.
First up, it’s a Microsoft keyboard and I had to be led screaming to the edge of that purchase.
Second, whoa! Thirty-nine simoleons! JB could’ve had a week’s worth of his preferred alternative back pain medicine for that money. (Nurofen and vodka martinis, in case you were wondering. It’s a miracle cure.)
But there are no miracle cures in ergonomics, according to Sydney University professor Chris Maher, who argues that what little data exists in the field indicates almost nothing — beyond a worrying hint that some ergonomic interventions might actually make things worse.
I’m not happy.
Until recently I was a confirmed standing-desk guy. I bought a bloody expensive rubber mat and everything. In YouTube videos you can drop an egg on this mat and the egg won’t break. When not in a YouTube video I’ve been reluctant to hazard a perfectly good cackleberry in pursuit of clarity on this issue.
But not to worry, I told myself. Having the expensive egg-safe mat under my tootsies felt better than standing on my polished concrete floor. And even if the standing desk didn’t help my back, it did prevent me falling asleep in my very expensive Aeron chair at about two every afternoon.
Now, it appears that falling asleep in my very expensive Aeron chair might have been just as good if not better for me than all that standing up and not having a proper nap.
Dr James McAuley, a lead researcher at Neuroscience Research Australia, even pooh-poohed the idea that my very expensive ergo-fabulous Aeron chair was any better than a wooden church pew.
“There is no correct way to sit,” he says. “In our research we see people all the time who have been advised to sit up straight at their desk. This has just made their pain worse.”
I knew it!
I was always more comfortable slumping like a drunken sailor in that chair, anyway. Now science has proven me right. Or my interpretation of something a scientist said, in relation to something else in another context, which seems to be about as rigorous a standard as any applied to the study of ergonomics.
From now on, I think, I’m going to follow the example of Truman Capote, who did all his writing while lounging, smoking and drinking martinis.
Also, Stephen King starts every writing session with a piece of cheesecake and I like cheesecake, so I might do that too. I guess it won’t matter if crumbs get into my ergonomic keyboard.
