Most workplace altercations are about deadlines, schedules, or passive-aggressive email exchanges.

This one somehow turned into a multi-day debate about… Chairs.

After dealing with back pain and leg pain from the terrible office chairs, one employee decided to take matters into his own hands.

He found the ideal chair, bought it with his own money, and brought it to work.

In many offices, that would be perfectly fine, but not on this one.

Instead, management immediately called reinforcements to deal with the chair situation and started spewing different explanations for why it couldn’t stay.

First it was because other employees might want different chairs too. Then it was vendor policies. Then it was personal property rules.

Meanwhile, the employee has a doctor’s note saying he needs a proper chair, but they kept making a huge deal out of a chair.

And the whole situation just kept getting more absurd.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITAH – Office Chair Meltdown

I work in a corporate setting.

The chairs provided in the office are extremely uncomfortable (steel series think v2. It has a very thin pad and hard back. I’m quite tall and it doesn’t fit well)

It has also been causing me intense pain in my lower back and shooting down my leg. I’ve tried to use a pad, but it doesn’t help and has been getting worse.

I went out and bought myself a similar chair on Facebook market place (got a size C Herman Miller Aeron) and brought it into the office.

My boss saw and commented “new chair eh” and proceeded to inform the facilities manager to let me know we couldn’t have our own chairs, as other people would want new chairs too if mine was different.

He sounds like a school principal.

I informed him of my back pain and said I could get a doctor’s note if necessary.

He said it would be, so I booked an appointment that evening and sent the note to him and cc’d HR.

They then said that the issue isn’t that it looks slightly different, but that there are rules against having our own chairs as it needs to go through the vendor (different from the original explanation).

They said they would get me a new chair similar to my own from the vendor and it would take 6-8 weeks.

They said I may have to work from home during this time as they didn’t want my chair there. I said that was fine, albeit a bit strange.

But the goalpost kept moving.

They then told me yesterday I would not be in fact getting the chair they offered, but that they would instead just get something similar enough from another facility.

I said that was fine as well, as long as it was similar in ergonomic support.

They then informed me today that the chair arrived….

Lo and behold… It was the exact chair I already had brough in (the Aeron) but in a size B which is too small for me (my legs hang off by about 8 inches and the backrest ends below my shoulder blades).

They just wouldn’t listen.

Additionally, their vendor is Steelcase and doesn’t even provide this chair, which is at odds with the latest explanation.

They now said the reason is that I can’t have personal assets in the office (even though every desk in the office is full of decoration and personal items).

They wanted me to use it for a week and see how it felt.

I informed them this wouldn’t work, and showed them the size difference and why it would cause back pain.

I stated that I could use it tomorrow if necessary, but would be sending a note by the end of the day if it caused pain.

Chairs are apparently an extremely important subject of discussion.

My manager then relented, saying that I could use my chair tomorrow, but that they would discuss with me tomorrow the use of my chair going forward.

I am at a complete loss here. It’s a ****** chair.

I had no idea you couldn’t bring your own chair as anywhere else I worked in the past would have never expected you to request this.

Their reasoning for why this is a problem also is inconsistent and keeps changing.

I wouldn’t be making such a fuss if I weren’t in serious pain from the previous chair.

AITAH?

His boss is an idiot.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about people who refuse to cut down more trees for their neighbor’s water view after already capitulating once.

What did Reddit think?

This is cruel.

Wow.

A suggestion.

Another good course of action.

Another commenter shares their thoughts.

Some people don’t care about being generous or kind at all.

Honestly, the part I found most confusing isn’t that the company has policies about office furniture.

The funny part is how many different explanations they came up with every time the previous one didn’t work.

First the issue was fairness. Then it was approved vendors. Then it was personal property.

Then they bought a replacement chair and spent company money instead of just letting him use the one he had already bought.

It stopped feeling like anyone was trying to solve the actual problem, and to me, now it just looks like everyone was just procrastinating work.

Meanwhile, the employee wasn’t asking for luxuries; he actually needed a proper, comfortable chair.

If this isn’t what they call corporate hell, I don’t know what is.