One of the first things they made us do was attend three safety briefings. Working in the Cambridge University Engineering Department is a hazardous pasttime, what, with all the cutting surfaces and acid lying around. But apparently, the most dangerous thing we will be doing is working with a DSE or VDU — Display Screen Equipment or Video Display Unit. That is, a computer.
“Look at this,” Mr Joseph, the safety officer, said solemnly. “This is severe spinal damage at zero miles per hour.”
“Do you believe me?” he asked.
I did believe, indeed. I was so frightened that I bought a keyboard and mouse and propped my laptop up on a ream of paper so that I could get the recommended neck angle.
After working at my computer for less than an hour, my shoulders started hurting. I went back to the safety pamphlet and was able to diagnose the problem: my chair was too short (or I was too short for my table, one or the other). No, no, no, this would not do. I did not want severe spinal damage at zero miles per hour.
The next day, I visited our College’s Domestic Bursar.
“Excuse me, hello,” I said. “How would I go about getting a computer chair? You see, I’m quite short and it hurts to work at my desk for too long.”
The Bursar seemed quite taken aback. She looked uncomfortable as she explained that the college could not provide me a computer chair because then it would have to give one to every student.
I remembered what Mr Joseph had said about England’s new health and safety legislation. “Don’t you have an obligation to provide me with a proper chair?”
The Bursar assured me that the legislation only applied to College staff, and not students.
There was nothing left for me to do but to buy my own chair. I found one on sale at Ryman for £14.99.
When I got home, I assembled most of it before realising that I needed a screwdriver. I don’t have a screwdriver. It’s one of those things that I’ve been hoping I could live without for a year. I kind of needed one when I was installing my bike lights earlier on, when the cupboard door fell off its hinge and when the shower head got too loose and couldn’t stay up.
Something tells me I will eventually have to buy a screwdriver.
Anyway, that was something to deal with tomorrow. In the mean time, I was so keen to finish the chair puzzle that I screwed it together as best I could with what I had at my immediately disposal. And all I had was a nail file.
By the time I was done, the chair looked complete and solid but there was no way I was going to sit on it. It was being held together by little more than willpower.
The delicately balanced chair sat in the corner of my room for a day or two before I found a friend with a screwdriver. Just as I was going to leave the house to pick it up from my friend’s house, the College computer technician arrived to fix one of my housemate’s network connection. Phil the computer tech kindly lended me a Phillips head screwdriver and I was finally able to finish assembling the chair.
And now I am sitting here in my ergonomically perfect workstation doing lots of non-work.