Last summer I bought a new desk chair. At the time I was fed up with my desk chairs breaking. I’m not especially heavy but they had a habit of forming cracks that made them inadvisable to sit in. So in hopes of finding something of higher quality, I shelled out more for a nicer one. I liked it, it’s still pretty comfortable. But a year and a few months later it’s getting torn up. The arm leather on one side is cracking very badly, the leather on the back is getting cracked up from slamming into the desk a lot, the wheels are having issues, and the pneumatic lift bit will slowly sink.

So that’s $200 for a year’s worth of a decent desk chair experience. At least it doesn’t squeak much.

But once again I’m fed up and have found new inspiration in the chairs at my office. The conference room chairs have been there and largely intact since the building was finished in 2001, and my previous company had them for all 7 years I was there with relatively few breakages. They’re supremely comfortable, they don’t have leather to crack or even cushion to flatten, they promote better posture, and are very adjustable.

Of course I’m referring to the vaunted Aeron chairs, which would probably run me $700 to get one, shipped. Which is a lot… but if it holds up as well as the ones at the office it should be worth it. Even the most poorly treated ones in the conference rooms rarely have issues, the issues they have are minor (99% is just that the arms don’t tighten up right), and it’s still less than one in ten that has that problem.

We’ll see. This one isn’t dead yet, just getting less comfortable for now. It should hold out until the bonus rolls around in February-ish. Maybe then I’ll consider it.