The Office Chair

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Not too long ago my brother went shopping for a new office chair for himself. My brother likes to talk. His favorite subjects? Sports, fishing, hunting and his brother–me. I think his brother tops all of his favorites to talk about. There are a lot of private things I don’t tell my brother because I know he has an awful time trying to hold his tongue. But that’s another story for another time. My brother picked out the chair he wanted and of course he had to tell the salesperson about my office chair. I bought my office chair used in 2000. Yes, I’m still using it. Anyway, I bought my chair from the company I worked for at the time. They were downsizing and needed to sell off a lot of office furniture. The sale started a seven in the morning and I got there about five after seven. The place was already crowded. I wanted to buy two items–an office chair and a filing cabinet. When I walked in the door I noticed there were only about five chairs left. I grabbed one. The chairs were $100 each. I dragged my chair around with me as I looked for a file cabinet. I came across one that was just what I was looking for. The only problem was it said “sold” on it. So I looked at the rest of the cabinets. I picked out the best of the worse. It cost $25–the same as the price on the one I wanted. I got in line. A woman got in line behind me. “Those are nice chairs,” she said. “Yes, they are.” “I’m just not going to pay $100 for one.” I knew what the company paid for them. “They paid $500 each for them.” “I know, but I’m still not going to pay $100 for one.” I didn’t say anything else because I figured getting a slightly used $500 chair was well worth $100. I also knew that the company bought the chairs about nine months earlier when business was booming. When I reach the table where they were collecting the money I paid for the chair and the cabinet. I was told to back my pickup up to one of the bay doors and someone would load the file cabinet for me. I took my chair, load it into the back of my pickup and backed up to one of the bay doors. I found one of the workers, showed him my paperwork and we headed for my cabinet. We arrived where I cabinet was supposed to be, but it was gone! “Someone else must have taken my file cabinet,” I said. “The person that took this cabinet was supposed to take a different one. Let’s go look at that one.” When we got to the other one I couldn’t believe it. It was the one I wanted all along. “Are you sure I can take this one?” I asked trying my best not to sound overenthusiastic. “Yeah, I loaded that other cabinet up for the guy who was supposed to take this one. Look at it. It’s better than the one you paid for. It sturdier.” He shook the cabinet. “And this one even has a lock on it.” The one I paid for didn’t have a lock. “If you think it’s alright then I’ll take it,” I said. So that’s how I got both my office chair and file cabinet. Oh, back to my brother. After he told the salesperson about my chair she said, “He should have bought a new one here. That way he would have gotten a warranty on it.” My brother told her I have had my chair for many years now–longer then their warranty was on their chair. Even being as old as it is, my chair is still in pretty good shape. No rips or tear or anything like that in it. And it has all kinds of adjustments.