Don’t Fuck with my Aeron Chair

Yes, I have an Aeron chair in my office. Yes, this makes me incredibly spoiled. Ok, that’s out of the way.

We apparently have an office prankster who thinks that it’s incredibly funny to fuck with the stuff on my desk. So, I’ll come in and my pens will be in the wrong place or my moisturizer will be on the floor.

In addition to the creep factor of having someone go into my office and rearrange my stuff, the OCD part of my brain screams out in pain every time I discover things that are out of place. My office might be a total pigpen, but dammit I know where everything is. I figure the best way to combat my prankster is to not let on that it bothers me. Why give them the satisfaction, right?

I’m a big fan of practical jokes, as long as the person you are pranking gets to join in on the fun. I had coworkers who I would play jokes with and we all gave us good as we got, nothing was malicious and it was all out in the open. I once had my entire office covered with fake valentines with the picture of an end user who bought me flowers. We stole another coworker’s door and replaced it with a beaded curtain made out of old computer mice. Another coworker had his office turned into a jungle while he was on vacation, including palm fronds, monkey stuffed animals and a tikki pinata. This prankster is creeping me out, because it’s all secretive and mysterious. Which also means that the person can hide behind their anonymity and not have to worry about me returning the favor.

Well, today I came in and sat down… a lot harder than usual. Someone had changed all of the settings on my chair. They readjusted the height of the seat, the arm rests, etc. Luckily they left the lumbar support alone, or I might have had to kill someone (preferably my office prankster). Actually, I take that back. Now that my chair is a different height, the lumbar support is all wrong. I spent some time getting my chair just how I like it and now it’s all wrong and uncomfortable. I know that I have a ridiculously complicated (and expensive chair!), but I also have a bad back. I like the fact that I can sit at my desk for long stretches of time and not feel all sore when I stand up. These chairs are ridiculously complicated and it’s not that easy to optimize the various settings to make sure that you’re getting the proper back support.

So, what would you do? Would you continue to ignore the jerk that feels the need to mess with your stuff? Would you track them down and cover everything in your office with aluminum foil and steal the door from your office? Would you make it known in your department that the joke is getting old?

I’m trying to have a sense of humor about this all, but I really really REALLY don’t like that they fucked with my chair.