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Comment by abossy | Hacker News Reader

Nobody I know is capable of standing for an entire workday. A drafting stool is absolutely required, and it's often the trickiest part of the configuration; for men taller than six feet, it's very difficult to find an inexpensive drafting stool that is sufficiently tall to match the height of your desk.

[1] e.g., http://www.amazon.com/Boss-Drafting-Stool-Foot-Black/dp/B001...

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> Nobody I know is capable of standing for an entire workday.

I used to work in a supermarket and would stand for nearly the entire day apart from a short tea break and lunch break. All the other employees would too. It's not uncommon.

Ditto. I bartended a decade ago and my shifts started at 4:00PM and didn't end until an hour after close at 2:00AM. We were on our fee the entire time, with only smoke breaks where we weren't allowed to sit down.

Why weren't you allowed to sit down during cigarette breaks?

Man, I have no idea. They also didn't allow us to take a lunch break during what could be an 11 hour shift because, as one of the owners told me, people weren't clocking out during the 15 minutes it took to wolf down a burger and some cheese fries. I reminded them of labor laws and they made an "exception" for me.

This was, is, a very successful burger place in Dallas and I learned a ton fom the experience.

Organize your co-workers to go after them for back wages and damages.

This was over a decade ago. Water under the bridge.

I learned a lot from that job about how to create extremely efficient processes as well as how not to treat humans.

That sort of standing is different than the way programmers work.

In what you describe, people walk around and do some physical activity all the time. That's totally different than the way programmers work.

We practically stand motionless for hours, with only eyes and fingers moving. That sorting of standing is difficult to do for prolonged working hours. And might be more harmful than sitting for long working hours.

I used to work in an assembly line in a factory. Other than the minimum legally mandated breaks, all the line workers stood in one place.

I heard a lot about the security of supermarket that gets heavy back problem very early in their lives because they stand all day.

abossy, have you tried this drafting stool? Id love to hear somebodys feedback before spending $100 on a non-returnable furniture..

Or puff + laptop.

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