”Ere mate,” came the voice from behind me, “you’re sitting in my chair. I want it back.” He looked at me, red in the face and indignant.  He didn’t actually say it, but the look he was giving me spoke volumes. You are pissing on my lamppost.

I looked around. Within a few feet, there were a group of identical office chairs, all empty, congregated in a little group.

I was visiting a client’s office and talking to one of their database people about a problem. It was a complex explanation, and I’d given my slightly arthritic knee a slight rest by sitting down on the nearest empty chair to hand. The owner had returned, and started a reenactment of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 'Who'se that sitting in MY Chair?'. I had inadvertently invaded his personal space.

I looked up at the protesting office worker.  It is a worrying sign when the disease of institutionalisation has progressed to the point where the sufferer must have his own chair.

I should explain that, if you spend too much time in any one workplace or any communal space, particularly if your life is unstimulating, you are in danger of institutionalization. Amongst other symptoms, the chair you sit on becomes increasingly psychologically important. The great poet and author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien, in his book 'The Third Policeman', invented the fantastic allegory that policemen who rode their bicycles so much over rough roads that  part of their soul entered the bicycle, and some of the spirit of the bicycle entered their soul. In the same way, the red-faced office worker felt subconsciously that I was sitting on part of him. The other part of him that was not now office-chair, resented the fact. Similarly, it was once said of a politician 'he spent so long sitting on the fence that the iron entered his soul'.

Mankind was designed to roam the shorelines of the world in small family groups, gathering fish, nuts and herbs.  Office-life is a strange, alien environment that slowly erodes that wild creative independent streak. Like the long term inmates of a psychiatric ward or prisons, the ‘trusties’ in an office settle down over the years and become passive, submissive, less trouble, but at what cost?

I remember vividly the leaving parties for the old chaps who were retiring from the vast international company where I once worked, after a lifetime’s service. White haired, but hale and hearty, they would leave their old familiar workplace, speaking bravely of putting their feet up, doing a bit of gardening, popping down the pub every lunchtime.  For us that shook their hands, and wished them happiness, it was a poignant moment. Almost invariably, we’d be attending their funeral within months. Sudden freedom from a lifetime’s incarceration in a stultifying and all-providing workplace can be highly stressful.  Cold Turkey from institutionalisation is a mistaken kindness. Anyone who has been imprisoned will describe the long hard road to rehabilitation after release. We should be wandering along the shore, gathering shellfish, not festering inside concrete walls, staring at computer screens.The damage to our free-will is subtle but longstanding.

I looked up at the ‘owner’ of the chair. Should I explain to him the danger to his psyche?  Should I pull him back from the brink by refusing his request? No, I took the coward’s way out and gave him back the chair, and hobbled over to get myself another one. I felt slightly gutless at not having done the decent thing by staying put on 'his' chair.

I resumed my conversation with the DBA about indexing strategies and so on, but occasionally glanced over at  The Chair Man, who had subsided into surly obeisance of his  keyboard and  screen, like a  priest at an icon, fumbling prayer-beads.  I gradually wondered if I should try what I call the Factor Test. This is a test which any of you can try, which gives a measure of the degree of institutionalisation of the office worker.  You ask if you can borrow one of his office pens. (Of course, you must ensure that they really belong to the company, not a personal possession.)

Together with other significant tests, one can soon single out the people in danger of slipping into a distorted reality.

The Chair Man had worrying symptoms. Pens were festooned in neat groups around his  desk. I decided to try out the Factor Test. I wanted to draw a diagram of the way that clustered indexes work  so I got my notebook out, and pretended to fumble around my pockets for my pen. I turned around to the Chair Man. ‘Excuse me, may I borrow your pen?’
‘Sorry, I haven’t got a spare one’

Oh dear, that scores four.  There is an emergency procedure for acute sufferers of institutionalization, equivalent to the The Heimlich manoeuvre, which  is used for the removal of airways obstruction in a choking patient. Unlike the Heimlich manoeuvre, the sufferer is generally ungrateful, through being unaware that their soul has been rescued from the grim embrace of institutionalisation. I once did it to a senior executive at Rank Xerox.  You sit in their chair, and grab at all their company pens and pencils, stuffing them into your pockets,  whilst singing loudly ‘Pop goes the Weasel’. Then you rush off, laughing. Surprisingly, it gave me an almost demi-god status amongst the other senior executives when they got to hear about it. I never had to my my own drinks in the pub after work ever again.

Should I administer this procedure? Call me a wimp if you like, but at a time when I could have saved the chap from his slide into half-life, I did not proceed, but carried on with the session with the Database Administrator. I felt slightly bad about it, so I did second-best. When I got up at the end of my chat, I noticed with a surge of delight that my chair was one of those absurd plastic constructions with castors that you can push around like a  Bath Chair. A quick flick with my leg and the chair flew back and crashed against the desk next to Chair Man. His life had had a sudden, apparently disagreeable, shock. It had, however, administered a theraputic change into the quiet complacent unchanging tranquility of his existence. For a moment I thought he might try to hit me, but he thought better of it.

I was pleased. I bade them farewell with the contentment that comes from having brought back a flicker of humanity into an institutionalized life. Perhaps, one day, he will realise the act of kindness and thank me.