I work in manufacturing. Today at a meeting, my manager asked if there were any concerns. I said it would be nice to have more chairs available because there aren’t enough to go around. She said “[your station] isn’t a sitting station.”
Bullshit. It is 100% possible to sit at my station and it doesn’t even slow you down. Granted you do have to stand for some of it, but a big part of it is documentation, so while I’m waiting for my machine to process a batch, I’ll sit to write stuff down. The 30 second break from standing does wonders for my feet. Absolutely zero productivity is lost from this as I am waiting on the machine anyhow. Anyone that’s worked this station for more than a day would know this.
This is true for most other stations as well, and paperwork is a part of nearly everyone’s job. And the tables are NOT standing height, so obviously bending down every 5 minutes to write is not comfy on the back.
After the meeting today, my coworker told me he heard the same manager ranting about another woman who sits down in a position where she’s “not supposed to,” and (jokingly, I hope) threatening to take all chairs out of the lab. Like wtf?? If somebody is not getting the work you need done, you can talk to them about that. Don’t demonize fucking chairs. In all likelihood, this person probably genuinely needs accommodation.
I get the sense that the insistence on standing has to do with perceived “laziness” and not actual results. And even if it is about results, it’s still kinda fucked up and micromanagey.
I’m going to bring this up tomorrow. Trying to think of how to phrase my argument because these seems like it could be an HR issue. I’m a contractor btw so I’m technically employed by a separate agency. I generally never correspond with anyone over email, but maybe it would be good to in this case?