When attending office meetings with new colleagues, it is difficult to establish the relative importance of each person in the room...
I propose the following solution, the 'self-levelling' excecutive chair. Modern office chairs are height-adjustable by means of a pneumatic mechanism and a height setting lever. These could be modified quite simply to include a lithium battery, GPS altimeter, a powerful servo and a wireless PDA complete with infrared transponder.
The finished chair could be programmed for each user allowing them to customised their comfort preferences and ,of course, their company position.
On encountering a sub-ordinate, your chair will rise, indicating your elevated status. In the presence of senior management the chair would slowly descend, relative to those of your superiors. Naturally, a visit from the CEO would cause a split-pin in the mechanism to break, leaving you prostate on the floor.
On special occasions, e.g. IPO, the chairs could be programmed to deliver a mexican wave.
p.s. As a wild-life expert recently noted, in any social gathering of Baboons, position is important. This idea is much simpler and avoids having to paint your bottom purple...-- riposte, May 31 2001 An additional feature of this could be to enhance the cushioned pad with wiring that will deliver an appropriate level of electric shock to the sitter when they are less attentive in meetings or, perhaps, speak out of turn or disagree on points.-- dapkniht, May 31 2001 There's a little bit of cheese on the table. Who wants to chase the mousey?-- tracer03, Jun 04 2001 I don't think I'd like having my prostate on the floor, dude...
<Fourth paragraph, '...pin in the mechanism to break, leaving you prostate on the floor.'.>-- StarChaser, Jun 04 2001 i like this. but does it follow some pre-programmed org chart or the real power structure?-- thinkfuture, Jun 05 2001 [startchaser] spelling correction noted, but ignored because of the amusing imagery that it conjures up...-- riposte, Jun 05 2001 It'd be terribly amusing to see all the ~peers in middle management (Regional Directors for different regions, Product Managers for different products, etc) vie for position. Assuredly, one of the big shots I used to work for would blurt out, "What the hell? Why is MY chair lowering?!" hahaha...-- absterge, Jun 06 2001 The chair(s) could also move in response to company events (e.g. share price). It would give a whole new meaning to the words "pay rise"...-- riposte, Jun 08 2001 maybe helmets would also be a wise idea
roisin ( i cant be bothered to sign in on my account )-- kaz, Jun 09 2002 The people at DaimlerChrysler and some other companies with sick salaries should wear oxygen masks as they would be propelled right through the roof into the stratosphere. P.S. this would also give a completely new meaning to "the prices are shooting through the roof"-- Saruman, Jun 09 2002 I can see some kind of computer hacking to be used here...so that the mail boy can look down on his subjects ha ha ha!!!!! Erm, and then get fired.
I can also see that 'Dave', the 6ft 4 office junior sits at a meeting with many other execs of varying power, but him being the lowest.
He is forced to spend the meeting with his heels dragging from the chair and speaking to 'Frank', the CEO, who is only 5'2 but for some reason towers above him, legs swinging like a child on a climbing frame.
I like it.-- Jinbish, Jun 30 2002 [good cop] I wonder if it would make sense for occupational health. They would raise the seats of colleagues identified as having low self esteem or recline them for those with excessive amounts of stress.
[bad cop] Alternatively, the chair would rise in response to excessive chatter (or C02 levels) , created by the office gossips, lifting them above the level of the cubicle so that everyone can see who is making all the noise.-- riposte, Jul 25 2003 random, halfbakery