While out for a jog the other day (a jog that turned into a sprint when a German shepherd came after me), I noticed a \u201cFor Lease\u201d sign sitting in the empty window of a failed restaurant. After the dog got distracted and ran after a bicyclist, I strolled back to the restaurant and peered in the window.<\/p>\n
I knew that restaurant. I almost had a meal there once. I really wanted to have that meal, too, but it was not to be. I think I know why the restaurant didn\u2019t succeed. And the reason is startling.<\/p>\n
You see, in this struggling economy, with its intermittent shortages of gas, water and cash, there is yet another shortage that has gone unreported \u2013until now. This story is a stunner. Are you sitting down? Well, chances are you are not. And here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n
A few years ago, my wife and I made reservations at a restaurant we had never been to before. We made the reservations for four. But an hour before we arrived, a fifth person decided to join us. We figured that wouldn\u2019t be a problem, so we all hopped into the car together and headed to the restaurant. As we walked up to the entrance, I noticed a sign in the window that read \u201cHelp Wanted.\u201d Experts say that whenever you see such a sign in a restaurant window \u2013 or funeral home \u2013 you should run back to your car as fast as possible and drive away. We didn\u2019t. We entered and a hostess met us immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re the Cashman party,\u201d I told her. \u201cWe have reservations for four, but there are actually five of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hostess looked stricken. \u201cFive?\u201d she gasped. \u201cBut we don\u2019t have enough chairs for five!\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked around the restaurant, which was perhaps only half-full. \u201cWhat about all those empty chairs?\u201d I said, pointing to dozens of them. \u201cCouldn\u2019t we just grab one of those?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat wouldn\u2019t work,” she said. \u201cWe have just enough chairs for each table, and we have other customers coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tried again. \u201cBut isn\u2019t there just one more chair some place? Maybe in the kitchen or outside the back door where your employees go to smoke?\u201d<\/p>\n
The hostess was resolute. \u201cWe have no other chairs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about a cardboard box?\u201d I begged.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoodbye,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I thanked her and our party of five shuffled out the door.<\/p>\n
The warning signs were obvious back then. I just didn\u2019t pick up on them. Ladies and gentlemen, we are running out of chairs! It seems to be true. Big companies are discovering that no matter how many people they lay off, they are still always two or three chairs short for their staff meetings.<\/p>\n
A colleague reports that he was recently released from a high-tech firm he had worked at for 10 years. \u201cThey told me it wasn\u2019t poor job performance or decreased revenues,\u201d he said. \u201cThey said they simply couldn’t find a place for me to sit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Remember how network TV news anchors like Walter Cronkite used to deliver the news sitting down? Increasingly, you see people like Charles Gibson and Katie Couric being forced to do their newscasts standing up. Perhaps with TV revenues not as high as they used to be, chairs have become an unjustifiable luxury.<\/p>\n
Before long, football games, live theater and even movie theaters will all be standing-room only. It\u2019s already happening at the Sea-Tac airport, with lots of tall tables for quick meals, but no chairs.<\/p>\n
Yes, my friends, we may soon become a chairless society, standing for haircuts, teeth cleanings, roller coaster rides and minor surgeries. Airplane travelers will no longer be complaining about legroom, but headroom. The bottom line is that I hope my fellow citizens will soon realize that we have an inchoate chair shortage in this country. It\u2019s a shortage that may get even worse once people find out what “inchoate” means.<\/p>\n
So take warning: Chairs are endangered. I think sinister forces are quietly removing them. So we must protect and defend the chairs that we do have. Please fight against those who would like to impose chair control in this country. Otherwise, only criminals will have chairs \u2013 electric or otherwise.<\/p>\n
As I write this from my office chair, I am planting myself firmly upon it, and nobody\u2019s going to take it. Not unless they pry it from my cold, dead \u2013 well, you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While out for a jog the other day (a jog that turned into a sprint when a German shepherd came after me), I noticed a \u201cFor Lease\u201d sign sitting in the empty window of a failed restaurant. After the dog got distracted and ran after a bicyclist, I strolled back to the restaurant and peered in the window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}