I see, on the program Tot es mou, on TV3, an interview with Malika Favre, the illustrator of the La Mercè poster, at her home in Barcelona. While she tells us curiosities about her work, we see the place where she works. The screen of the computer she uses is on top of two books.
You can enter the newsroom of any newspaper, radio or TV program, or any house of someone who writes, in any office, and you will find books under the screen or a ream of paper. How can it be that screen manufacturing companies have not thought that everyone has different heights and, therefore, should manufacture them with an adjustable system? How can it be that a large, state-of-the-art computer, like Malika Favre's, is on top of two books?
With remote work, we started talking about the need, for example, to have a good chair for working, like the one you would have in the office or in the store, and that the heating, light, or cooling you might use while typing should be tax-deductible expenses. Self-employed people who write at home laugh when we hear this, because for us, this has always been questioned. "This chair, this dress you would also use in your non-working life," they tell you. Poor managers, always suffering from not deducting more than necessary, lest we get fined. But we don't start working with dining room chairs, because we would all end up with contractures and it's not convenient for us to take sick leave. As soon as we can, we invest in an adjustable office chair. I have a plastic box of Schweppes tonic ---I love it--- to put my feet on. I also have a fan that I connect to the computer. And the ream of paper (now that we print less than ever).
This makes me think of schools and high schools. It seems to me that teenagers, of various heights and weights, deserve somewhat more ergonomic chairs than those in the centers. But teenagers are like the self-employed. They have come to this world to suffer.