unlike other chairs I had that seemed to last 6 months on average
WTF? I never remember breaking an office chair; I have broken a couple of wooden dining-room chairs and a hollow steel classroom chair so far, but I’m about 200 lbs...
I’ve gone through lots of office chairs in my house; I use them for all of my household chairs and usually get them on the cheap. The most common failure modes from memory:
caster breaks
seat breaks off of the post
raising/lowering mechanism malfunctions, usually causing it to be permanently lowered or uncontrollable
wherever the back rest attaches to the rest of the chair breaks off—if there is an arm, then this happens on the bottom of the arm
bottom of the post breaks through the frame for the casters—even if still functional, it now scrapes the floor
fart smell
On all-steel frame, fairly solid chairs I’ve only ever seen the post break once and otherwise it was always casters snapping off at the connection. But those are not only expensive but very heavy, and tend to be less adjustable.
The shitty plastic holding seat and back together that most chairs seem to use is usually the weakest link that fails first.
It might be related to me being taller than most people (188cm, leverage multiplies force) and moving in chair a lot, most chairs being far too rigid to accommodate that.
The younger teen utterly trashed one of my ergonomic chairs that I’d had for five years at that point—back flapping loose, screws holding it together knocked out. She’s 157cm (5′2″) and weighs about 55kg (120lb). I have no idea how the hell she managed this.
I’m 194cm/95-100kg and have nothing like this sort of trail of trashed chairs. (One whose back plastic warped badly from being kept too near an open fire.) I’m thinking it’s less height and weight and more sheer talent.
I’m about 1.87 m and I move a lot too, but I mostly move sideways rather than back-and-forth, and I don’t lean on the back so much. (Or maybe they make better chairs in my country than in yours, but this doesn’t sound likely.)
WTF? I never remember breaking an office chair; I have broken a couple of wooden dining-room chairs and a hollow steel classroom chair so far, but I’m about 200 lbs...
I’ve gone through lots of office chairs in my house; I use them for all of my household chairs and usually get them on the cheap. The most common failure modes from memory:
caster breaks
seat breaks off of the post
raising/lowering mechanism malfunctions, usually causing it to be permanently lowered or uncontrollable
wherever the back rest attaches to the rest of the chair breaks off—if there is an arm, then this happens on the bottom of the arm
bottom of the post breaks through the frame for the casters—even if still functional, it now scrapes the floor
fart smell
On all-steel frame, fairly solid chairs I’ve only ever seen the post break once and otherwise it was always casters snapping off at the connection. But those are not only expensive but very heavy, and tend to be less adjustable.
The shitty plastic holding seat and back together that most chairs seem to use is usually the weakest link that fails first.
It might be related to me being taller than most people (188cm, leverage multiplies force) and moving in chair a lot, most chairs being far too rigid to accommodate that.
The younger teen utterly trashed one of my ergonomic chairs that I’d had for five years at that point—back flapping loose, screws holding it together knocked out. She’s 157cm (5′2″) and weighs about 55kg (120lb). I have no idea how the hell she managed this.
I’m 194cm/95-100kg and have nothing like this sort of trail of trashed chairs. (One whose back plastic warped badly from being kept too near an open fire.) I’m thinking it’s less height and weight and more sheer talent.
I’m about 1.87 m and I move a lot too, but I mostly move sideways rather than back-and-forth, and I don’t lean on the back so much. (Or maybe they make better chairs in my country than in yours, but this doesn’t sound likely.)
I’m about 1.95 m, move a lot, and haven’t broken many office chairs.
Maybe the next LW Survey should ask how tall we are, too. We might see some interesting correlations. :-)
… and how many office chairs we’ve broken?