the tinyblog

Now I work graveyard, but I used to work during the day shift at Spacelabs Medical.
Once, my office chair broke, and our office recieved another chair as a loaner. It was a black leather captain's chair. No one else in the department seemed to want it, so I pulled it over to my desk and sat down in it. It was ok, but not as comfortable as my regular chair.

I didn't think anything of it for a while, but then people coming in from outside the department would come in, they would say, "Whoa! How'd you get the fancy chair?"

"It's just a loaner." I'd say.

People who had never been in the department before and had to ask a question would walk right past my boss and come over to ask me their question. I like to think that if I would have kept the chair, I would be the CEO by now, like The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol.

In Gogol's story a young, poor Russian clerk finally one day finds his coat is too worn to even wear to the office. He takes it to the tailor who tells him it is way too far gone and he needs a new coat. The clerk trips out, but finally agrees to buy a new overcoat. The overcoat changes everyone's perception of him and he gets all these promotions and social attention and his life is changed.

In Gogol's story though, the coat is stolen from the clerk and without it, he lacks the imposing power to get the police to actually look for his coat (It's a very Russian kind of story) and he soon dies. In my case, however, my chair just got repaired, and then they took the loaner. Simple as that. I didn't get a promotion, but I'm still here to write about it.