“I really don’t like to sit,” reveals Gary Grossman as we walk into his downtown office at Green & Seifter. And he doesn’t sit, though he offers me a chair at a small conference table. All in all, there are five chairs in the room, as well as a large, traditional desk, and Grossman doesn’t use any of them.
For the last three years, he’s worked at a standing desk, electing to be on his feet all day. Sort of an unusual choice for an accountant.
But Grossman says his tendency to stand started with shifting the way he took important phone calls.
“I started to believe if I had an important telephone call, I should stand,” Grossman says. “You are much more present, you are much more forward. It’s an engaged position.”
“But then I thought, ‘everything’s important,’” he adds.
Fast-forward three years, and Grossman’s workspace is now elevated to bar-height, parallel with his forearms at 90 degrees. He stands on an anti-fatigue mat that offers a little cushion and give, and suggests fellow standers angle their toes outward to prevent their knees from locking.
“I can’t imagine sitting down now,” he says. “It is so foreign to me.”
Grossman’s new normal
Switching from sitting to standing was not, however, without a transitional period. Grossman estimated that by the third day of standing his legs were cramped and feet were sore, and he began wondering if he was doing more harm than good. He bought a pair of shoes that offered more support and added the fatigue mat to the set-up.
Not ready to completely overhaul your day-to-day workspace?
Try standing meetings instead, and see for yourself whether eliminating chairs — and the opportunity they present to “settle in” — quickens the pace for staff meetings.
And the next time you take a particularly important call, try standing up or even moving around in the space. Maybe you’ll find you already do.
“There was an acclimation period,” he remembers. “I began to think, ‘maybe we weren’t meant to stand.’”
Now, “I don’t think twice about it,” Grossman adds. When meeting with clients, he sits at the conference table, he explains. And newcomers to the office usually comment on the novelty of the standing desk.
Standing desks aren’t new, and elevated, tilted draft tables have long been the choice for artists, architects and the like. An assortment of studies, including a 2004 report by the egonomics team at Cornell University, have piled up evidence showing extended sitting raises the risk of heart disease, slows the processes that break down fat and burn calories, and shortens life span overall.
But one of the most alarming pieces of evidence is that these factors are not impacted by the amount of time a person spends exercising. The solution isn’t spending more time in the gym after work, it’s interrupting time spent sitting by walking around the office — but simply standing up doesn’t cut it.
That’s not an issue for Grossman, who in reality doesn’t so much stand all day as he does move around all day. At one point, he hops up on the heating unit, illustrating how the whole office “becomes your desk,” once you free yourself from the traditional sitting desk.
“I think this is for everyone,” Grossman says enthusiastically.
But will he ever try a treadmill desk?
“Oh, no way,” he says. “I tried it, but I didn’t like it. It’s like doing two things at once!”
Ami Olson is editor of The Eagle. Reach her at [email protected].
