Who said swivel chairs must have 5 legs?

My health and safety advisers tell me that five legs are more stable than 4. Less likely to roll you out of the chair.

The problem with them is that the wheels always try to go in five different directions.

I remember having a conversation with my brother about his early days in the computing world. I was intrigued about office workers donning trainers for a day at the office. My Brother explained that this was so that they could, more comfortably push themselves between the various computers they were trying to write code for.

This is all very well and good so long as the chairs in question go where you want them to go.

Take yesterday for example. I was at work, I was scanning a patient but was trying to organise for a patient to come down from a ward. I had left the phone on speakerphone so that when the nurse returned to the phone from checking the patient was suitable to travel i could break away from what I was doing and get the phone.

I got stuck into the scan and after what seemed a long time I heard the plaintive voice on the speakerphone saying "Hello?"

I dropped what I was doing and decided to push back with my heels and roll the chair up to the the phone. However my chair had other ideas. I pushed directly at the phone but no sooner had my feet left the ground the wheels spun around and I headed away from the phone at a 45 degree angle.

My corrective actions, namely trying to steer myself back toward the phone, only served to make all 5 wheels spin in a clockwise direction whilst continuing the trajectory toward the sink. Upon hitting the sink I was then able to grab the wall and haul myself back along the wall to the phone only to hear her cuss gently and put the phone down!

Is five a sort of health and safety magic number? As in a tripod would be most stable and therefore a couple of extra legs would be even better? And while we at it who allowed us to walk on just two legs? there is no redundancy in two. One fails your buggered. No, no seven legs would be much better so you could have a few spares. Just in case.

Rant over
For now