Seating arrangements

THE CHAIR does not merely refer to a piece of furniture. It can stand for a person heading an organization or committee. While not always the designated decision-maker, the head of a group who leads a meeting around the table or online is designated as the “chair.”

Using a piece of furniture for sitting to designate the sitter avoids the need for specifying gender or needing to change the word itself to accommodate any difference in sexual orientation. This tends to skirt (note the gender bias) the now chauvinistic term “chairman” with a male entitlement implied.

The dictionary reveals another possible meaning for the word “chairman” as one who carries a chair or pushes one with wheels for a physically challenged ward unable to walk the length of an airport terminal. This little-used definition of chairman as a menial occupation deviates from its more common reference.

A “chair” person (two words) on the other hand refers to someone with the job of collecting seats like Thai elephant chairs for tourists, ottomans around a hotel lobby, or divans for lounges.

Another usage of “chair” person can refer to the hobby of collecting seating paraphernalia, just like a “gun person” being someone who collects pistols and uses them on non-moving targets.

The commonly understood “chair” however presides over meetings. She opens a meeting by ritually asking the corporate secretary if there is a quorum. (Yes, there is a quorum, Madame Chair.)

Other uses of our furniture for resting the body (in a sitting position) can refer to how we occupy ourselves.

The video game or TV addict is referred to as a “couch potato.” The chair envelops its sitter, inert and absorbed in his addiction. Clutching the remote control to surf channels or using a mobile screen with push keys, the couch potato wallows in his solitary preoccupation.

Another chair usage involves politics, traditional or corporate. There are references to “musical chairs” in the reorganization of the cabinet (coincidentally another piece of furniture for storing files and old socks). The chair game pertains to the practice of reassigning the same people to different portfolios. In this one, the music never stops. Also as in the game, the chairs are fewer than those wishing to be seated.

This musical game applies to corporations too, although certain seats here are outside the building, maybe in the middle of traffic, or on the biking lane. Thus is a corporate casualty sometimes referred to as “roadkill” — flattened and unrecognizable. Old furniture can suffer the same fate in a warehouse.

Management styles have acquired other furniture traits.

One who is deemed too laid back is called an “armchair manager” as opposed to one who is rocking everyone’s chair. Armchair occupancy refers to those preferring to be observers comfortably seated, with only a theoretical understanding of how things work, and relying heavily on others to do the heavy lifting.

In team sports like basketball, there are “bench warmers” who are given less minutes of play than the starting five. If the rotation is deep, the bench warmers get to play a few more minutes. When the lead is insurmountable in the last seconds, the coach can “clear the bench” to allow the laggards to get their stats in.

Seats available purely for resting are seldom available in malls as a visitor at rest is considered a non-revenue customer. Seats are therefore only provided in restaurants and food courts where being stationary is necessary for dining in. Any flat surfaces which can serve as benches are declared off limits by putting potted plants on them, preferably cacti or leafy hibiscus.

Cocktail events encourage interaction and movement. Seats only make people stay in one place with a small group, restricting if not completely stopping the flow of social congress and the exchange of calling cards. Movement and noise, even when driven by alcohol, measure the success of an event. Live performers have already been removed as well at such occasions.

What about empty seats?

Chairs may refer to people and their elevated status in an investigative committee or a corporate board. Still, even such high perches can be brought back to their inanimate state when a chair is declared vacant.

As Burt Bacharach puts it in his song, “A chair is still a chair, even if there’s no one sitting there.”