World's Greatest Office Chair (Humanscale Freedom Review)

Damn you Humanscale!

Damn you for making such a ridiculously comfortable chair.

Some brief background.

I've got a bad back. MRI shows disc herniations at L4-L5, L5-S1 and when it's "out" I'm a complete mess. I get shooting pain down my right leg and suffer with terrible muscle spasms in my lower back. I don't sleep well, I can't pick up my kids, exercise, etc.

It went "out" last June. By the fall I was desperate. I had another MRI to ensure there wasn't something growing in there and when that came back negative I decided it couldn't hurt to research my options in office ergonomics.

For anyone who's looked into their options for chairs and keyboard trays etc., you'll know that the options are not cheap.

My research online brought me to two chairs - the Humanscale Freedom and the Humanscale Liberty.

Contacting the company brought me to Mr. Joel Howey who kindly brought by one chair a week for test sits.

I opted for the Freedom, much to the chagrin of our Director of Operations who was nonplussed about spending nearly $1,000 on a chair. His measure of whether or not it was a good purchase was whether or not I ever opted to buy one for my home.

Fast forward to now. My back is back "in". I'm exercising again and completely functional. Yet whenever I work at home, and I mean literally every single time, within half an hour of sitting in my chair (an Obus Forme) I start getting shooting pain down my right leg and an hour of work usually translates to 2-4 hours of pain. I've adjusted it every which way I can think of to no avail.

So last week I shelled out my own dough to pick up another Humanscale Freedom. This weekend I worked away, pain free.

Damn you Humanscale for making the greatest chair on earth so darn expensive.

Worth every penny.

[If you're in the Ottawa region and would like to deal with an exemplary company and customer service representative feel free to contact Joel Howey at Jhowey@humanscale.com or call him on his cell at 613.218.3383. For further proof of just how good the service is, Joel was at my home on Saturday morning at 9:00am replacing a bolt that had disappeared during shipping - no charge. If his bosses are reading this, give him a raise!]