The Office Worker Of The Future Supposedly Looks Like… This

Are you sit­ting at desk? “Emma” wants you to get up. Right now.

Emma is your “work col­league of the future,” a life-sized pre­dic­tion of what office work­ers’ bod­ies look like in 20 thanks to the long-term neg­a­tive phys­i­cal and men­tal impact of increased screen time, longer and too much sit­ting.

Emma has sal­low skin too many years of arti­fi­cial light and -relat­ed eczema on her arms. Poor air qual­i­ty has caused swollen sinus­es with more nose- and ear- hairs, and red eyes. Sit­ting at her work sta­tion set-up has giv­en her a per­ma­nent­ly bent back. Was she doing work while curled into a pret­zel for 20 years? Free this woman and give her a vaca­tion!

Emma's ankles are swollen from years of repetitive movement, too.

Emma’s ankles are swollen from years of repet­i­tive move­ment, too.

S. O. S.

S.O.S.

Emma is part of a 2019 report com­mis­sioned by office equip­ment com­pa­ny Fel­lowes Brands, who part­nered with behav­ioral futur­ist William High­am and oth­er experts to deter­mine the health effects humans will see if we don’t make changes in the work­place.

High­am, who wrote the report that helped to inform what Emma look like, called her a “worst-case sce­nario.” “Emma is what could hap­pen to some­body in the worst case if they do every­thing bad­ly,” he told Huff­Post.

High­am said Emma has made peo­ple imag­ine the health risks more clear­ly. “When you start say­ing, ‘You could look like this. This could be you,’ I think peo­ple are more able to iden­ti­fy with the issue.”

You may not get a hunched back, but sitting incorrectly all day is bad for you.

Of course, Emma does not rep­re­sent all office work­ers; we are not all brunette, white women, for one. She is an extreme rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a stressed, seden­tary lifestyle. Her cre­ator is an office equip­ment com­pa­ny with a vest­ed inter­est in your con­cern about ergonom­ics, after all.

Good air qual­i­ty and expo­sure to nat­ur­al light does impact your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and your abil­i­ty to work with­out eye­strain or headaches, but you are not going to into a vam­pire if you have an arti­fi­cial light.

Don’t stress about all the ear hairs you could sprout. But it’s true that sit­ting down all day is not great for our health. An analy­sis of seden­tary behav­ior found that regard­less of how much study par­tic­i­pants exer­cised, sit­ting down for long peri­ods was asso­ci­at­ed with bad health out­comes. One -year study found that peo­ple who did not meet the rec­om­men­da­tion of at least 150 min­utes of activ­i­ty a week had a high­er risk of mor­tal­i­ty.

“[Emma] made me think more,” High­am said. “I take more breaks than I used to. I stand up more. I’ll stand once an hour. I’ll make sure I’m not in the same posi­tion for a long time. I’ll take breaks from star­ing at the screen.”

Can you get a per­ma­nent­ly bent back from a bad work­sta­tion? A life­time of poor pos­ture can be a pos­si­ble con­tribut­ing fac­tor of a hunched back, or kypho­sis, among many oth­er fac­tors like aging and osteo­poro­sis.

Emma is a dystopi­an pre­dic­tion of every­thing going wrong with your office envi­ron­ment with­out . “It’s too late for Emma now,” the Fel­lowes web­site states. To that, I say: Emma, come sit with me. I’ll be your friend. We can strate­gize how to get you out of this job, stat.

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