#(hypothetically)

why would they do this. they are doctors. they know about ergonomics, in theory.

and yet.

by the end of tomorrow, i will have spent about 12 hours this week alone sitting in awful hospital desk chairs. i'm not even being paid. why.

in my experience doctors dont make chairs. occasionally, doctors buy urgent cares, which forces them to make chairs for maybe, two hours, tops, but eventually their backs start to get sore and they remember that they have several children who Yearn For Money. this is, of course, an opportunity for a win-win situation, so they go home and they make a deal with their kids that's like, hey, ill give you $8 for every chair that you build (because it's been taking them about 45 minutes a chair and $11ish an hour was actually very generous for a middle schooler back in the 2010 era). of course the kids agree, because hell yeah, moneyyyyy, and then mr. bigshot doctor leaves for a few hours to go important dad things, such as Ace Hardware, or Lawn, only to come back around noon and have all of the chairs done in one morning.

the average was maybe 15 minutes a chair.

perhaps someone else would have been suspicious of this. maybe. but mr. bigshot doctor has a lot on his mind at that moment, what, with the urgent care that he just bought, and the Ace Hardware and Lawn he just did, so he's really mostly just relieved that the chair building is all done and he won't have to hurt his back anymore. maybe he doesn't really think about it, and all those kids get a very big, very fat payday, which they then spend on kid things, such as Video Game, or Gum.

of course, eventually all those chairs wind up being wobbly and squeaky. and for a while mr doctor is not exaaaactly sure why. but a detailed inspection of one several years later mayhaps reveals that no washers were used on any bolts, ever, and that actually, several not stricly necessary but definitively stabilizing bolts and/or metal crossbars were strategically skipped. perhaps to make building them faster. perhaps. its hard to tell. he asks his kids about this and they shuffle their feet a little and say that they dont really recall. its all a blur to them. whose to say that anyone built those chairs. perhaps they sprung into the office, fully formed from their fathers brow. like athena. chairthena. perhaps patients stole the crossbars and the washers for their own chairs. patients are always doing strange things like that, and who can blame them? they're sick, the're delirious, they do strange things all the time.

maybe it was even a bird.

(there are, hypothetically, four kids that this doctor has. and it is hypothetically the oldest who suggests the bird while the other three nod their heads thoughtfully. i mean, who really knows what birds are up to these days? perhaps sabotaging chairs.)

the children are lying of course. but maybe lying is a proud tradition in that family. maybe its been around ten years. maybe the gum is already chewed and sly 3: honor among thieves has already been bought and the urgent care is already sold and theres really not much left to be done but laugh.

maybe.

i am a filthy figure x seek shipper i am so sorry doors community. its been this way since 2022

I met you and Jonny on Thursday (!!!!!), I just wanted to thank you so much for signing my jacket & being so cool about it (I had colourful hair & gave you the notebook & pins). I’m 15 and only go to Manchester once or twice a year from where I come from (very small town) so I was super nervous just to be in the city, let alone meeting you guys!!

All that to say sorry about how awkward I was, I don’t think I’ll ever be used to these kinds of interactions!

I had a question I wanted to ask for months, and it’s dumb, unrelated to everything you do. And I forgot, because ofcourse I did. But I wanted to ask the chicken question. It is to be pondered.

In a world where chickens grew hair like humans (imagine a chicken with an Elvis Presley up-do), do you think that the fact they’re gyroscopic would make it easier or harder to give them haircuts?

I occasionally trawl older questions I didn't get time for first go round and see what jumps out at me. I read this question and thought: "What a stupid question, obviously it would be easier!" Then I paused. Then I thought about it. Then I really thought about it. Then I finally came back to my original answer but via a much longer and involved thought process than I was expecting so... kudos. Good question. I think it comes down to the fact that they are still chickens. You can't ask them to put their head down or look left or up or whatever because they're chickens. They don't understand you and they don't want their hair cut. That means ultimately it hits the same territory as sheep sheering and an animal that doesn't randomly jerk their head is going to be much easier to deal with. After all, people train on mannequins for a while at barber college so really it would just be like giving a hair cut for a teeny ,tiny self-stabilising, mannequin that has a beak and an attitude problem.