INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN

NEW YORK

Last time I was in Sweden, I was surprised to find a finance minister with his long hair in a ponytail, a gold ring through his left ear, and a very skeptical view of welfare. But that was nothing to my astonishment at what I found outside Anders Borg’s office.
None of the public employees were sitting at their desks. Instead, they were standing at desks which they’d raised with the push of a button. When I inquired about the reason for these stand-up desks, the answer I got had a disarming Scandinavian directness: it’s healthier.
Human history is usually depicted as a sequence of apelike beings progressing from left to right, with each ape-man showing more human traits, and the most decisive change - at least visually - coming with the arrival of “homo erectus” on two feet. But a contemporary detail is omitted: mankind then sat down.
At least, that’s what happened in much of the developed world. The consequences are still being tallied, but I’d say they include the spread of depression, backache, obesity, anger and psychoanalysis. The human body was conceived for many uses related to the survival of the species, but not for the sedentary office slump. I’m not sure why Scandinavians have grasped this faster than others, except that they have a knack for simplifying things (furniture, fashion). It makes more sense to give people the means to move at work than to take care of them once immobility has exacted its physical and mental toll.
Peter Hagglund, who works in Stockholm for Telenor, the Norwegian telecommunications company, described himself as a lazy guy who only stands about an hour a day, but loves to have the adjustable- desk option.
“I always raise the desk when I’m on the phone, it makes your voice sound better,” he said. “The basic philosophy here is the fitter you are, the more your company benefits. That’s why we get free gym membership, a free massage every other week and a desk design for mobility.”
My own company does the free massage, but not the gym or the desk. Still, a refinement of the stand-up desk called the Walkstation is starting to sell. It’s a raised desk combined with a treadmill that allows work-walking. (Page 7.)
A Mayo Clinic doctor helped develop the calorie-burning Walkstation and the clinic’s “Office Exercise 101” urges everyone to “look for opportunities to stand,” including eating lunch standing up. It also suggests trading your office chair for a fitness ball, which seems excessive.
Everyone’s got their favorite American problem right now, but mine would be anger. It’s bred by a lot of things - falling incomes, foreclosures, debt, disappearing health insurance and pensions - but too much sitting would be one factor. Anger does not make for constructive politics. Roll on the stand-up desk and the new bipedalism!
Rob Rehg, president of the Washington office of the Edelman public relations company, has had a stand-up desk for five years; it’s cured his chronic backache .
“There’s an added benefit,” he told me. “It makes for much shorter meetings.”
Case closed.