Clever office chair lets your needy pets hang out with you while you work

Adobe

If you’ve been working from home through the pandemic, you’ve probably made some space-related concessions for the people and animals in your life. I’ve worked on the couch with a cat and laptop in my lap, and I’ve stood in the kitchen, using my counter as a makeshift standing desk, as a feline sat on my feet. I’ve also perched my butt way out on the edge of my desk chair so a kitty could tuck in behind me.

So, when I saw the office chair that roboticist Simone Giertz built so her pup could sit close while she’s at her desk, I fully understood her motivation.

Giertz is an inventor and YouTube star known as the “Queen of Sh*tty Robots.” Her videos often show her building unnecessarily elaborate robots, such as the robot to serve her soup in the video below. She puts herself right in the middle of the testing process, which means that when the robot’s off, it flings soup on her shirt and dumps an entire bowl of it right into her lap.

For her new desk chair — which is not a robot, and also is not for sale, by the way — Giertz created a spiral staircase her dog, Scraps, could hop up to reach the seat, which has guardrails and is big enough for a side-by-side reclining dog and human butt.

Giertz tweeted a short version of the video of her designing, building and tweaking the chair.

“I built it because I have a very needy dog that refuses to fall asleep if she’s not next to me,” she says.

Giertz customized the chair specifically for her desk and her little pup, so it does have one big limitation — it won’t work for big doggos.

On Twitter, Spyro Markesinis pointed this out with a photo of his Bernese mountain dog settled (attempting to settle? Attempting to take over the entire sofa?) onto his lap.

Part of the fun of Giertz’s videos is watching her build something from scratch, then fail, then make some tweaks, then fail some more, and then finally get it right, or right-ish.

The desk chair required some extra care because Scraps only has three legs, so she needs to feel extra secure in her footing on steps.

Here’s the full video, which also shows just how adorable the spritely little Scraps is:

This isn’t the first time Scraps has been featured in her human’s wacky videos. Giertz made her pup a pretty awesome selfie booth: Scraps can go into the booth to take her own selfies by touching a paw to a pedal, which also dispenses treats. Oh, and the whole thing is made out of Legos.

Good girl, Scraps! Hope you keep inspiring your human to make cool things for you.

Animals, Pets, Technology

About the Author
Jenn Fields
Jenn Fields serves as Simplemost Media’s managing editor from Colorado, where she worked as a reporter and editor, on staff and as a freelancer, at newspapers and magazines. After earning her master’s from University of Missouri’s journalism school, Jenn worked in community journalism for 10 years, writing and editing for the Boulder Daily Camera and Denver Post. Over her 20-year career, she has covered a diverse range of topics, including travel, health and fitness, outdoor sports and culture, climate science, religion and plenty of other fascinating topics.

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