CEO kept moving employee’s personal chair to his desk every morning, so employee quietly ended the fight by storing it in his car: '[He] said it wasn't right I had a nicer chair than he did'

Author image for Isabella Penn
Isabella Penn
Jul 22, 2025 9:00 AM EDT

Finally getting your own office is so satisfying. Or even just your own desk. It's a space that's yours. A place to put your little plant, your bobblehead, maybe even a framed photo of your dog pretending to be your child. But if there's one undeniable truth about most office setups, it's that the furniture usually leaves something to be desired. The chairs creak. The desks wobble. And the fabric probably hasn't been updated since the company came into existence.

You could upgrade, but the idea of spending your own paycheck on a more comfortable chair or desk is a line most of us aren't willing to cross. It's the principle of it. The company wants me to sit here for eight hours, five days a week, they can spring for more lumbar support.

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  • But one guy did bring in his own fancy chair. And when his CEO kept mysteriously “borrowing” it for himself, things got… awkward. 

    Keep reading to see how this employee got the last laugh and made sure everyone in the office knew exactly what was going on.

  • Cheezburger Image 10531857152
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "CEO's Assistant said it wasn't right I had a nicer chair than he did"

    A while back my wife and I were buying our house after a few years of rental. There was a delay in the new house being ready, so we moved in with my mother for a few weeks.
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  • During that time I stashed some stuff at work, including bringing in my chair, a very nice Herman Miller Aeron I had gotten second hand. The office chairs were old. standard/serviceable but not exactly nice.
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  • After a few days. I noticed that my chair would be in the conference room every morning. No problem, I just wheeled it back to my desk. I was working 8 to 4 to avoid traffic so was usually in first
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  • The CEO (of about 120 people) would usually not arrive until about noon, and take later meetings when most of the staff were away. After a few days the chair kept ending up at his desk.
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  • (Open plan thankfully, so I just took it back every morning. i wasnt foolish enough to go into the CEOs office..). He'd sh ot me a dirty look every morning but that was it.
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  • Cheezburger Image 10531856896
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+
  • After a few more days of this back and forward, the CEOs assistant (who was a lovely person who I felt immense pity for) approached me and told. me that the CEO didn't think it was appropriate that I had a nicer chair than him. People would
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  • think that my desk belonged to the CEO and it was stressing her out having to basically fight for it every day on his behalf. I told her I understood completely, and would stop fighting over it. I
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  • took it out of the office that lunch time, and reclaimed a normal office chair. The next day she came over and asked where the chair was. I said with an incredibly straight face
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  • that I thought since it wasnt appropriate I just took it to my car. She had a super stunned look, but just kind of ran off. Since I was almost always first in I always got parking near the building,
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  • pretty much everyone got to walk past my car on the way into the office and see my chair in the boot for a few more weeks, however given his cowardly nature I never got approached about it again
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  • To this day, I'm 100% certain they thought I was just going to give in and let him have my chair. Instead I got the joy of telling everyone the honest truth about why my chair was in my car for weeks
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  • Hattix If the guy had any sense, he'd have just done what my old IT Director did.
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  • "Hey, why's your chair so much better than everyone else's?" "I brought it in from home, it's mine." "Cool. Good choice."
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  • Next day he had a £980 office chair delivered.
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  • Annual-Ad-9442 dude was cheap otherwise he would have bought a better chair
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  • desertrock62 About 20 years ago, | was a civilian IT guy working for the US military in Baghdad.
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  • Same as OP, the office furniture was serviceable, but not fancy by any means. I bought my own office chair through the mail and assembled it for myself in my office.
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  • More than once, certain colonels determined I was not authorized to be issued such a nice chair and would liberate it to their workspace.
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  • I solved the issue once and for all by securing a copy of my receipt underneath with packing tape. I loudly asked the latest entitled officer if his name was on the receipt underneath. Never happened again.
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  • Mackowitz At my first job, we had crappy chairs to pretty nice chairs, ranging from like 1 to 5. But
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  • there was a weird office hierarchy where people at a certain level were not allowed to have a nicer chair than their level. Even when a couple more "senior chairs" were not being used, an entry level person was
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  • not allowed to use them. A few years later we hired an HR manager who explained ergonomics related injuries and the liability the company was exposing itself to by not providing
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  • everyone with high quality, supportive chairs. After that, we all got the same, much better chairs.
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humor office chair employee desk work coworking petty revenge ceo Office entitled people karma comedy workplace bad bosses funny
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