9 Things That Are Better Standing Up
Well, it’s true – with the news that the PM presenters will be broadcasting standing up, and medical research showing us that constant sitting is damaging our health by putting us at risk of potential heart and diabetes problems, we need to embrace the vertical and stand up for standing up. So here’s our guide to things that are altogether better when you’re standing.
1. Meetings
Stand-up meetings allow you to shuffle subtly towards the exit, so you can gallop out at high speed before anyone tries to catch your eye about ‘forming a steering group to research learnings’. It also puts you in a better position to feign a realistic faint should the meeting become overly long.
2. Travelling
No, not standing on the train, which is hell on earth, but the joys of the Segway. What better way to reduce your colleagues to hysterical incredulity by swooping along your commute on an out of control vacuum cleaner.
3. Eating.
It is a well-known fact that all food consumed while standing up has no calorific value, which is why eating an entire roast chicken out of the fridge while hunting for the low calorie mayonnaise is completely acceptable.
4. Watching television
Watching trashy television while standing up allows you to convince yourself that you are not really watching it, you are merely ‘in the room when it was on’, which you can tell colleagues when you describe the episode in minute detail the next day.
5. Public speaking
As a rule you look a trifle too relaxed if you don’t stand when public speaking, particularly if you’re in an armchair. Unless you’re Alan Bennett.
6. Waiting for your gate to open at the airport
Even though you know perfectly well they are not going to let you on the ‘plane for a good twenty minutes it is ESSENTIAL that you stand up the second there is more than one person in a flurorescent jacket at the departure gate. The same rule applies when leaving the ‘plane. Stand up the second the wheels hit the ground and then spend half an hour bent double over the seat in front while the person next to you struggles to remove their ukulele collection from the overhead locker.
7. Mourning
A deckchair next to the graveside just looks half-hearted, to be honest.
8. Attending a drinks party
Standing up is compulsory as only then can you throw tapenade down your front while balancing a glass of warm white wine in one hand and struggling to peer interestedly at the mobile phone of the person you’re talking to who is showing you pictures of their greenhouse. When you do get to sit down you will inevitably pick the one chair in the room that not only makes a rude noise but is so low you will practically have to pole vault out of it.
9. Being a passenger in a car
Highly recommended by the Pope.
