Man, that study really nails it. It's not just about avoiding pain, it's about all the little things that add up. A guy who isn't fighting a sore back by 3 PM is way more likely to spot a label error or not rush a safety check. That old mindset saw a chair as a cost, but really it's like buying back an hour of good work from every person, every single day. The real cost was always in that tired, sloppy final stretch.
That's a total shift in thinking, but it makes sense. Read a study in an industry magazine that tracked warehouse order pickers before and after getting proper chairs. The ones with bad seats had way more reports of lower back pain (you know, the kind that just becomes a nagging ache all day) and their productivity actually dipped in the last two hours of a shift. Goes to show that old foreman was wrong about more than just seats, he was wrong about what keeps people working well.