Diksha Sundriyal
In HBO’s ‘The Chair Company,’ a common man gets deeply invested in unraveling a conspiracy after an embarrassing incident at work. The protagonist is Ron Trosper, who has a big project coming up. He is a family man, with his daughter’s rehearsal dinner on the horizon and his son getting ready to go to college. He is also doing well in his professional life, and overall, there is a lot to look forward to. But then, one thing brings everything apart, leading him on an entirely unexpected path. SPOILERS AHEAD.
An Embarrassing Incident at Work Shakes Up Ron Trosper’s Life
Ron Trosper has dinner with his family at a restaurant. It is a celebration for a major project at work, which he is leading. He is tense and evidently anxious, and it becomes embarrassingly awkward when he gets into an argument. It happens when a waitress comes to their table after recognizing Seth, Ron’s son, who played very well in the last game. Not wishing to steal the limelight from his father, Seth tells the girl about his upcoming project to build a mall. When the waitress says that she cannot remember the last time she went to a mall, Ron tries to convince her that she must have, but she doesn’t know it. It turns into a whole thing as the waitress insists that she would have known if she were in a mall, while Ron says otherwise. The evening ends with him getting the remaining deviled eggs packed for home, and everyone calls it a night.
The next day, Ron shows up at work, where he is hyped by his coworkers for the presentation that is about to take place in a few minutes. As they leave, an older employee named Douglas tells Ron that he, too, was in line for promotion, but now that Ron is getting it, he has decided not to take his job so seriously. As an initiative to become more fun, he has brought a bubble pen, which he now carries around his neck at all times. Then they move on to the presentation, where Ron presents the project. Everything goes well until Ron ends his speech and returns to his chair, which snaps, causing him to fall flat on the floor. It takes him a minute to process everything, during which he unintentionally peeks up his colleague’s skirt.
Ron gets up, shrugs it off by making a joke, and the presentation moves forward. He contains himself for the time being, but then rushes back to his office, where he hides under his table while chiding himself for the mess up on what is perhaps his most important day in office. When his colleagues come looking for him, he continues hiding and then slips out of the office, choosing not to attend the party. When his wife texts him, he tells her that everything went well and he must attend the party while their son is being scouted at the school game. He goes home and relives the incident in his mind all over again.
Ron Tries to Hold the Chair Company Accountable
The next day, Ron arrives at the office, where he finds his team waiting for him. He is updated about the project, which is officially going to begin now. He is asked to hire a security firm to protect the site, among other important things. When he turns towards his desk, he makes a joke about the chair, which brings some levity to the room. Everyone is relieved that he is alright and is making jokes about the incident, but when they start to make jokes, things get serious. Ron points out that had it been Doris, an older employee, she would most likely have died from the fall. As the tone grows somber, the employees decide to return to work.
Now that the broken chair is back on his mind, he decides to take a look at it. He goes back to the presentation hall and finds the chair. He takes its picture, which is when he notices the brand’s name, Tecca, written on it. He has a weird conversation with a man from the cleaning staff, who starts talking about his wheelbarrow. When Ron gets back to the office, he looks up the company, finds their website, and finds their contact number. When he calls it, someone from National Business Solutions picks it up. When he asks to be put in contact with Tecca, explaining the incident that happened with his employee, he is told that they cannot connect him. The phone conversation goes on for a few minutes, during which Ron doesn’t get what he wanted, and he becomes even more agitated.
When the call ends, he scours through the website, but there is nothing that can lead him to contact the company. He goes home distressed, and when his son tries to talk to him about the college, he brushes him off, saying that he is too busy at work. He goes back to the website where he talks with the online customer service, which reroutes him to the main page of the website. The chat is entirely unhelpful, and eventually, Ron finds an email address. He writes a long email, detailing everything, including how he could have died from the fall. However, when he sends it, the email is found to be invalid. The next day, Ron calls the number from the website again, and this time, a man answers. He tells Ron that if he can show proof of danger to a person from the chairs, then perhaps the company will contact him themselves. This gives Ron hope, and he turns his attention to Doris.
Ron’s Obsession with the Chair Company Makes Him Unhinged
Doris is an old employee, and Ron believes she can be his subject to prove that the chairs are dangerous. He tells another employee, Jamie, to get snacks for everyone, believing that it would lead Doris to get up from her station. He gets ready to film it, but she never gets up. Irritated, he goes back to Jamie and tells her to bring cookies, not granola like the last time. While a little perturbed, Jamie does as asked. Again, Ron gets ready to film Doris, but before she can get up, Douglas shows up and starts to chat with her. He keeps her entertained with the bubbles, and by that time, everyone comes back, and Jamie hands Doris’ cookie to her.
This angers Ron, and he storms out of the office, shouting at Douglas to stop his bubbles game. When the old man tries to calm him down, Ron pulls the pen off his neck, hurting him in the process. The entire office sees it and feels bad for Douglas, while Ron also realizes that he has crossed a line. As if this wasn’t enough to make him feel bad, an employee shows up at his office. This is the woman whose skirt he saw up when he fell, and she tells him that while she knows it wasn’t intentional on his part, she needs to report it to Diane from HR. She also lets it know that it happened to be her birthday that day. This makes Ron even more flustered, and he sneaks out of the office after watching Douglas talk to their boss about the pen thing.
At home, Ron goes through the photos of his daughter for her rehearsal dinner. He Googles an emotional song for the video, and as he hears it while looking at the photos, he starts crying. A comment on the song talks about how time goes by so fast, and Ron comments that it really does. He also adds the part about not being able to do something with one’s life. As he goes through the pictures, he chances upon one with him in the office. There is a Tecca chair in the background, and to his surprise, there is an address written on the chair. Now that he finally has something concrete to contact them, Ron decides to visit them right away. Before leaving, he eats the deviled eggs he’d gotten from the restaurant a couple of nights back and drives to the chair company’s office.
Ron’s Investigation Takes an Unexpected Turn
When Ron arrives at the chair company’s office, he finds it entirely empty. There is nothing and no one there. A copier has explicit photos of unknown people, and he takes their pictures. There is a giant red ball in one corner, but nothing else. While Ron wonders where the chairs are, his stomach growls. It seems that the egg was bad, and now, he sits on the toilet stall, embarrassed about what he is doing. When he hears someone else enter a different stall, he shoves toilet paper in his pants and runs away. He reaches the office in the morning, where he goes to the toilet to dispose of the paper. When he comes out, he has Jamie waiting for him. She tells him to meet Brenda, their boss, about something serious. At first, Ron thinks it may have something to do with Douglas or the woman with the skirt incident. But it turns out to be about his laxity.
He did not hire a security firm for the site, and now there is an incident. The previous night, a group of teenagers got drunk on the site, and one of them almost died of alcohol poisoning. To make matters worse, they had a teacher with them, who was drinking with his shirt off. Brenda points out that Ron cannot afford to mess things up. They have already taken a chance on him, given how he took a year-long break, during which he tried to start an Adventure and Jeep Tours Company out of his garage, mortgaged his family’s house, and built one rope bridge out in the woods. She asks him to focus on the job, and he realizes how sidetracked he had become from the things that actually matter.
When he leaves Brenda’s office, he deletes the pictures of the broken chair and tells himself that he must focus on his work and his family. That night, as he leaves the office building, he is followed by a strange man who tells him to stop looking into the chair company. The man hits him, and for a minute, Ron goes blank. But when he comes to, he sees the man walking away and runs after him. While he gets his hands on the strange man, the latter takes his shirt off, leaving it in Ron’s hand and running away into the night. Now, however, Ron’s doubts about the company are validated, which means the search must continue.
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