Welcome to my sit-stand desk nightmare

The term nightmare has so many meanings that it would be a nightmare to even try to list them all.

My current nightmare is a bourgeois nightmare of sorts. My Hanukkah gift to myself—a $599 sit-stand desk—had a major malfunction. A $1,000 Apple cinema display was almost lost along the way. And the desk replacement the furniture store delivered wasn't even new. Its surface was a couple of degrees off, too. And the motor sounded like it was going to explode while lifting two 27-inch Apple monitors and a 24-inch Dell screen.

I had been searching for a sit-stand desk for perhaps as long as two years. The ones I scoped out ranged from $1,500 to $3,500—a price too steep for my bank account. I stumbled onto the Scandinavian Designs model while doing a honey-do with my girlfriend. She wanted to check out a couch at the shop's East Bay, California, floor.