Meraki Coffee Co. has a variety of furniture but all are metal frame chairs and similar in size.

In “If the Chair Fits: Sexism in American Office Furniture Design,” Kaufmann-Buhler discusses the history and perpetuation of idealized and gendered furniture in office environments. From the advent of the white collar office environments, hierarchy was embedded into office designs but, Kaufmann-Buhler argues, even the embrace of the open plan office resulted in gendered hierarchy. The elimination of individual offices reduced the hierarchy of space but the desks maintained a certain status associated with the task and person sitting at that desk. Even the chairs, which she argues embody the human form, hold a “class” to them. These “classes” of chairs include the executive chair, made for a man, and the secretarial chair, made for a woman. This also led to the design of such pieces to position a woman as a beautiful object within the space rather than focusing on the comfort while doing the work. The root of these gendered pieces of furniture was the type of task associated with one gender. But even as more women have entered various industries of office work as executives and employees and not just secretaries, the perpetuation of gendered furniture has remained due to the long-lasting nature of office furniture.

In Meraki Coffee Co., a cafe in Downtown Eugene, the chairs and furniture within the space have only a small variety to accommodate different sizes of users. While this could be a purely aesthetic choice for consistency throughout the space, the lack of variety results in an exclusion of certain groups of people. Especially being metal framed chairs, comfort is not the highest priority, which may be intentional to prevent users from staying within the space for very long. This tactic is seen in design, especially in places with higher populations of unhoused people. As an architectural move, oftentimes metal elements are used to prevent unhoused people from sleeping or “loitering” in and around buildings. As a cafe in Downtown Eugene, Meraki has a higher potential for the unhoused population to come in for warmth, use the facilities, and get something to eat or drink. And even though the furniture selection could likely be based solely on aesthetics, it comes to question the exclusionary effects of furniture towards specific groups of people.