MINNEAPOLIS — A landmark study released Tuesday by the Consortium for Sedentary Furniture Awareness has found that 97 percent of all height-adjustable standing desks currently deployed in American workplaces are operated at a fixed sitting height, their motorized legs fully extended into the air like a table that has simply given up on pretending.

The report, which surveyed more than 14,000 office workers across 38 states, found that the average standing desk has been manually adjusted exactly 1.3 times since purchase — typically during the unboxing, and once more when a coworker wanted to see "how high it goes."

"The standing desk represents one of the most successful marketing achievements in the history of interior furnishings," said Dr. Prentiss Oglesby, Associate Professor of Aspirational Consumer Behavior at the Duluth Institute for Things People Buy But Do Not Use. "People are not buying a desk. They are buying the sensation of being the kind of person who would stand at a desk."

The study further found that 61 percent of standing desk owners have positioned their chair at a height that is technically incorrect for both sitting and standing, placing them in what researchers are now calling "the ergonomic no man's land." An additional 22 percent reported storing the included anti-fatigue mat in a closet, where it serves as a premium, gel-cushioned surface for shoes they also never wear.

"On average, the standing function of a standing desk is used for eleven minutes per year, most of which occur during a phone call in the first week of ownership."

The motorized adjustment mechanism, which typically retails as a premium feature costing several hundred additional dollars, was described by 84 percent of respondents as "something I'm pretty sure still works." Forty-one percent admitted they had forgotten the desk could move at all.

Manufacturers, for their part, remain enthusiastic. A spokesperson for VertaLux Office Solutions, a leading producer of adjustable workstations, declined to comment on the study's findings but noted that the company's newest model features a "SmartRise™ Wellness Reminder" app that sends a push notification every forty-five minutes suggesting the user consider standing, which users can dismiss in under a second.

"We are committed to empowering workers to make healthy choices," the spokesperson said, via email, from what the footer indicated was a sit-stand workstation.

The study also identified a small but passionate cohort — the remaining 3 percent — who do stand at their desks regularly. These individuals were found to exhibit above-average rates of telling coworkers about it unprompted, a behavior researchers noted was "well outside the scope of this particular study, but worth flagging."

The Consortium recommends that employers considering purchasing standing desks instead allocate the equivalent budget toward outdoor seating, adjustable monitor arms, or simply leaving earlier.