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About this tool
Pick the right cafe table height for your body, size the cushion and riser you need, and time your breaks.
The Cafe Working Posture Routine ranks the three standard commercial seating heights — dining (about 75 cm with a 45 cm chair), counter (about 89 cm with a 64 cm stool) and bar (about 104 cm with a 75 cm stool) — against your own seated elbow height, then sizes the cushion, footrest and laptop riser needed to close whatever gap remains. Elbow, eye and popliteal heights are derived from your body height using 50th-percentile adult proportions, and screen height comes from the laptop diagonal, so the riser figure is real rather than generic. Break counts follow the 20-20-20 eye rule and the general advice to change posture at least every 30 minutes.
Open Cafe Working Posture Routine on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter Your height (cm) between 120 and 220, pick Where you are sitting from Dining-height table with a normal chair (75 cm), Counter-height table with a mid stool (89 cm) or Bar-height table with a tall stool (104 cm), and set How long you will stay (minutes).
Add Laptop screen size (inches) and Eye-to-screen distance (cm), then tick 'I have a separate keyboard with me' if you carry one — without it the riser figure is marked usable only with a separate keyboard.
Read Best seat in the house for you, then the rows for 'Sit on something this thick', Footrest height, 'Raise the laptop by', Downward gaze angle and the eye breaks (every 20 min) and posture breaks (every 30 min) counts. Copy result takes the set-up with you.
Compares all three standard heights against your elbow height so the seat choice is made before you sit down.
Cushion and footrest heights are given in centimetres, so a jacket or a book becomes a measured adjustment.
If you have no separate keyboard, the tool says so rather than telling you to raise the laptop anyway.
Pick the table whose surface is closest to your seated elbow height. For someone 175 cm tall that is usually a counter-height table with a mid stool: the elbow lands about 87 cm above the floor against an 89 cm table, versus a 7 cm shortfall at a standard 75 cm dining table.
Only if the table is genuinely at your elbow height and you can rest your feet. A 75 cm stool leaves most people's feet more than 30 cm off the floor, which pushes weight forward onto the thighs — use the stool's foot ring or move to a lower table.
Only alongside a separate keyboard. On its own, a stand lifts the keys above your elbow height and moves the strain from your neck to your shoulders and wrists — the tool shows the riser figure but marks it unusable when no keyboard is packed.
Look 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes, which is the standard 20-20-20 advice for screen work, and get up to change posture at least every 30 minutes. A two-hour session therefore contains about five eye breaks and three posture breaks.