While out for a jog the other day (a jog that turned into a sprint when a German shepherd came after me), I noticed a “For Lease” sign sitting in the empty window of a failed restaurant. After the dog got distracted and ran after a bicyclist, I strolled back to the restaurant and peered in the window.

I knew that restaurant. I almost had a meal there once. I really wanted to have that meal, too, but it was not to be. I think I know why the restaurant didn’t succeed. And the reason is startling.

You see, in this struggling economy, with its intermittent shortages of gas, water and cash, there is yet another shortage that has gone unreported –until now. This story is a stunner. Are you sitting down? Well, chances are you are not. And here’s why:

A few years ago, my wife and I made reservations at a restaurant we had never been to before. We made the reservations for four. But an hour before we arrived, a fifth person decided to join us. We figured that wouldn’t be a problem, so we all hopped into the car together and headed to the restaurant. As we walked up to the entrance, I noticed a sign in the window that read “Help Wanted.” Experts say that whenever you see such a sign in a restaurant window – or funeral home – you should run back to your car as fast as possible and drive away. We didn’t. We entered and a hostess met us immediately.

“We’re the Cashman party,” I told her. “We have reservations for four, but there are actually five of us.”

The hostess looked stricken. “Five? But we don’t have enough chairs for five!”

I looked around the restaurant, which was perhaps only half-full. “What about all those empty chairs?” I said, pointing to dozens of them. “Couldn’t we just grab one of those?”

“That wouldn’t work, “ she said. “We have just enough chairs for each table, and we have other customers coming.”

I tried again. “But isn’t there just one more chair some place? Maybe in the kitchen or outside the back door where your employees go to smoke?”

The hostess was resolute. “We have no other chairs.”

“How about a cardboard box?” I begged.

“Goodbye,” she said.

I thanked her and our party of five shuffled out the door.

The warning signs were obvious back then. I just didn’t pick up on them. Ladies and gentlemen, we are running out of chairs! It seems to be true. Big companies are discovering that no matter how many people they lay off, they are still always two or three chairs short for their staff meetings.

A colleague reports that he was recently released from a high-tech firm he had worked at for 10 years. “They told me it wasn’t poor job performance or decreased revenues,” he said. “They said they simply couldn’t find a place for me to sit.”

Remember how network TV news anchors like Walter Cronkite used to deliver the news sitting down? Increasingly, you see people like Charles Gibson and Katie Couric being forced to do their newscasts standing up. Perhaps with TV revenues not as high as they used to be, chairs have become an unjustifiable luxury.

Before long, football games, live theater and even movie theaters will all be standing-room only. It’s already happening at the Sea-Tac airport, with lots of tall tables for quick meals, but no chairs.

Yes my friends, we may soon become a chairless society, standing for haircuts, teeth cleanings, roller coaster rides and minor surgeries. Airplane travelers will no longer be complaining about legroom, but headroom. The bottom line is that I hope my fellow citizens will soon realize that we have an inchoate chair shortage in this country. It’s a shortage that may get even worse once people find out what “inchoate” means.

So take warning: Chairs are endangered. I think sinister forces are quietly removing them. So we must protect and defend the chairs that we do have. Please fight against those who would like to impose chair control in this country. Otherwise, only criminals will have chairs – electric or otherwise.

As I write this from my office chair, I am planting myself firmly upon it, and nobody’s going to take it. Not unless they pry it from my cold, dead – well, you know.

Pat Cashman is a writer, actor and public speaker. He can be reached at pat@patcashman.com