So somebody at work has just shown me his bike and I can’t believe how long a fork steerer the shop have fitted for him, there’s no way that this can be okay?!

I recently heard on GMBN that 25mm is generally the manufacturers recommended max. Due the the extra leverage it can put on the steerer.
Not sure how true this is but it makes sense.
Adding those steerer extension things looms dangerous to me. Especially for a trail bike. I’d on,y use one for a commuter.

Thorn have always gone down the foot of steerer above the headtube route:

[edit] although that’s without the extender your mate has fitted.

That’s a steerer extender. What’s the issue?

It’s not a very good bike setup and it looks ridiculous. The saddle looks to be about 6 inches below the bars. My guess is that your friend isn’t a serious cyclist and bought a new bike, then didn’t like the bars being at about saddle height, which is where they would be if there wasn’t a steerer extension. Steerer extensions look scary to me, I certainly wouldn’t ride one off-road, but probably fine for just commuting on bike paths. If your friend asked for the bars to be put up that high, you might want to see if you can get them to try riding it with them at normal height for a bit to try to get used to a more normal setup.

It looks like it has one of those stem extender things on it. I did know someone that used one to help with bike fit due to some odd body proportions but they weren’t exactly shredding the gnarr to max. Like one of these:

https://www.evanscycles.com/fwe-stem-riser-1-1-8-EV180192

I guess it must be strong enough and if the person prefers the fit then why not? I guess flex and horrible upright position would render it a bad choice for most people though well before breaking it became an issue.

Its definitely a steerer extender, perfectly fine if you like a “sit up and beg” riding position. Similar to this:-

I had my old stumpjumper 26er set up with one of those for commuting – ugly as ****, but I like to sit as upright as possible when cycling in traffic.

I’m not a “serious” cyclist, but that seating position didn’t slow me down in the slightest – I was far from the slowest commuter out there – you can still duck down in a headwind if you want 🙂

But no I wouldn’t use one for proper off-roading either – handling would be crap for that, and I would be paranoid about both safety and bending the steerer.

i have one of them extenders on my cargo bike. its solid – but then its bolted to a set of Surly Krampus forks.

Looks like a decent position for folks to get riding if they have say – a bad back or bad hands/arms/shoulders that they need to keep weight off.

I recently heard on GMBN that 25mm is generally the manufacturers recommended max. Due the the extra leverage it can put on the steerer.

Well GMBN are talking cobblers. There will only be a few stems that are less than 25mm in height, and that’s without even a minimum of spacers under it.

The OPs work colleague might have a medical condition that stops them being in the “correct” position, or the shop have sold them the wrong sized bike. Also don’t rule out the customer being right.