These jets are like a fancy car with electric seats, you hit the button and the seat moves up and down. This is not designed primarily for comfort but for the pilots safety. He must move the seat and rudder pedals to a position where he cannot put his fingers under his leg. If the had the space of just the thickness his fingers between the seat and his leg when he pulled the ejection handle, the ejection force would break both his legs just above his knees. Many times upon ejection a pilot will break something anyway, his arm or his leg.
Ejection seats are a last resort, only.
When I went through ejection seat training, I had to do this for a back seat license in the TA-4, we watched many videos on the ejection process. Just like on TV, you see the guy fly out of the aircraft neat and easy. But when they showed the process at normal speeds it looked more like something out a comedy program. The pilots shot out of the airplane at a tremendous speed way faster than what looks real. The films you see in the movies are slowed down to make the ejection process look real.