You Know Your Office Air Conditioning Is Working When…
- You find yourself warming your hands on a stack of freshly-printed papers.
- You lower your chair to facilitate ergonomic posture while sitting with your feet tucked into your knees / under your thighs for warmth.
... any more?
- The office regulations against electric heaters inspires one of your cubemates to bring their toaster oven to work “to heat my morning bagels”.
- You cannot get the mental image of Bob Cratchit (Mickey-Mouse version or otherwise) out of your head.
- The pregnant women in the office no longer complain about the heat.
Hah! The toaster idea is a good one - though come to think of it, my office doesn’t have any regulations against electric heaters…
…when three separate people mention a card they saw in the store about office heat/AC wars.
…when mini-heaters are offered to the chillier folks (no joke - I may get one).
…when you have a sweater in your car, in your pack, and at your desk — just in case you forget one.
…the supply of hot drinks is one of the more popular perks, even in July and August.
…when you walk outside to go to the other office and break into a sweat. And, even worse, you begin to plan excuses to allow you to walk there, then change your mind before entering (the AC there is even colder).
I could go on and on. Yes, this is a problem here — why do you ask?
…when, instead of taking off your jacket as you enter the building, you put ON your jacket.
…when you and your co-workers decide to revive the fingerless gloves look.
…when someone jokingly asks to buy the shawl you’re wearing.
All of these were true for me a couple of weeks ago. (Though, in all fairness, it had nothing to do with overzealous air conditioning — it was a hot water pipe issue.)
I can’t really say my office air conditioning is overzealous; the more accurate word is “shitty”. Ventilation is poor and there’s no individual zone control, so if my part of the office is a reasonable temperature it means the side offices are boiling hot. And if it’s a choice between wearing a sweater and warming my hands on Xerox copy, and seeing my coworkers strip nekkid to keep cool, well… I’m hardly anti-nudity but for a variety of reasons, my coworkers are exactly the wrong people for it. I’ll keep my sweaters (two at the desk, one in the car)
At $OLD_COMPANY there was a single setting for a whole building, and it was controlled by the important persons, which sat in the warmth of upstairs while the peasants (dont moi) froze.
Before that, though, $ALMA_MATER’s computer rooms were kept at a temperature that suited the boxen not their operators, so coming second to persons was in fact an upgrade.
Here, we mostly just deal with the heat, but we do not especially live in uninhabitable deserts.