When the weather in office is frightful
Justin Blum and Amy Joyce

THEY walk among us: wearers of long johns, tucked neatly under suit pants, blouses and jackets. Smugglers of space heaters, sneaking the small appliances to hide under their desks.

They are the cold ones who, despite 21st-century jobs, are stuck in 20th-century buildings, with 20th-century heating and cooling systems that make workers sweat and freeze—sometimes in the same day.

They search for gloves thin enough to allow them to type, but thick enough that they can feel their fingers. They hang the old office sweater on their chairs year-round. They try in vain to move the unmovable thermostat.

On the other end of the thermometer are the office suffocaters. Despite freezing temperatures outside, despite their desk fans and their pleadings to turn that darn heat off, they are the ones stripped down to T-shirts and flip-flops by the afternoon.

In this era of low-rise cubicles and open-space offices, workers sit exposed to the elements in their personal Dilbertesque spaces. Making everyone comfortable is nearly impossible, thanks to huge heating and air-conditioning systems that can be quirky, outdated and cumbersome.

"Either it’s too hot or too cold,’’ says industrial psychologist Bruce Katcher, who has surveyed employees at a dozen workplaces about office temperature.

"You can never please everybody,’’ he says. "It’s like the Three Bears—it’s hard to get it just right.’’

So employees try to get it right for themselves.

Coping with the elements

Some stack books atop floor vents. Others bring an entire wardrobe to work to put on and take off as necessary.

Many try to change the temperature on a nearby thermostat that actually connects to ... nothing. Dummy thermostats exist, engineers admit.

Jen McNamara, a program analyst, has spent four years trying to outwit a powerful vent whose cold winds have buffeted her head every day. She tried to duct-tape cardboard over it. The air immediately blew off the makeshift shield. She tried attaching a harder plastic cover at an angle. The air found its way around to her anyway. A co-worker was told by building management that it couldn’t be fixed. (And then was admonished for trying to put something over it.) Another nearby co-worker called her cold, windy cubicle "the bus stop.’’

McNamara donned a fleece, sometimes buttoning her coat over it. Finally, she and her co-workers started to march into the building with space heaters.

Higher energy costs this winter are leading some employers to turn temperate zones into tundras—at least in the view of some chill-prone workers.

"Sometimes, when you’re dealing with a workspace where there are cubicles, you may have a complaint from one of the tenants in one of the areas that is conflicting with a tenant 30 feet away,’’ says Harold Nelson, vice-president and director of operations for office buildings in a leading firm. "You’re looking for a midpoint that will make them both happy.’’

Then there’s the gender factor. Women are more likely to be colder than their male colleagues, at least partly because they frequently wear dresses and skirts that do not cover the lower legs.

Daniel Int-Hout, chief engineer for a air-handling company, explains that warm air rises off the body, drawing colder air from the floor to the body. "As you’re sitting there, you’re bringing air across the floor,’’ he says. "Air at the floor is drawn to your ankles. The guys could care less,’’ thanks to their socks and pants.

Freddie Mac’s suburban headquarters may be the envy of the temperature-sensitive: It can create micro-environments.

If an employee is especially cold, he or she can call the building engineers.

The engineers locate that person on the building map and read the temperature and air volume in that area. From that they can determine if there is an equipment malfunction or if the space is just cold, and turn up the heat in that specific area.

"As the sun comes up on the east (side), we balance (the temperature) as it passes over the building," says Bill Menda, vice president of corporate properties and facilities management. "We get a greenhouse effect during the day.’’

But many workers toil in buildings that are too old for such high-tech air systems.

Employees at a L’Enfant Plaza building are suffering major office temperature fluctuations, said one employee who didn’t want to give her name because her employer is "wary about publicity,’’ and signed a super-secret, deep-background e-mail as "Scratchy Throat.’’

When she and her co-workers get to the office, the place is 65 degrees or so. But at quitting time? It’s 79.9 degrees, sometimes more.

How does she know? A repairman left his thermometer behind one day. The co-workers temporarily absconded with it to measure the temperatures as further proof the next time they called to complain.

"I never know what to wear, because last week, the heat was down for two days and we were freezing, then they fixed it (and I use that term loosely) and anyone in a sweater was sweaty,’’ she wrote in an e-mail.

Co-workers have decked the place out with devices and apparel to make it through the day: fans, cooling humidifiers, space heaters for the mornings, extra sweaters and coats. Some have flip-flops under their desks for warm afternoons.

And the manager? "She deals with the same thing as well,’’ the employee says. "When she walks out and sees us all lethargic, she understands.’’