In mid-August, we evacuated our temporary trailer offices and moved into the shiny new office complex at work. i’m enjoying my daily climb* to the third floor as a bonus workout, and my frequent treks down one floor to hit the only functioning coffee pot in the building.
Despite a few growing pains**, it’s generally been fine – except for a recently discovered glitch with building temperature control.
With a turn in the weather, we are now freezing our collective nutsacks off. It’s become a bit unpleasant, and i’ve taken to wearing a jacket in the office. Today was the chilliest day so far. As we were huddled near the copier for warmth, i was struck by a grand plan to solve the temporary problem, while garnering sufficient management attention to get it solved permanently.
Cornering the kid on the “Morale” committee, i asked him when there would be another fundraiser, selling clothing with the organizational logo.
MoraleBoy: We usually do the logo sale in the fall – we’re due for another one.
daisyfae: Forget the golf shirts and denim crap with the embroidered logo. i want “Snuggies“. If we’re all hunkered down in a staff meeting, wearing organizationally sanctioned blankets with sleeves? Someone is bound to get the message.
* Fifty six steps up. At least twice a day, since i go to the gym every day at lunch. Plus an additional twenty eight steps down to the coffee pot. i made a vow when moving in that i would NEVER use the elevator, choosing instead to augment my daily workout. Silly me. File that under “what the fuck was i thinking?”
** i’m now in a cube ranch. Private phone conversations? No such thing. Seeing as i swear like a sailor when yakking with certain colleagues, i’m afraid i’m teaching the young engineers across the wall some new vocabulary words… What’s not to like about yet another opportunity to earn a few “hostile workplace” points”?
Trailer Park Refugee 
What a brilliant way to make a point. Those Snuggies not only keep you warm, they also hide a lot of sins. And I’m talking as a bloke!
excellent point! should anyone get too excited about the science, then there’s no embarassment…
Jay Leno had the best Snuggie joke: It’s like wearing a robe backwards! I wish I had invented the Snuggie. I’d be posting this comment from the South Pacific instead of suburban New Jersey.
i like the ones for dogs. i think if you’d even invented the dog snuggie, you’d at least be in the bahamas…
Are you stopping on every landing to do push ups and squats?
She does alternate flights walking on her hands doing push-ups. . .
not exactly. i spend a lot of time outside the door on the third floor catching my breath before i walk past the others to my cube…
You could all cuddle ….. wouldn’t that be nice ……. arrrrrrr
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
You may overestimate your management. They could see this as a great way to drop the thermostat even further. You might win an award, and public recognition as the employee who brought the snuggie to the workplace. On the plus side, no pants required, but you might want to bring your own chair to meetings.
we’ll need to swap out the cloth chairs for something more hygenic. like polycarbonate-coated kevlar. ewww….
I got a kick thinking about you guys huddled around the copier rubbing your hands over it. My office is freezing. The air conditioning never works right. Even in the dead of winter, the vent over my desk spews cold air down on me. It’s a good thing my metabolism is high or I’d probably freeze solid at the keyboard.
we have a ‘push – pull’ heating and air conditioning system to manage the humidity, so it never seems right. i’ve learned over the years to keep a warm sweater at my desk – even in the summer. but this is a bit much…
I’m always hot and sweaty. I spend all day fighting with the chick in the office next to me about the thermostat. I turn it down, she turns it up, I sprinkle arsenic on her sandwich in the frig, she tries to blow up my car…
i like it! why muck around with the sneaky little thermostat wars. kick it up a notch!
Did you just say you’re freezing your nutsack off? nice one. i know ways to re-attach if need be. Figure you’d be a fine mentor to all those bright eyed engineers right out of school, who better than to lead by example than you Ms. Daisy, who i ask? no one that’s who.
that’s one of the phrases that actually freaks out my son, so i use it a lot. as in “Lick my sweaty nutsack, motherfucker”, while driving… i dunno about the mentoring. i think i’ve become ‘that guy’. the one who used to be good…
You could tell the bright eyed newbies that you will mentor their nutsack. Then laugh maniacallly
That’s funny.
Welcome to The Park, Doug! Kono is a pretty brilliant dude….
I know of people who bring a space heater to work and put it under their desk because even in the summer they are freezing to death.
I think you cuss on the phone so that maybe they’ll move you out of the cube ranch and into your very own corner office. . . Young engineers should be eddicated to the real world anyway.
we are forbidden from having space heaters due to the fire hazard. awhile ago, in a similar situation, i brought an electric heating pad to the office and sat on it – but was a little afraid that an ill-timed sneeze would lead to my electrocution!
A cube farm, eh? Couldn’t you just tear a few bits of wood off some of the partions and start a fire in a wastebin? That’d get the bugger’s attention.
i suppose we could turn the big metal trash can into a ‘smudge pot’, and burn all the paper we normally shred. our partitions are metal and fabric – the toxic cloud would likely kill us all!
Oooh! Oooh! The metal smudge pot burning normally shredded paper! What a good idea. I’m pretty sure that that would set off the fire alarms and sprinkler systems thereby earning you all an afternoon off that you could spend in a nice warm bar somewhere.
i’m liking this approach more and more, as we continue to shiver ourselves silly…
Freezing offices is why I have an arsenal of hockey jerseys at my disposal, and they’re much more fashionable than snuggies.
the big quilted flannel ‘woobie’ stays in the jeep this time of year – but i suppose i could start wearing into the building…
I wish my place of work was cool….but it’s not…it’s hot all the time….like sweaty drippy hot….not nice
restaurants are the new sweatshops… i’d rather be chilled than sweaty any day!
There is a morale committee?! Does it organize company branded, whiskey filled hip flasks to get the workers thru the day?….
I wish my last workplace had one of those instead of all those *inspiration* plaques
i despise the motivational posters. thankfully, our committees only raise funds for the holiday party and the summer picnic. i like the flask idea, though, and may have to suggest that for a future logo item!
Whahahaha – the mental picture. Dais, I want pictures.
it could happen… they are seriously considering doing this! i was STUNNED when the idea came up as a joke by my young morale guy, and the rest of the committe apparently loved it!
I always had the opposite problem at work. The three of us ladies in the dental office all suffered from hot flashes. It would have been heaven to work in an environment where it was cold enough to hang meat.
renting out space as a meatlocker? hadn’t thought of that, but we could also end up getting awards for reducing costs by eliminating the freezer in the canteen…
I must have the Goldilocks syndrome, I like my temperature ‘just right’. But this is not a perfect world, so I have both a fan and a space heater at my disposal. However, I do work from home so I have the freedom to do what I want….like make comments on blogs when I should be on my work computer doing very important excel spread sheets on various food items. yee-haw!
working from home? i’d stay in my underwear and under the comforter all winter long… and sleep when i want to, and probably get fired, or go broke.
I would take a trailer office over a cube ranch any day. Snuggies? That’s what long underwear and long sleeve t-shirts are for. They look good with skirts and blouses too, but only if you wear them underneath.
we’re all still bundled up… the snuggie movement is picking up steam, and i suspect they’ll be selling the Logo Snuggies within a month! and i miss the trailer office – very, very much. it was fun out there…we presented it as a hardship gig, but in fact, we all LOVED it!
Brrrrr. I work in a horribly ventilated newspaper plant, which isn’t really a newspaper plant anymore as we now outsource our printing. But the building itself is ancient, and the temperature cannot be regulated. During the summer, we wear jackets and fingerless gloves. And in the winter, T-shirts and tanks. I regularly retreat to the restroom to run my hands under cold or hot water, depending.
sounds awful…. but at least it’s consistent, and you aren’t surprised from one day to the next. since we have laboratories, we also have to have tight control of humidity, so when the systems break down on humid summer days? in the past, we’ve gotten condensation so heavy it seems like it’s rained inside the building…