Sometime between the age of heavy metal desks and cubicles, office air conditioning became impossible to manage. My office has a temperature range so widely abnormal, you can go from Miami to Siberia in a few steps. At one end of the office, women on various rungs of the menopause ladder strip down to within being in violation of the summer dress code, while a few feet away others are wrapped in blankets (really).
I sit near the boss, and he wants the air cranked up. I keep a sweater handy and use it often, with sips from a hot container of tea, to keep away the threat of hypothermia. The consensus is that the law regarding cold summer offices is exclusively a male dominated process. That makes sense, because offices are generally still male dominated places. If that is the case, why don’t men work on roads more often in winter than summer, if they hate sweating so much? Go figure.
If the office dress code is liberal enough in summer, the men can take off their suit jackets and still complain they are hot. Women get to wear short sleeves, but often they have to cover up with blankets.
The summer dress code for women has been a challenge, and it makes me glad not to be on the committee that has to establish what not to wear in the office environment. The code breaks down the legality of clamdiggers and capri pants, the horrors of any kind of denim (skirts included), and whether a toe thong is allowed as part of dress sandals. Men get to take off their jackets and avoid tee shirts, and bare feet in huaraches are out of the question.
Meanwhile the air continues to blast away to keep the men, and our sensitive computers, happy. The rest of us enjoy the winter of 2010 all over again.
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