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We all know the struggle. It doesn’t matter what month or season it is — it could be negative degrees in the middle of winter or triple digits in mid-August, but your office is freezing cold. Although you may be in a sleeveless top and a pencil skirt to brave the heat walking from your car, your warmest cardigan has a permanent place on the back of your office chair. At previous jobs, my desk has been so cold that I’ve resorted to hauling in a space heater and a warm blanket to use, because I physically cannot handle how cold the office is. In hundred-plus degree Southern summer heat, we all know it’s not to save on the electricity bill – no, it’s to suit the men.
We’ve all had the temperature debates with our boyfriends, male friends, or husbands in our houses or in our cars – we’re cold, they’re hot, and whoever makes the biggest fit about it is going to win. Unfortunately, it isn’t that way in the office. Some scientists decided to get to work on this temperature problem and figured out what exactly is going on. It turns out that the majority of office buildings set their temperature lower based on a formula using the metabolic rate of the average male.
This formula was developed in the sixties, when most office employees were men, and if there were female office members, they likely weren’t at the executive or decision-making level. If you’re really interested in the science and want to check out the formula, you can do so here, but the TL;DR version that you came here for is that this formula that was used to calculate office temperature did so based on what, biologically, was the most comfortable for the men in the office. And 50 years later, we haven’t changed it one bit, although women now make up half of the workforce.
To prove that the women weren’t just nagging all of the men in their lives, these male scientists put them to the test. They studied their metabolic rates, and as it turns out, they’re significantly different than the metabolic rates for men, meaning that they actually DO need warmer working temperatures – most women were physiologically most comfortable at around 75 degrees, as opposed to the 70 degrees that the men prefer.
So if half of the workforce prefers one temperature while the other half prefers another, how do we resolve this problem? Our scientists have come up with two options. First, we could adapt the formula used to calculate the average metabolic rate of all of the office workers, which would, of course, now include the females, raising the average office temperature by a couple of degrees. However, they recognize that we’re still in a male-dominated society and that seems unlikely, so they offered an alternative – err in favor of the environment. Scientists believe that the excessive use of A/C in the summer is harming the environment and contributing to global warming (as well as higher electric bills), so we should be raising the temperatures anyway for the sake of the Earth.
For the sake of the fairer, harder-working, and prettier sex, let’s all agree to raise the office temperatures just a teensy bit, because yes, we really are freezing cold. We’ll stop wearing ridiculous looking snuggies in our offices, and we may just quit complaining – and if that’s not worth being slightly warm, I don’t know what is..
[via New York Times]
Image via Shutterstock
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Steph W.
Steph W. is a new Master's degree graduate with an intern's salary and six-figure taste. She realizes her expectations far exceed reality, so she spends her days pinning away Loubs she pretends are in her physical closet instead of her virtual one. Her hobbies include attempting to trapping her boyfriend into marriage before he finds out how insane she is and pretending that Black Box wine tastes as good as the kind she could afford when she was gainfully employed. Send her tips for getting out of student debt at recruitchairtsm@gmail.com
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The men don’t control the AC, violent menopausal women do. And they want it at 60.
One: Men in finance jobs usually wear suit and ties, which is basically two more layers than women are wearing anyways (men’s shirts are typically long-sleeved).
Two: How hard is it to put on a jacket?
Whoa whoa pump the breaks. The “harder-working” sex?
Any credibility she had, completely gone now
You can always put more clothes on. Can only take so many off
Get the hell out of here. While I’m walking 10 blocks after getting off the 120 degree subway, the only thing I’m looking forward too is walking into the AC at full blast. I’m not walking into a lukewarm environment in my full suit and tie with dress socks that are drenched by 9am. While on the streets, I see Women wearing less layers than some people do at the beach. Wear more if you want, because I can’t wear less.
If it’s hot in the office, everyone suffers. If it’s cold, put on a sweater and call it a day.
Disclaimer: I sleep with the AC at 60 over the summer, so yea that’s who I am.
BINGO! Many moons ago, I could handle the heat. Then, after my last trip to the sandbox, the switch flipped. I’d take a beating with a brick stick over having to be outside at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in August. But in the winter, I can hang out in blue jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt at 25°.
Cool to 72. Heat to 68.
You can argue, “Put on a sweater” all you want, but it’s like any argument I’ve been in about the toilet seat. The solution is so obvious and minor, you wonder why is it even being discussed.
We have casual dress at my agency. Guys can’t wear sorts but girls are free to wear skirts / dresses / flip flops / whatever. I snap when female coworkers complain about the AC
Fine, then I get to wear shorts and a golf shirt to work.
The women in my office have space heaters running in August.
Shhhhhhhh… don’t let the women find out our secret plan to freeze them out of the office and back to the home.