CSotD: Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?
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In case you thought Canadians all came pre-packaged in down parkas, toques and mukluks, Sandra Bell Lundy cites a conflict familiar on both sides of the border in today's "Between Friends."
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, but it was too damn hot to wear it.
These days, I can be completely neutral on this topic: I live alone, except for the dog, who seems happy at any temperature although he is very young and does not yet know of the existence of fireplaces.
And there is no thermostat in my apartment anyway; It's part of a larger house, heated by radiators, and the thermostat is in the landlord's half.
Which is fine with me, because they pay the utilities. If you pick up the tab, you can set the thermostat any place you want, so long as I'm free to open a door now and then, or to plug in a space heater.
But thermostat wars are a constant feature of office life, at least here in the Northeast, and in my days working in an office, I became as battle-scarred as anyone else.
At one paper where I worked, though, they seemed to have inadvertantly come up with a system that worked very, very well: The newsroom, backshop and printing presses were in one building. Across the parking lot was a second building that housed advertising and circulation.
As much as we'd all like things to be 50/50 in life, they aren't. Practically speaking, news and production are male-dominated fields. Advertising and circulation are female-dominated.
Which meant that entering the news/production building was like stepping into a meat locker, while the advertising/circ building was like the tropical bird building at the zoo. The majority of people were happy with this arrangement, and I suppose the utilities averaged out.
I was, however, one of the misfits: A male working in circulation. I was in an open workspace along with my assistant, a young woman; a male salesman who spent most of his time out on the road; his artist, a middle-aged woman; and three 20-something women marketers. Which means that, except for about an hour and a half each day when Tom was at his desk, it was five-to-one in favor of having the thermostat set in the high 70s.
Things have come to a pretty pass, I must say, when middle-aged men are begging attractive young women to put on some more damn clothes ferchrissake. These heatseekers, however, were not in slacks-and-sweaters, but in the same fashionable short skirts and light blouses they wore in August.
Okay, not exactly the same ones. But they weren't in sweaters, either, and, after turning the thermostat back down to 72 yet again, a temperature I thought was a pretty good compromise, since it's halfway between 68 and 76, I made an announcement: If they persisted in setting it back at 76 and 78, I was going to start showing up for work in a wifebeater.
The fact that I outranked them all did not quell an outburst of horrified giggling.
But the fact that they knew my penchant for odd displays of willful behavior did mean that they weren't sure I wouldn't follow through, and the thermostat stayed at 72.
Which was still too damn hot, but, after all, I was the one flaunting gender stereotypes by working there.
Yes, I am blaming the victim.
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