As
much as the world needs a fat pill to get us back into shape, I
would suggest to you that what is needed even more is something
which could help balance the body temperatures between men and
women.
Now, this may
not seem to be any big deal to you, particularly if you happen
to live in the Sahara desert or the Amazon rain forest, but for
the rest of us it’s a national tragedy of the first degree. I
would venture to say that there are very few places in this
country where you could put both men and women inn the same room
and have them agree on the correct and most comfortable
temperature. If it’s too cold for the men, it’s too hot for
women. If it’s too hot for the men, then you can bet your bottom
dollar it will be too cold for the women.
I am currently
writing this from an office that has had no less than six visits
from the building management office within the past six weeks.
Why? Good question.
There are two
seasons of the year where the problem is a little easier to
manage. Those seasons are summer and winter. The outside weather
helps to moderate the inside temperature. The other two seasons
aren’t as simple as those just mentioned. Obviously we’re
talking about fall and spring. When those roll around the
problem gets intensified by the fact that one day it’s cold and
the next day warm again. In our office we’d like to see some
sort of electronic thermostat, which could electrocute the
person who sneaks in, and attempts to change the settings during
the day. The men can set the dial on something sensible such as
say, 72 degrees and within an hour or so, it gets moved up to 75
degrees by the Phantom Thermostat Person. Not one of these women
in our office will step forward and admit to changing it. Oh,
we’ve tried to catch them in the act without success. We’ve even
considered putting peanut butter on the knobs so we could tell
who might be doing it. Then we’d see one of them licking their
fingers as they are walking down the hall. We ruled this idea
out after more thought.
The other day,
the women were bundled up with shawls and jackets while the men
were burning up and drinking gallons of iced tea and cold water.
Again we called the management office to come and help us before
someone got violent. This time they had had their fill of us and
sent some type of airflow specialist. In about three hours he
finally ‘balanced’ the load and got everyone back at his or her
desks. Not without an unusual amount of mumbling and muttering,
I must admit. I hate it when grown men and women mutter and
mumble. The thought always occurs to me that this must have been
a problem going back thousands of years. At least we are in a
position to make it more livable than it might have been for the
caveman. Can you envision how tough it was to control the
temperature in a cave? No wonder those guys looked so bad. I bet
they went on long distance hunting parties for months just to
escape the agonies of temperature differential syndrome. (TDS)
This might very well be the reason our American Indians roamed
all over the west. Truth to tell, they probably weren’t mad at
the white man for moving in on the land, but tremendously hacked
at the idea that civilization was putting the kibosh on their
weeks out in the field away from Mama when she was in one of her
moods. I bet if we checked out the facts of the massacre at
Little Big Horn, the Indians were mad at Custer for putting them
in a position, which might have required them to go home earlier
than they had anticipated. You know what happened to Custer.
Anyway, when
the air conditioning guy was leaving the other day, I asked him
if this was a common occurrence and he assured me that indeed,
it was. He offered to put a fake thermostat in the office where
the women worked so they could adjust it anytime they wanted to
do so, but it wouldn’t change the real setting. We said no, we’d
work though this. Winter was coming on soon.
