Baby it's cold inside, especially for women in offices
phys.org
phys.org
It sounds like the situation may improve if the temperature adapts on an annual basis so that the delta between inside and outside isn't so high?
Many people make their employment decisions based on whether the employer offers WFH. But I bet many (but not all) would also accept traditional offices as a decent alternative, at least 1 or 2 days a week.
"First, we analyzed 38,851 responses to the CBE Occupant Survey about satisfaction with temperature from 435 office buildings across 168 cities in the US."
Last place I was at had everyone complaining that it was too cold, but everyone in the front of the office (5 of the 17 people in the office, me being one of them) would absolutely bake in the sun if they turned the AC off since they refused to let us close the blinds because "they face the street and that's our only view".
So we in the front had to put up with the constant complaints about it being cold while we baked as the hot Texas sun beat down on us.
Also, I had no skin in the game to start with, until the micro-managing CEO decided our office layout wasn't ideal and put together a new seating chart with the HR person, assigning seats like it was a damn kindergarten class. I went from being just fine in our little developer row in the back of the office to being put up in the front. Additionally, the four or five most vocal about the cold now were previously right up by the window and rarely complained about the temp before they were moved.
Depends where and when you are! Where I live and in this season cold is saving energy and heating is a huge waste of energy.
Fortunately, a new CEO came in and revised down our 4 page dress code to a single common-sense paragraph: "Employees are prohibited from wearing sweatpants and offensive t-shirts in the office. Personnel who are meeting with clients or presenting at court should wear business-formal attire for those meetings/events. Use common sense for all other times."
Oh, and at the cheaper places, 60% of stuff is for teenagers or college students. Literally.
So, for example, let's take Target as one of the cheaper brands since I was there earlier. For female clothes here are some examples:
[0]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-cropped-turtleneck-pullover... = sweater that looks great until you pick it up and it's a crop top because that's what the kids are into. This is about 30% of what you find.
[1]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-crafted-chunky-knit-cardiga... = looks decent until you check the fabric content and, like any woman's sweater under 80 dollars, it's all plastic so it won't insulate you for shit.
[2] https://www.target.com/p/women-s-crewneck-pullover-sweater-k... = looks fine, but hover over and check o out the sleeve. Look how thin that is; making thin sweaters saves fabric. And again, this is 100% synthetic (and not fleece or other warm polyester; it's acrylic)
So it's basically all that until you spend at least 80 bucks on a single sweater.
There are cheaper things that keep you warm, but you can't wear them to an office:
[3]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-fleece-quarter-zip-sweatshi... [4]https://www.target.com/p/women-s-sherpa-longline-1-2-zip-tun...
Does this make sense?
Work from home has been great though.
The game is equally rigged against men cooling down, as many offices also have formal or informal rules against men wearing short trousers and T-shirts.
I know that used to be a rule many years ago, but I was under the impression that slacks or pantsuits were acceptable business attire for women just about everywhere.
Also as a female that wears both sexes's clothing, the fabric on women's clothing is far thinner and less insulating than the fabric on men's clothing: I'm substantially warmer when I wear men's clothing (but again, that's not professional). On the other hand, women's clothing is softer and stretchier.
I work from home and in my pajamas now, but there are other variables contributing to the male/female office temperature debate.
Personally I think offices should just have 2 or 3 zones and let people work where they're most comfortable. It would probably be the most productive too.
In the summer, it should be warm enough to still be comfortable for folks wearing short sleeves, maybe short pants (depending on how warm it gets outside). It should not be cold indoors in the summer.
Fingerless gloves.
Small heater on the desk.
Blood flow (stand up and stretch more often, or walk around the office more).
Increase core temperature (wear more on the core - it will warm extremities).
One thing that works great for me at home is, compromising on a temperature with my partner such that we're both physically comfortable throughout the day.
Finding an intersection of two preferences is much easier than finding one with 30+ preferences. Me and my wife are extreme opposites but manage to keep the house comfortable for both of us thanks to having our own offices. If we had to share one...
In a lot of circumstances, an office can shuffle people around and modify the HVAC settings to get most people comfortable, but getting everyone comfortable is rare. I think the fundamental point the parent was trying to make is: given that outliers will exist, which end of the spectrum is preferable? There are many more tools to deal with being too cold than there are with being too hot.
https://www.amazon.com/Madala-Waterproof-Electric-Extended-P...
2) yes - I own a pair with an electric heating element. I'm not quite as fast as normal, but they work just fine.
3) This one is fair, but you just need to avoid the heaters that pull a ton of power. Shoot for something around 200 watts (or anything that will run on usb) with an auto-off. A lot of folks will plug in 1500 watt heaters (because they're small), and not realize they're pulling a LOT of power. A standard 20amp/120v circuit in the US can only support a single 1500 watt heater (maxes at ~2400 watts) and 2 will start blowing fuses.
4 & 5) They do work - I promise. Also consider a head covering (beanie/hat or something).
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It's not really a preference/compromise discussion - in most cases office buildings are running their AC/heat to shoot for minimum costs. Add in relatively poor airflow and building designs that have warm/cold pockets and it's literally impossible to make everyone happy.
I'm not sure why it seems to be so common for people to be so persistent about increasing core temperature to make extremities comfortable. It's probably good advise for life and death scenarios to keep your extremities workable, but I can assure you that it's not an uncommon occurrence in the winter for my hands to be freezing while im sweltering elsewhere.
I usually have the opposite relation with core temp and extremities where covering my feet or hands makes up a much more significant temperature difference while inside. All else the same, socks vs no socks is a significant difference between being comfortable and not based on the temperature.
Cold hands and feet are almost always a sign of poor blood flow in extremities, Making the heart beat faster (ex: doing 15 pushups/jumping jacks) helps the most. Decreasing blood vessel constriction helps as well (increasing core temp/ decreasing heat loss). Alcohol has a similar effect, and will increase blood flow to the extremities and increase heartrate - this is why it's so commonly thought to warm you up (note - it's not, it's just increasing blood flow and getting it to your hands/feet more quickly & easily)
Unfortunately - no one is identical, reynauds is a condition where folks have an extreme version of the constriction of the blood vessels in their hands/feet in response to cold. You may be farther along that scale.
That said, in general I'd really prefer if offices weren't so cold.
He worked in a 4 person office with 3 women and over the course of a year the all requested the facility manager to block the AC vents above their desks, because it was too cold for them.
At the end of that year, my coworker was freezing cold because all summed up output that was now blowing on his desk alone.
The temperature was fine for the ladies, but too warm for the mostly male programmers. It's hard to develop code when the heat and limited circulation is soporific.
> We collected 16,791 tweets with common expressions of cold discomfort in U.S. offices between January 2010 and December 2019
> Our findings demonstrate
No. The findings don't support the conclusion. Sorry. The conclusion is likely correct (read on), yet the methodology in this study is unlikely to actually support it.
Statistical inference requires that the following be true:
- The data/samples are randomized
- The data/samples must be independent
- The population distribution must be normal (or, at a minimum, reasonably symmetric about a peak)
- Ideally, the population standard deviation is known
I say "data/samples" because to engineers a sample usually means a single number or single data point (as in a sample from an analog to digital converter or a sample used in a finite impulse response filter); this is something that always twisted my brain around whenever I had to switch from EE/DSP work to thinking about statistics. In statistics as sample is a set of data points randomly chosen from a population. To pound this one to death, in this context "sample" refers to a bunch of data points, not a single data point. In fact, one would ideally want a bunch of randomly-chosen sample sets. For example, 50 samples each with 10,000 randomly-measured data points.
I would also suggest work could be done to try to sample a randomized control group in order to isolate the variable being evaluated. Not sure this would be the correct control group...one idea could be to ask randomly-selected people at the beach for a hot/cold assessment at a range of temperatures. That tends to eliminate most clothing as a variable.
In this study I can't see how the samples were random. At the very least, we don't know who did not answer the survey. It is possible that 95% of building occupants, regardless of gender, are just fine and have nothing to complain about.
We don't know how many data points come from the same office, building or geographic areas.
Furthermore, we I don't think we know the temperature setting for each office or building, the condition of the air conditioning system (Was it working correctly? How accurate was the temperature control?) or how close/far each person surveyed was from a window (which could make you hot or cold), the air conditioning exhaust (which is generally very cold or hot), etc. It is easy to understand that it might be sensible to ask something like "Do you sit within a 1 meter radius of the air conditioning exhaust?" and either exclude those answers or perhaps, if justified, use them as part of a control group of sorts.
Did people answer in the morning, after breakfast, mid-day, after a heavy lunch, mid afternoon, end-of-day, in the moment or at home away from the office? What was their diet? A high protein diet will tend to make you feel warmer after eating. Etc.
I don't think we know that the samples were independent either. If the samples contain a bunch of people from the same office, are their answers truly independent? Again, how about those who did not reply? Were respondents biased in any way? Would the sample mean and distribution be far different and more normal if everyone (or a much larger percentage) of the population had responded?
Etc.
Having said that, it is clear that people, regardless of gender, will perceive the temperature of the environment differently. As a personal note, when I am leaner I feel cold far more intensely than when I am less lean. The difference is almost digital, on/off. Either I am perfectly comfortable in the cold or I am at the edge of shivering. I interpret that as being caused by the relative thickness and distribution of the adipose (fat) layer.
Which leads me to think about this study/conclusion in a different way, one which supports the conclusion that women tend to feel colder than men despite my belief that the methodology used cannot support that conclusion.
Women are generally characterized by a higher distribution of adipose tissue in the gluteal-femoral region, while men accumulate fat in the visceral region. Hence the pear-shape for women and apple shape for men. [0]
Fat is an insulator. If you have more fat around the central/abdominal region this means you have more insulation in an area that might be a large contributor to the feeling of being cold. Women have relatively less insulation in this area, which means it stands to reason that they might feel colder under the same conditions.
From the article:
"In humans and other mammals, body fat distribution is significantly different between males and females and is a strong predictor of disease risk [7•, 8]. Women have more subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), creating a “pear shape” distribution, while men have fat, predominantly distributed to the visceral adipose tissue (VAT) around the abdominal organs creating an “apple shape” body habitus [9–11]. Central/abdominal (subcutaneous upper body and visceral) fat deposition correlates with an increased susceptibility for metabolic complications, while gluteal–femoral (lower body) adipose tissue distribution is associated with reduced metabolic risk and may be protective against the adverse health effects of obesity in both sexes [12–14]."
Of course, the other question is: This is a very simple concept in Physics. This is high school thermodynamics. Was a study really necessary? I hope it didn't cost much.
"First, we analyzed 38,851 responses to the CBE Occupant Survey about satisfaction with temperature from 435 office buildings across 168 cities in the US."