Hacker News Reader

Comment by Timpy | Hacker News Reader

A Japanese woman explained to me that they blast the AC really hard in the summer and she keeps a blanket in her office because it gets so cold. Japanese summers are hot and humid but men still wear suits to the office. I heard about some campaigns to change this behavior while I was studying Japanese, it does seem kind of wasteful when you think about having to toss on a jacket to stay warm during the hottest part of the summer.

View on HN

There's a couple mixed reasons for this I think, you see it in the US even where suits in the office are less of a thing until you hit upper management. One big one I think though is it's simpler to add layers to warm up for people who prefer a warmer temperature than it is for individuals to cool down. So given two groups that need different settings to get comfortable it makes sense to tend towards the low end. Of course Japan has it's own weirdness about this where suits could be slipped but office culture pushes back.

ESID, for real.

Blasting the AC is usually symptomatic of a poorly-implemented HVAC system. Someone in the building is working in an office that has poor circulation, so they complain until someone with control turns the thermostat down a few degrees. Everywhere else in the building becomes a little chillier. People start complaining it's too cold. It gets turned up a few degrees. Repeat.

It's been a while since I worked in anything akin to a Japanese cubicle hell, but I've worked in a lot of female-dominated offices. Anecdotally:

> in my workplace it's women that control the thermostats and they set it to freezing

Before HVAC automation and smart/demand-response systems took that perk away from them (an early casualty in the war-on-women), IME it was usually middle-aged women who governed the thermostat. Biological factors (pregnancy, menses, etc.) lead them to perceive ambient temperature as being hotter than it actually is, and so they set the thermostat to temperatures that "feel" sane to them. Hormones are a poorly-understood beast-- assuming you're male, you'll experience this yourself if you ever have testosterone fluctuations.

Women also tend(ed?) to work around a lot of heat-producing appliances like faxes, laser printers, copiers, CRTs, and underspec desktop workstations with CPUs perpetually pegged at 100%. None of this was accounted for in building designs from the past.

In your life have you ever been in an office without a woman who felt cold regardless of season?

I think that whole men/women thing is a distraction. The biggest difference in temperature preference in offices in my experience is between the workers who are sitting down all day not moving, and the receptionists/managers/HR people who tend to spend more of the day running around.

They control the thermostats and so they get set far too cold for people who are just sitting. Gender doesn't seem to make any difference (in my workplace it's women that control the thermostats and they set it to freezing).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com