Work and Careers

Why Women are Hot All the Time | Joe Ditzel Vlog

Are you a woman?

If so, have you found yourself bundling up at work because the air conditioning is too damn cold all the time?

I know you have — I had an assistant one time that no matter the time of the year, and it was in Southern California, she thought it was so dang cold in her office she had on three sweaters, two parkas, two stocking caps, big thick gloves and mukluks.

I’m not talking about the mukluks you go down to Nordstrom and buy. I’m talking about real Inuit mukluks worn north of the Arctic Circle. She was cold all…the…time.

There’s good news ladies if this describes you: It’s not your fault.

Today’s air conditioning systems were developed in the 1960s with a formula that estimated the average office worker was a 154-pound 40-year old man!

Yes, the existing air conditioning systems we have today were developed in the 1960s for the average worker, which at the time was a 40-year-old 154-pound man.

When I first read this, I thought what 40-year old man weighs 150 pounds?

I had to check it out, and what I found, and I’m sure there’s different sources, but what I found is that the average 40 year old man today weighs 180 pounds.

And seeing as I’m 200 plus pounds with an emphasis on the plus, I can’t even believe the average 40-year-old weights 180 pounds.

Nonetheless, the air conditioning systems were developed for the average man, and yet men prefer cooler environments — women like rooms at around 77 degrees, women prefer warmer rooms, while men like it around 71 degrees, according to experts.

So not only do they in general want things warmer, the air conditioning systems were developed for a 40-year-old man years ago.

No wonder you’re cold!

No wonder my assistant was bundled up like an Eskimo in the middle of the Arctic Circle!

Some of the newer buildings are changing this, but how many people really work in a brand-new building, or work for an enlightened building owner that has updated their systems to accommodate new thinking and new information. Very few, very few. Where do you find building owners that have adapted their buildings to new green energy guidelines? I can’t think of five building in LA.

Maybe there’s more, but you’ll know because the ones that have met the government requirements to be designated as a green energy building, or and I forget the designation — something like IEEE, I mean they will tell you! They put it everywhere. They’ll put it right out front: “We have made the changes in our construction in our building to meet solar and green energy requirements!”

But that’s rare.

Most of us are working in buildings that were built during the time that these air conditioning variables were programmed into the air conditioning systems, and although those systems are probably updated along the way, I don’t think they change the general settings.

As a result, many women around the office today have got on enough warm weather gear to survive subzero temperatures in Siberia.

They can leave their office and enter into a outside temperature of 40-below, get on the back of a sled-dog team and mush those dogs across 1,700 miles of Arctic weather without needing to add add any additional warm weather gear.

I know you’ve seen that woman in the office. Maybe you have you been that woman. Maybe you are that woman.

Well, I say you use this information. Take it to the people that have the power to make changes and say. “Look, this is sexism. You guys are working with temperature guidelines that were set in the 1960s for a man, and now more than half the working population are women, and we have to suffer through your natural inclination to prefer cooler environments. But we are the majority, and we do most of the work around here, and therefore turn the damn turn it turn the damn thermostat up! And if you don’t like it, get a fan and put it in your office, and cool down your own personal space, and quit bugging us because we can’t get work done. Because our fingers are frozen, crippled and curled — stuck in a frozen position. I can barely hit the keys on my keyboard because my fingers are curled like I’m trying to pick up something off the ground like a rock.”

Joe Ditzel

Joe Ditzel is a keynote speaker, humor writer, and really bad golfer. You can reach him via email at [email protected] as well as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.