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HR practicePerformance management

Staff hot (and cold) under the collar

by Personnel Today 10 Jan 2006
by Personnel Today 10 Jan 2006

Continuing with the depressing theme, no doubt you are wondering what happened to 2005 and why you are still sitting in the same spot you were last year, despite resolutely telling yourself ‘I won’t be here in 12 months’.

However, Guru is – as ever – on hand to remind you that there is always someone worse off than you. Try this e-mail from Disciple Andy, who is having a very trying time indeed. You couldn’t make it up…

Dear Guru,

After a meeting with a member of staff asking me what type of pants they should wear after a vasectomy, I came back to my desk to receive the following e-mail:

Andy,
Over the past few days, since the recent cold spell of weather, I have been experiencing alternate cold and warm drafts from the air conditioning by my desk. Sometimes I need to put my jumper on during a cold draft; but when it starts warming up again it is too warm for a jumper.
Over the past couple of hours I have noted the changes:

12:42 cold
12:57 warm
13:17 cold
13:36 warm
13:43 cold
13:56 warm
13:59 cold
14:21 warm
14:25 cold
14:28 warm

Can anything be done?

So Andy replied:

Hi,
Thank you for your mail. I wondered if you could be a bit more precise. You have not supplied any definition of warm or cold. Please do so. Could you also ascertain whether the colleagues around you are feeling cold or hot before you or after you? From this, we will be able to tell which way the temperature change is moving.

The response he got:

Hi Andy,

Hot – Wet armpits
Warm – No jumper required
Cold – Jumper required (sometimes goose pimpling).

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I have talked to the other engineers and we believe the draft has been coming from the direction of the air conditioning. We adjusted the temperature on the air conditioning controls and it only alternates from cool to warm now.

Thank you for your help.

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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