Boss put chocolate cake on aircon controller, to stop people using it Far out, it's Friday! Which means it's time for another edition of On-Call, El Reg's week-ending reader-contributed tales of support gigs that went south. This week, meet “Jim” who one tended “a reasonably-sized server room/wiring closet, which hosted a number of internal and production systems. We were rather fortunate in …
Clearly a situation that calls for a BOFH-modded cattle prod, or a stairwell accident, or something weird happening to the elevators, or a freak Halon incident (triggered by a cocoa powder sensor an Arduino and some actuators?), or any solution involving quicklime and a roll of carpet.
I was in a meeting once discussing a move to a new premises that was being renovated for our use. The main topic was the design of various rooms designated for equipment use. Someone had put the air con control panel on the outside of the server room on the plan. This was queried as it meant that anyone could change the temperature in the server room without needing to get inside. As the door would be restricted to authorised users this was a security risk. So the panel is moved on the drawing to inside the room. Basically just on the backside of the same wall so the cabling should be the same.
Next meeting the panel is back where it was and again someone spots this and flags it up. On a conference call with contractors they tell us that they didn't do it. This is the latest version of the plans so something isn't right somewhere. We query with the architects and discover that they have been moving things around. Why? - That took some explaining but it boiled down to a case of aesthetics. The door to the server room was in a very small corridor leading to an office. The air con panel for the office was in this corridor too. When asked why the server panel was outside we were directed to a rendering of the corridor. It looks better putting it directly opposite the one on the other wall for the office than not having it there don't you think? "Nice bit of symmetry!"
"it boiled down to a case of aesthetics."
We had an architect with a fetish for putting windows right up to the corners of the building on both walls. Presumably it made it look as if the building was being held up by magic when, of course, everyone knew the external walls weren't load-bearing and the building was held up by pillars just behind the windows and blocking the light. Presumably in architect thinking it's better to be stupid and look clever rather than be clever and look ordinary.
Aaaah, food related support queries.
* The one about the Sony FX-series laptops that almost always got biscuit crumbs down the latch sensor at the front, holding the flap down and making the machine refuse to turn on.
* The one about the user who constantly complained about the poor quality keyboards we supplied, yet never grasped the link between those poor quality keyboards and the amount of pastry flakes we emptied out each time.
* The one about the customer who complained that we spilt Coca-Cola on their laptop during a repair, because they could never ever have done that - it got locked in a safe every night. (This was in the days of a laptop being expensive enough put in a safe). It went all the way through to legal action before their partner admitted, the evening before it was due in court, that they'd spilt it and lobbed it away in a panic.
* The desktop PC we discovered a really, REALLY mouldy sandwich inside. Initial examinations with a very long proddy stick showed it to be possibly bacon - and probably stashed there to keep warm, or because someone was meant to be on a diet. It was way past the stage of smelliness and had crossed the line into fossilisation.
Yeah been close to the pastry flakes. Had a new user complain about a crunching sound that came from the keyboard when they typed. We swapped out the keyboard and then opened it for investigation downstairs. We found toast crumbs in there sufficient to be at least one slice of bread. The previous occupant of the desk had always eaten breakfast at the office and this consisted of toast from the canteen. Also in there were two tiny black ball bearings, a stretched out paperclip and four propelling pencil leads.
In another the keys were sticking and upon opening the thing up we found out why. A slightly milky but otherwise mostly clear sticky substance was coating the interior. Upon confronting the user about their habits they admitted to having accidentally dropped a glass of sugar free lemonade onto the keyboard. They'd run a damp cloth over the keys but made no attempt to drain it at all. Unsurprisingly it was suffering next day during operation,
I've never worked anywhere yet where the heating / aircon worked adequately. Ever. One place that I worked had the thermostat in the boss's tiny office in an open plan building of about 10000 square foot. That worked well. And that sort of shit was pretty typical.
I've also never worked anywhere yet where anyone who could didn't fiddle with the thermostat constantly as the temperature was uncomfortable somewhere in the office.
Surely this shit should be sorted out by now.
With all due respect, I have to strongly disagree that "wearing jumpers" is the solution here. Just putting on a jumper doesn't fix the fact that my fingers and nose start to go numb with cold if the temperature drops below 20 degrees. I have been known to sit here wearing a hat and scarf. I sometimes also don mitts, but they make typing pretty hard work, which is far from ideal given that I'm a sys admin.
I don't know what the solution is to prevent air con wars in offices, but dismissing people who genuinely can't cope with the air temperature being cold is not it.
It's true the hands really start to suffer even if you wear a jumper.
I once worked in the Gherkin in London, such a modern building, you'd think that the environment would be right, wouldn't you? Except that inside there are these big areas cut out of the floors on several floors above each other, so you have something like balconies that can look down several floors. So if you are at or near the bottom of one of these sections the air just disappears up this section, leading to use of mini electric heaters in the offices.
"I don't know what the solution is to prevent air con wars in offices, but dismissing people who genuinely can't cope with the air temperature being cold is not it."
This might sound daft but it is not meant to be: some form of localised heating?
Other countries may have this sorted a bit... but not for hands...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsi
Gamers...
http://www.odditycentral.com/news/this-infrared-heat-lamp-keeps-your-hands-warm-as-you-type.html
Coat: I always have a fleece in my bag in case of aggressive aircon
I don't know what the solution is to prevent air con wars in offices, but dismissing people who genuinely can't cope with the air temperature being cold is not it.
It's not much fun the other way either. Worked in offices where the ladies had firm control over the AC temperatures. This left me a molten puddle of human flesh; Unable to think work, think or do anything useful. They thought this was great fun and many snide remarks were made at my expense.
Started spending time in the machine room. You would often find me sitting on the machine room floor with a laptop & Ethernet into the back one of the switches.
Not sure you'll read it, 3 days after the original article.
Wearing a scarf is a good solution . In fact you need to protect your head, neck, and spine the most. When your body gets cold, it will send warm blood to the essential places listed above, so you will have less blood to warm your hands and feet.
It is not very useful to protect your hands and feet, you better keep the very essential places warm. That's one of the reason why scuba diving wet suits has double layer of neoprene along the spine (triple layer if you count that pants too) and a hood. But you can go bare feet and bare hands.
When you have cold feet, cover your neck.
I was reading a piece recently in some industry journal or other that comfort testing on air-con shows women on average want a temperature about 1.5°C higher than men. To make this worse, this is very much an average, and people's preferred temperatures differ wildly.
Making it an unsolvable problem.
You can help by using things like chilled beams, which cool the office without causing a cold draft. But there is no perfect answer.
Although giving people access to controllers that don't work can help a bit. People will bugger the system up, and it will tend to be the most extreme people who care most, so if you let them you'll end up with the temperature at 16°C or 25°C. But they'll feel a bit better just by pressing buttons, and feeling that they're having some input.
You're definitely right about the most extreme people caring the most. I shared an office with a bunch of people who were all happy with anything around 20ish but there was one guy who who was very... well let's say he had a high volume to surface area ratio because that's the thermally relevant feature. He insisted that 16°C was the only reasonable temperature. So we ended up with a 'compromise' of about 17-18°C when a real compromise would have been 19.5°C and a gym subscription.
I worked for a small firm in a rented house once. A wife of a co-worker started working for us for a while and would put the central heating on *in summer*.
It was impossible to work in the high 20's, so I got some relief by turning off the boiler directly. Her doting husband found out and turned it back on.
She eventually got the living room to herself with an electric heater. That lasted until the boss walked in and realised he was paying for the electric that could power a sauna.
I have a colleague who's been given a little space-heater in her office. To be fair to her she gets very cold, and really does struggle at a temperature where I'm happy with a slightly thicker top.
And you can't just wear a jumper, when the temp falls below some point, your hands stop working properly. If I've got a nice jumper on I can be perfectly happily warm, and not even vaguely uncomfortable, at a temperature of around 15°C. But at that point I can't type very fast because my hands are too cold.
The problem with her is that she's perfectly happy at 22°C, which I can cope with. But she just doesn't understand thermostats. No, turning it up won't make it hotter, quicker. It just means the heater stays on longer. I walked into her room last winter with a thermometer. She still had her little scarf on, and it was 27°C! When I pointed out that it was just a trifle warm in there, she told me that it was just perfect, and to leave the heater controls alone. I don't know who designed the thermostat on that thing, but she had it turned to full and it still hadn't clicked off. If the office were open plan, there'd be more arguments.
27 degrees!
The problem is that of the frog in the boiling water.
She's cold so turns it up and it gradually goes up until it's 27. She doesn't notice the increase except that she starts to feel no longer cold.
Whereas you walk in and it's like getting off a plane on your summer holiday.
women on average want a temperature about 1.5°C higher than men
In my household it's the other way around. I set the thermostat to ~20c and yet, when I look at it a day or so later, it's somehow mysteriously gone down to 16C..
She tries to blame the cats, but the thermostat is about 5 foot up a blank wall. And besides which, if it was up to the cats, it would be set to 30C (being descended from desert creatures and all that).
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