No heater at work!

[Rine]

Yeah, apparently our building never has had heat. Why is it the last FOUR winters I've been working with my company, I spent the winters very warm and sometimes, TOO warm during the winter? I wish they would just tell the truth--they don't want to pay for the cost of heating such a large building! Same thing happens in the summer when our AC mysteriously breaks for two or three months...don't want to have to pay to cool the store!

Right now, the temps hover around 40-55 degrees upstairs (got warmer once more people entered and the electronics were all turned on; TVs give off lots of heat). I think around the time I left, it was like 60 upstairs. They are nearly 30-40 degrees near the mall entrance because of the air that comes in from the mall entrance is not heated because the mall is closed. Yes. We measured the temps. Felt like you were outside, minus the wind, if you went into any of the stockrooms or outer rooms in the store. I've had a runny nose all day and my hands are all stiff from being cold for so long.

Computers are slow, sluggish, all sorts of systems are not working correctly and I think it's because it is WAY too cold for the machines/computers to operate.

It's bad if I have to wear gloves and jacket indoors. Can't wait for it to warm back up and that should be soon!

[EvilEmpryss]

I feel your pain.

Imagine working in an airplane hanger, trying to process 300+ personnel through a deployment line (which means dealing with a bunch of people who are *not* happy about having to leave home for an undetermined amount of time), flipping through folders filled with various-sized pieces of paper that have to be kept in the proper order, and trying to get your computer to stay connected to the LAN when people are tripping over the ethernet cable every fifteen minutes.

All this while BOTH hanger doors are wide open, and it's the middle of a Minot, North Freaking Dakota winter, with snow drifting 10+ feet *inside* the hanger! Wind is whipping through the hanger because the doors are open on each end, creating a vortex of frigid air. I had those little reusable thermal packs in my boots, my gloves, *and* my bra!

You don't know cold until you've seen a cup of coffee fresh from the pot freeze in mid-air, crashing to the ground in so many brown icicles.

[Rine]

Brr! Okay, you have it way worst than me! I'm sorry!

It just gets frustrating when you want to be warm but you can't get warm any place in your workplace. Even all the customers were complaining and some said they were going to call corporate on our behalf.

[EvilEmpryss]

Bless the ones that actually *do* call corporate... Maybe something will change is they say they won't shop anyplace that doesn't have decent HVAC. In the mean time, those little reusable thermal packs can be a life saver! They have them at most Dollar Tree stores right now (okay, they're in cute little snowman, snowflake, and christmas tree shapes, but they work!). You click the little metal disc inside and it heats up the contents to a nice toasty temerature. They're small enough to stick in gloves or pockets so no one notices you're using them. If the Dollar Tree is out and you're desperate, they usually sell them this time of year at Home Depot and Lowes, as well.

I'm lucky I don't have to do the winter deployment thing anymore. That one winter was enough!

[scruff]

around here there is a minimum temp we are legally allowed to work in, for desk work, 60 degrees. Admittedly our old boss removed the thermomitors from the open plan office as they were a 'distraction', but the management had to improve the heating once everyone brought a portable heater from home for each desk, and we had so many running we blew a fuse. every day for a week.

[Indica]

I worked in a place once where the heat went out the same weekend we had a snowstorm (A rather rare occurrence, but...). They didn't fix the heat for several days, so I was working in a heavy coat and gloves. I finally said 'Y'know, I should find out if pneumonia is covered under workman's comp.' I was smart enough to say this in the hearing of a manager

Surprise, surprise... guess what got fixed the next day?

[XCashier]

Last winter I was working a temp job filling gardening seed packets at a warehouse. Big, filthy warehouse, no heat whatsoever, not even a space heater. I was wearing a parka, two shirts, two pairs of socks, thermals, and had a king-sized comforter wrapped around me and I was still freezing!

I was never so glad to leave a job in my life. Even the Drug Store From Hell was better than that; at least they had heating in the winter and AC in the summer!

[Broomjockey]

Computers are slow, sluggish, all sorts of systems are not working correctly and I think it's because it is WAY too cold for the machines/computers to operate.

While I sympathise with your predicament (I had to badger facilities for months to get my radiator properly fixed), I did want to note that computers effin' love the cold. If you're having issues with them, it's not because of the cold. Computers tend to work better the colder it gets. About the only point of failure due to cold would be the hard drive, and that needs to be way colder than 30F to have an impact. The point is, if you're having computer issues, get the computers looked at, because it's not the cold.

[Der Cute]

It's prolly an electric brown out/ dirty power issue more than a cold issue for the PCs.

And please, please please, from an IT stand point, DO NOT PLUG IN SMALL PORTABLE HEATERS on the same outlet OR POWER STRIP as the pc's are using.
The heaters draw so much power at one time, and the circuit can only give so much at one time...it can cause issues with data, processing, performance...just argh.

So if you can, use the thermal packs, and find a circuit just for Mr. Heater.

Cutenoob

[Rine]

LOL about the computer thing...turns out that our problems are because of a ticked off AT&T worker cutting phone lines in the area (a tale for another thread, I guess.) Everyone thought it was because of the frigid horrid cold, 'cause right now everything that goes wrong is blamed automatically on the cold.

We are also not allowed to have personal space heaters so we won't be plugging anything into the power strips.

[wraiths_crono]

ah cold.. i live in AZ but I still say it gets cold in my office overnight (they tend to turn the heat off overnight) and yes while PCs do like cold, too cold and they cant maintain the static charges that make them work, and even more a ROFL for AT&T guy cutting lines, makes me happy im leaving this place in a few more days.

[bean]

while PCs do like cold, too cold and they cant maintain the static charges that make them work

That was pretty funny.

Nitrogen has been used to cool massive computers before, and also in experiments to see how far a PC CPU can be overclocked and still run reliably.

Tom's Hardware managed to get a P4 up to 5.25 GHz with liquid nitrogen. The CPU temp was -190C. That's -374F.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...oject,731.html

Heat is the mortal enemy of electronics. They love cold, aside from hard drives and optical drives.