Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
In every office, of every company, in every city, people are complaining about the temperature.
Take Sharon in accounts – she weighs about the same as a mangled pigeon feather, so she’s always cold. Shaking her hand is like fondling a pack of skinny frozen sausages. Her perpetually cardigan-clad frame can be seen quick-footing her way from the kitchen to her desk, in an effort to warm up. She drinks eight cups of black coffee a day in an attempt to thaw out her shuddering, icy frame. Her heart will probably give out by the time she reaches fifty.
Sharon has threatened to bring a penguin into the office on more than one occasion, in order to prove that the creature would thrive in this temperature. She’s more than willing to scrub bird shit out of the carpet to prove her point. An inspection of her Google search history would reveal Exotic animals to buy and Penguin delivery to SE London. One her favourite movies is Happy Feet, which she watches at home with the radiators set to max.
Sitting opposite Sharon is Duncan, whose daily calorie intake is comparable to what Sharon eats in a month. His belly sometimes spreads out across his desk as he sits, hitting the lower edge of his keyboard and permeating his emails with nmxz,b,bvn,bnmbmx. He often doesn’t notice this because of his diabetes, which gives him chronic fatigue and blurred vision.
Duncan is always hot. It could be -2 degrees, and Duncan would be hot. His red face appears in the office manager’s door at least once a week, where he forces out a wheezed complaint, hangs around for a few moments longer than usual, and then drags himself back to his desk to write another confusing email.
Sue has been at the company for over a decade, and while she would describe the temperature as pleasing for the most part, her feet are permanently cold. Her requests to wear ugg-boots have been repeatedly denied, and consequently, she demands that the idiots in charge do something to make her more comfortable.
There’s at least another five people at the company who take exception to the temperature, writing regular strongly-worded emails to the suffering office manager.
The office manager’s name is David, and he despises his colleagues. Once, he wrote their climate-complaints on a Word document, printed it out, and used it to clean the mess from his nonchalant arsehole. Sometimes he rubs his dick around the rim of Duncan’s super-sized, golf-ball themed tea-mug, and watches gleefully as he fills it to the brim for his creme-topped, morning hot chocolate.
After receiving enough complaints, David calls the office maintenance company, from which a burly representative promptly arrives, thermometer gadget in hand. While showing as much arse-crack as possible, the temperature is taken from various points in the office, and confirmed to sit at the optimum 22 degrees. After an extended glance at an attractive female employee, the representative leaves an invoice with David, and then makes his way to another office to do the exact same thing. This happens twice a month at least.
There’s a million tormented Davids the world over, fighting in a war that cannot hope to be won. Sharon will be forever chilled, Duncan consistently sizzling, and Sue always frozen-toed. They’ll never agree on the perfect temperature. This is a tale of despicable tragedy, in which David is found hanging from the rafters by his belt, another innocent victim of the Office Temperature Wars.