6. Thermostat Wars

(laughter forecast for today: 3 minutes)

Every morning, I check the Weather app.

I don't know why.

I am stuck in the same room every day on a perpetual Zoom call sheltered from the elements. But it is a helpful habit if I ever decide to switch careers to fishing or agriculture.

I think the weather exists just to facilitate small talk.

It is not about environmental benefits and providing the necessary conditions for the survival of all organisms. It is about the survival of humans in awkward situations.

And it's universal across all cultures.

Whenever my mother calls me, she asks about the weather. She gives me the full weather report on her side too. We live 10 thousand miles apart but we are still talking about the weather. I don't get it. It is not like she is going to take an umbrella on her way out because it is raining here. And I am not crazy enough to head to the ocean in February because it is sunny over there.

Maybe this is why everyone I know talks about climate change even though none of them has a PhD in meteorology. They are qualified because they spend every morning talking about the weather with their co-workers. That's a lot of training.

———

What unites employees at a company is not missions, visions, and motivational posters on the wall. It is the collective agreement that we all disagree about the right temperature at the office.

Our office has an analog thermostat that no one really knows how to adjust.

Not the same one we have at the office but equally unfriendly.

Our company is very open; everyone has access to financial data, board slides, and detailed long term plans. But they put the thermostat in a plastic box with a lock. They couldn't trust us with the thermostat because people were mucking with it all the time.

The thermostat is the line that you can't cross.

To their credit, the operations team bought a fully transparent box for the thermostat to live up to our transparency values. You still get to know the temperature at which you are getting frosted or roasted.

———

I started working from home in March and I hated it. I felt lonely and unproductive. But then the summer came and the thermostat wars began.

The AC vent in my room spewed cold air like a jet engine during take-off. In her room, the vent was on par with a deflating helium balloon 5 weeks after a birthday party. I was chilling in the breeze on a beach in Southern France but she was melting faster than mozzarella in a pizza oven.

If we lowered the temperature, I was freezing and she was comfortable. Often, I'd wear a sweater in August or just leave the room altogether. We constantly bickered over the thermostat. It finally felt like a real office and only then did I produce any meaningful output.

My valentine's gift to my wife this year is a red box with a lock to cover the thermostat. The keys are heart shaped. The box is made of aluminum to block Wi-Fi signals so she can't adjust it via the app either.

It is a cute little Faraday cage.

When she protested and grabbed the heart-shaped key, I deflected and started singing Un-Break My Heart.

Stunned silence.

Eye rolls.

Grammy Award.