[mob] [Fwd: Employees Only Think They Control Thermostat]

[Robbie Honerkamp <robbie@shorty.com>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Employees Only Think They Control Thermostat
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:40:09 -0500
From: R. A. Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB1042577628591401304,00.html

January 15, 2003

CUBICLE CULTURE
By JARED SANDBERG


Employees Only Think
They Control Thermostat

Looking for an office thermostat that actually works? Good luck and 
Godspeed.

You may never find it. The controls for your company's heating, ventilation
and air conditioning (HVAC) are likely hidden in the office ducts. If you
do spy a thermostat, it's probably locked, or encased behind shatterproof
glass.

Even worse, HVAC experts acknowledge what millions of office workers have
suspected all along: A lot of office thermostats are completely fake --
meant to dupe you into thinking you've altered the office weather
conditions.

The specialists are unrepentant. Fed up with of complaints from sweaty men
and shivering women, HVAC technicians install dummy thermostats to give
workers the illusion of control. In some leased buildings, even the
corporate tenants don't know the thermostats are useless. Other times, it's
the companies themselves, barraged with calls from workers, who ask the
landlord's HVAC technicians to "fix" things.

Richard Dawson, an HVAC specialist from Homer, Ill., who has several
landlord clients, says too many office workers feel their environment is
"anything but what they want it to be." Better to install a dummy when
they're out to lunch, he figures. He estimates that 90% of office
thermostats are dummies (others say it's below 2%).

Does he feel bad? "I did what my employer told me to do," Mr. Dawson says.
The complainers in the cubicles wore him out. "You just get tired of
dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat. Guess what? They
quit calling you."

Outrageous! As if we haven't been living enough business lies, now this.
Thermo-fraud threatens to make more of us look like fools than the New
Economy and the disco era combined.

Scott McDaniel, an HVAC technician in North Augusta, S.C., installed a
dummy and actually bothered to attach a wire to the back of it -- one that
dead-ended into the thin, uncomfortable office air. He hoped the wire would
fool the office meddler. "There's always someone who thinks they're a
technician," he sighs.

That's just one of several examples where the mere illusion of control
seems to satisfy us. Plenty of placebo buttons give the same false
impression. That "close door" button on elevators? It won't work unless
you're a fireman or an elevator operator with special access to the system.
The rest of the time, in deference to various building codes, it's
deactivated, according to engineers at Otis Elevator.

That "walk" button at intersections? It tells the system a pedestrian is
waiting for a signal, says James Okazaki, assistant general manager of the
L.A. Department of Transportation. But that doesn't mean the signal will
change faster -- and it may be broken from public abuse. "People keep
pushing it, pushing it and pushing it until the signal changes," he says.
"You're pushing it like you have a thousand people there but you have one
person pushing it 1,000 times!"

Thermostat chicanery goes back about 40 years. Michael Downey, former
senior vice president of operations at a commercial real-estate company in
New York, first became aware of dummy 'stats in the 1960s. He says some
companies went so far as to install white-noise generators to mimic the hum
of the fan even though the system was shut off. Later, as heating prices
rose, landlords began to write leases specifying a narrow range for air
temperatures.

In an attempt to eliminate the human factor and introduce efficiency, many
office buildings have replaced thermostats with "thermistors," sensors that
read temperature and relay it to a computer that governs the system. But
one thermistor can be crowded out by a competing chorus of others, says
Paul Milligan, who writes HVAC software programs.

The systems are programmed to allow only a slight variance in temperature.
Fiddle all you want, but the computer is saying "do not allow a desired
temperature," he says.

The average office worker almost has to be a NASA engineer to get these
thermostats working. That's exactly what Scott Packard is. The 39-year-old
staff engineer, who works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif., has used various illicit techniques to control climate at the
different offices he has worked in, including obtaining a rare wrench to
remove a thermostat cover.

He and other suffering employees have been known to hold a desk lamps or
computer monitor up to the sensor to fool thermostats into turning on the
AC. For heat, they strap a baggie full of ice water to it. "I haven't tried
to work within the system," Mr. Packard concedes.

Trying to reform, he recently begged for a fan for his JPL office, but
"comfort items" can't be purchased with government dollars. So he resorted
to his old ways. "I got a ladder and went into the drop ceiling and
adjusted dampers to get more cold air," he acknowledges.

Sometimes the stuff is just busted. Vicki Szaszvari, a building-equipment
operator for the city of Phoenix, says all the breakdowns are good news for
her. "My 2002 truck is paid for," she says. Her license plate: HVAC MAM.

That sounds cold, but Mrs. Szaszvari is compassionate: She once tipped a
waitress with a set of keys that unlocked the restaurant thermostat.

--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'