I’m freezing because the office flirts have got the air con turned up. Help!

Dear Aunty B,

I am the boss but you wouldn’t know this as I am sitting in my office freezing to death even though it is a really nice hot Aussie summer day. Why, you ask? Well, the hotties in our office have just succeeded in getting our air conditioning turned up to freezing.

To put it in perspective Aunty, our office has about 125 staff and only 10 of them get very hot. The hotties are mostly well-padded. They are also very vocal and chatty (one could even say flirtatious) with our building maintenance guy, so he came and turned up their air conditioning to Iceland levels, after they complained to him that they were too hot.

Now, while they sprawl comfortably in their chairs, the rest of us are blue-lipped with cold and sit in trench coats.

When I pointed out to our maintenance man that I was freezing to death he told me to put on a jumper and walked off!!

Do you think I should pull rank with building maintenance man?

Ms Freezing at work,
Sydney

Dear Freezing at Work,

Pulling rank has already got you absolutely nowhere, because you are not his boss. Yet the solution is staring you in the face. Start flirting with the building maintenance man immediately. If that is all it takes to get the air con turned up, imagine the other benefits that might flow your way.

You could get that annoying blind fixed that falls on the floor whenever you try to open it. Or you could get him to look into the smelly drain in the kitchen that he promised to look at a month ago. Or you could get those planning whiteboards put up on the wall before the next millenium. Oh, the possibilities.

Once you have warmed him up, raise the topic. In his bizy, wizy day, does he have a sec to pop down and measure the different temperatures at different parts of the floor? Maybe there is a vent that sits right on top of you that he can close. It is not impossible to get the right temperature in an office – it just takes enormous patience, perseverance and fiddling!

And may I thank you. You see, we have a list of things we need our building maintenance guy to do – and now we know how to fast track it.

Good luck,

Your Aunty B.