Speaker 1: Every summer, there's a fierce battle waged in offices across
Speaker 1: the country. Sides are taken, lines are drawn, and everybody
Speaker 1: settles in for a long fight. The subject of that
Speaker 1: fight air conditioning. This is game plan. Hi. I'm Francesco
Speaker 1: Eavy and I'm Rebecca Greenfield, and this week we are
Speaker 1: talking about the office air conditioning wars. Yet what mpy summer?
Speaker 1: Unless week complained about air conditioning, I just wouldn't. So
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty cold in the studio right now. It's
Speaker 1: always freezing when we walk in, and I think it's
Speaker 1: like a tradition to start the day by complaining about it. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I think about it, I have several daily meetings
Speaker 1: that start with everybody agreeing that it's freezing cold in
Speaker 1: the room, or like way too hot, way too hot.
Speaker 1: Doesn't happen as much in the summer, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: in the conference rooms are purposefully overcooled because lots of
Speaker 1: people are going to come into them, But when it's
Speaker 1: just you in a couple of people and you just
Speaker 1: walk in, it's not fun. Yeah. And then there's other
Speaker 1: zones in the office that are mysteriously hot and nobody
Speaker 1: can quite agree on it. Like I feel like I
Speaker 1: sit next to my coworkers and I have some version
Speaker 1: of the like is it cold right now? I'm really cold?
Speaker 1: And then somebody else is like I feel okay. Well
Speaker 1: that's because people experience temperature differently. I think this isn't
Speaker 1: like necessarily an office problem. It's a people problem. And
Speaker 1: guess what people experience temperature the most differently. I know
Speaker 1: the answer. It's women. Yeah, I mean I've raised that
Speaker 1: question in a weird way, but uh, yeah, women are
Speaker 1: actually colder. It's not just a stereotype. And we do
Speaker 1: suffer more in these over air conditioned offices because, as
Speaker 1: is written in some version of this story by some publication,
Speaker 1: every summer, the air conditioning in most office buildings, the
Speaker 1: temperature is set based on this like decades old formula
Speaker 1: that was based off of the metabolic rate of men,
Speaker 1: and so it's and also men wear tend to wear
Speaker 1: suits more often, so uh, the office office temperature is
Speaker 1: calibrated for men, and that's why women are suffering with
Speaker 1: their blankets and office sweaters. Yeah, I mean, Blue America
Speaker 1: is pretty good, I think on the temperature front. Not
Speaker 1: just saying that I've worked in offices where I have
Speaker 1: pictures of my coworkers wrapped in blankets. Actually, my friend
Speaker 1: posted a picture on Instagram of her and what looked
Speaker 1: like a sleeping bag with armholes, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a sign of a joke, but specifically made for the
Speaker 1: freezing cold office phenomenon. It's really hard to work when
Speaker 1: your body isn't at the right temperature. But offices also
Speaker 1: have to figure out how they're going to handle it
Speaker 1: when different people with different temperature requirements are sitting close
Speaker 1: to each other. So this is clearly a major problem
Speaker 1: for employees and for companies, and just keeping a sweater
Speaker 1: thrown over the back of your office chair doesn't really
Speaker 1: cut it. Employees gripe at each other and their bosses
Speaker 1: about the air around them, and nobody can figure out
Speaker 1: exactly how to make everyone happy. But there's one company
Speaker 1: that thought they'd finally found a solution to the air
Speaker 1: conditioning wars. We took a trip to their offices to
Speaker 1: hear about what they did to solve the problem and
Speaker 1: some of the unexpected hurdles they ran into. Caddy Withers
Speaker 1: is a manager at app Nexus, a digital ad sales
Speaker 1: company housed in a twelve story office building in New
Speaker 1: York's Flatirn neighborhood. It's her job to help keep all
Speaker 1: twenty seven of app Nexus offices running smoothly. And I'm
Speaker 1: a senior manager on Goo? What does go Global office operations?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? You do? That means we managed facilities, maintenance, cleaning, security,
Speaker 1: We designed, build, and run all of our offices internationally.
Speaker 1: The app Nexus offices have many of the snazzy features
Speaker 1: we've come to expect from modern tech companies, a cafe
Speaker 1: stocked with free snacks, futuristic relaxation pods, and even a
Speaker 1: basketball court that doubles as a meditation room. But one
Speaker 1: thing about the office was stubbornly old. It's heating and
Speaker 1: cooling system. Some areas were consistently too warm, and others
Speaker 1: would be blasted with ice cold air. It was Caddie's
Speaker 1: job to adjust the temperature when workers complained. My team
Speaker 1: managed the temperature in the office everywhere, all the time,
Speaker 1: and no user, no independent user, had any control. So
Speaker 1: if someone wanted to make a temperature change, they would
Speaker 1: email me or paying me, or text me or find
Speaker 1: me and asked me if I could make an adjustment,
Speaker 1: and then I would do that. What was that like?
Speaker 1: It was awful. Caddy was overwhelmed by requests from people
Speaker 1: who were too hot or too cold and wanted her
Speaker 1: to do something about it. She was able to control
Speaker 1: the air temperature around different zones or groups of desks,
Speaker 1: but she didn't have a way to figure out how
Speaker 1: hot or cold it should be, so she just ended
Speaker 1: up giving in to the most persistent people. There was
Speaker 1: no science behind it. It was just kind of like
Speaker 1: if I got enough requests, or if it seemed like
Speaker 1: a reasonable request, I would make a change. But then
Speaker 1: sometimes I would just try to talk to the person
Speaker 1: and give him a blanket. And Caddie wasn't the only
Speaker 1: one hearing complaints. Everyone intermittently, sporadically would come to me
Speaker 1: asking me to change the temperature. That's Heidi Delasando, who's
Speaker 1: in charge of setting up events at app Nexus. She
Speaker 1: had wrangled groups of outside clients and one of the
Speaker 1: company's spacious auditoriums and try to guess what temperatures would
Speaker 1: make them happy and keep them that way. And it
Speaker 1: was such a pain. Yes, because you have men and
Speaker 1: women who are feeling different, you know, temperatures, who want
Speaker 1: a certain way, and You're like, I can't please everyone,
Speaker 1: so I'm just trying him do it. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: that I did just not do it. So things have
Speaker 1: gotten pretty bad. During the summer's at app Nexus, Caddie
Speaker 1: and her team wasted tons of time trying to fix
Speaker 1: the temperature trouble spots or help employees sort out their differences. Heidi,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, heads sometimes resorted to just lying
Speaker 1: to people and hoping the placebo effect would kick in
Speaker 1: and make them feel warmer or cooler. It was clear
Speaker 1: that something had to change, so the company installed Comfy,
Speaker 1: a system that allowed employees to adjust the air around
Speaker 1: their desks through an app. Comfy eventually learns the employee's
Speaker 1: preferences and starts adjusting the temperature accordingly so they don't
Speaker 1: have to make as many requests. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: open the phone and the Comfy app. Okay, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to open my map, find myself on the fourth floor,
Speaker 1: and I hit cool my space, and then we'll feel
Speaker 1: some air kick on. I knew, so I can check
Speaker 1: if company is actually working if I pull up our BMS,
Speaker 1: which is our building management system, and then actually like
Speaker 1: see the numbers tick up. Comfy gave employees more power
Speaker 1: over their environment and freed up facility staff to do
Speaker 1: other things. Here's Michael Delto, a product support team manager.
Speaker 1: Now when people talk about it, it is like action oriented.
Speaker 1: It is like I am going to comfy this room.
Speaker 1: It's just different totally. There's a different vibe to it.
Speaker 1: There's you're you are in charge of your empowered to
Speaker 1: do something. Before it's like I've already emailed this person
Speaker 1: and what are they going to do? Like nothing changed
Speaker 1: and I'm bothering them, but I don't see any output
Speaker 1: of that. So it worked. People were actually pretty satisfied
Speaker 1: with the solution. But as time went on, new employees
Speaker 1: started and some of them weren't familiar with the ins
Speaker 1: and outs of Comfy, and just early enthusiasm for this
Speaker 1: new toy started waning. Complaints started to surface again. We
Speaker 1: were a year, we were about a year into using
Speaker 1: Comfy and we saw a usership drop and that's when
Speaker 1: we hear about, oh I'm freezing at my desk. So
Speaker 1: to get people using Comfy again, app Nexus started what
Speaker 1: they called the Comfy Challenge. It's simple. Every month, the
Speaker 1: person who uses Comfy the most get some free swag,
Speaker 1: and people got surprisingly into it. Here's Michael Delto in May.
Speaker 1: I was like near like the last week of May,
Speaker 1: and I saw somebody winning this and I was like,
Speaker 1: there's no way that they should be winning this with
Speaker 1: the amount of votes that they had at the time.
Speaker 1: So I put it induce my watch and I would
Speaker 1: pull up a timer and I would sit at to
Speaker 1: ten minutes and hit my comfy app and go about
Speaker 1: my day and do some stuff, and then my watch
Speaker 1: with buzz and I would hit the button again and
Speaker 1: go back to work and hit resent the timer. And
Speaker 1: so I just did that for a few for a week.
Speaker 1: But a hard as he tries, Michael is going to
Speaker 1: have a pretty hard time reaching his goal because there
Speaker 1: are lots of other employees at at Nexus working just
Speaker 1: as hard as him to get their hands on some
Speaker 1: of that free swag. Here's Heidi again. I won one
Speaker 1: of the Comfy challenges. I have a tiara, I have
Speaker 1: a sash. I was gonna bring it forgot. Uh did
Speaker 1: you get a hoodie? I didn't. I got sunglasses. I
Speaker 1: got a gift card to bid Gay ice cream, which
Speaker 1: is ironic case I was cold all the time. Um,
Speaker 1: but It was a very fascinating campaign. How how our
Speaker 1: global offer office operations did it to just encourage people
Speaker 1: to use that instead of just you know, send them
Speaker 1: requests and stuff. I just kept pressing it as off
Speaker 1: just as I could, and I didn't care if it
Speaker 1: went through or not. I just kind of wanted to win.
Speaker 1: So the Comfy challenge was working. People knew about Comfy
Speaker 1: more and their competitive spirit got them using the app.
Speaker 1: But still no system is perfect, and when it comes
Speaker 1: to office temperature, there's always something to complain about. Here's
Speaker 1: Peggy John Louis, who trains app Nexus customers about its products,
Speaker 1: and the buddy mode is probably my biggest nemesis. A
Speaker 1: the buddy mode with Comfy, you need someone a buddy
Speaker 1: to back you up on your temperature request before the
Speaker 1: system will make the adjustment you want. If you're the
Speaker 1: only woman in a group of guys and you're sitting
Speaker 1: in that area and they're all comfying it to get
Speaker 1: cool and you're trying to warm up, you don't have
Speaker 1: a buddy to confirm your desire for it to be warmer,
Speaker 1: so you just have to deal with it, or you
Speaker 1: can try to negotiate with the people in your area.
Speaker 1: Mostly you're yelling at them and saying, please stop blowing
Speaker 1: the temperature and here I'm freezing to day have there's
Speaker 1: one person whose life Comfy has definitely changed for the better,
Speaker 1: Caddie manager who used to spend all her time answering
Speaker 1: temperature change requests. And how do you spend all your
Speaker 1: free time now that you're obviously online shopping? Just kidding,
Speaker 1: just kidding, there's a bigger fish to fry. So I
Speaker 1: wonder how much of this experiment was the placebo effect,
Speaker 1: Like if you're sitting at a desk next to somebody
Speaker 1: who's always going to be a different temperature than you,
Speaker 1: then it might feel good to feel like you have
Speaker 1: a little bit more control over getting the temperature changed,
Speaker 1: But you and that person, like someone's still going to
Speaker 1: be unhappy. So is it really solving the problem. I
Speaker 1: think comfy does more than that. It's because you can
Speaker 1: make it warmer, you can. I guess what I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about is that, like people think that they hate the
Speaker 1: temperature in the office, but what they're really upset about
Speaker 1: is they're feeling of a total lack of control. And
Speaker 1: like here at Bloomber, we have a system, there's somebody
Speaker 1: we send an email to. Basically we put in a
Speaker 1: ticket through or like to getting system. And if the
Speaker 1: person next to you is sending in a ticket every
Speaker 1: time you send a ticket, then eventually they will email
Speaker 1: you back and be like, I can't keep changing the
Speaker 1: temperature because the person in this other desk has the
Speaker 1: opposite opinion of you. So like it's that feeling of helplessness. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: having some agency does feel good, even the agency we
Speaker 1: have here, and I think we I see that a
Speaker 1: lot of my reporting that giving workers the idea of
Speaker 1: autonomy makes them way happier. So we see it kind
Speaker 1: of with um flexible scheduling companies saying you can pick
Speaker 1: your when you come in and when you leave, and
Speaker 1: we trust you to get your work done. People end
Speaker 1: up working similar hours. But they just like the feeling
Speaker 1: of control over their hours. It's it's like being treated
Speaker 1: like the adult that I think we are. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I hate to think that we're so easily manipulated that
Speaker 1: all you have to do is make us workers think
Speaker 1: we have some control over something like the atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: that's enough to make us happy. So I'm gonna stay unhappy.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to always be physic. Okay, Frantisca's pro complaint.
Speaker 1: You're a curmudgeon. All right, that's fair. End, that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my generation. And now it's time for half big
Speaker 1: takes half fake takes. If you have your own half
Speaker 1: big take you want to share with us, call our
Speaker 1: voicemail at two one two six one seven zero one
Speaker 1: six six. This week we have a listener half big
Speaker 1: take about greetings. My half bag take is people at
Speaker 1: work should not ask you how your day is going
Speaker 1: the second day walk into the office. One, I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about it too. My day is probably
Speaker 1: not going well. Or three, I don't want to share
Speaker 1: it with you. Also, I do not want to know
Speaker 1: what you did last night. When last night is to Tuesday,
Speaker 1: you can check in with what people did over the weekend,
Speaker 1: but you do not need to rehash every night of
Speaker 1: the week from Sunday to Friday morning. I do not
Speaker 1: want to share it with you. Okay, there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on here, so don't ask someone how their day
Speaker 1: is if they have had a day yet. That's fair.
Speaker 1: And then nobody wants to know what people did on
Speaker 1: a Tuesday. We get so many half big takes about
Speaker 1: asking small talk questions. I did one about good morning
Speaker 1: once saying good morning. I think I'm the only solutions
Speaker 1: oriented person here where I gave a solution to ask
Speaker 1: you say the one answering but her. This listener's argument
Speaker 1: is that nothing you're going to do on a Tuesday
Speaker 1: night could possibly be interesting enough to share with your
Speaker 1: co workers. And I think that's probably fair speak for yourselves,
Speaker 1: you crazy millennials. You probably go wild on Tuesday nights.
Speaker 1: Tuesday's my big night. Actually heard millennials were killing tuesdays. Becca,
Speaker 1: What not completely thought through idea? Do you want to
Speaker 1: share with the world today? This is work related because
Speaker 1: I think this often happens during work conversations. And it's
Speaker 1: the spoiler and I don't believe in spoilers. What do
Speaker 1: you mean you don't believe in spoiler? Are always like
Speaker 1: what if I just spoiled trading places for you? I
Speaker 1: think that most culture are all experiences. Movies, TV shows
Speaker 1: can still be enjoyed if you know what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: Like I know the ending to Romeo and Juliet, I'm
Speaker 1: I'd still see it. There are certain movies, uh, the
Speaker 1: bos Lerman version. Yeah, it's a classic. It's a classic. Um,
Speaker 1: really great soundtrack. Um. No. There are some movies that
Speaker 1: can be spoiled really badly, like The Sixth Sense. But
Speaker 1: I think most of the time, you know, just talk
Speaker 1: about spoilers. It's not going to ruin it for me.
Speaker 1: You can talk about it. It's fine, it's true. I
Speaker 1: think it's mostly true. I guess like thrillers, horror movies
Speaker 1: like The Sixth Sense, you don't you don't want to know,
Speaker 1: but then it's like that it's the ending is always
Speaker 1: the same, like the bad guy was a ghost or dies. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I just someone the other day. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you about that TV show This is Us.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I mean, have you seen it? And I
Speaker 1: was like spoilers and I was like that, there's no
Speaker 1: spoilers in that show. I don't know spoiler it's it's
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore and an old lady makeup. Spoiler alert you
Speaker 1: will probably cry. So that's my half big take. How
Speaker 1: about you. Um, I think that hashtags have ruined the
Speaker 1: hashtag Yeah. Um. People might have all kinds of complaints
Speaker 1: about social media culture, but the hashtag now has come
Speaker 1: to mean exclusively. It's social media meaning, which is like hashtag, hashtag,
Speaker 1: later Graham, hashtag, Friday, hashtag, baby toes, hashtag, half big take,
Speaker 1: and my dream. That hashtag, also known as the pound sign,
Speaker 1: means something. It means number, but it doesn't anymore. So
Speaker 1: we tried to use yes, and I've been like, I've
Speaker 1: like texted or messaged people like, oh, send me the
Speaker 1: number for that thing, and put in a hashtag, and
Speaker 1: it looks like I'm I'm doing like a trending top.
Speaker 1: So bring back the pound sign. Yeah, that's my half
Speaker 1: bay take. I missed the pound sign. That's cute. Thanks,
Speaker 1: and this has been in half Bake Takes half Baked Takes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to another episode of Game Plan. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at francesco Today and I'm
Speaker 1: at rs Greenfield and call into our hotline. It's two
Speaker 1: on two six one seven zero one six. We'd also
Speaker 1: love it if you would please head over to Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you like our show, subscribe,
Speaker 1: rate review us um. Every review helps new people find
Speaker 1: our show. Also, just tell people about it. Yeah, email
Speaker 1: everyone you know. The show was produced by Liz Smith
Speaker 1: and Magnus Hendrickson. The head of podcast is Alec McCabe
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next week. We will yah and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next week. I will not me though,