We have a heating problem at my office. For some reason known only to the idiot architect who designed this building only the offices with windows have vents. Interior offices, such as the one I’m in, get all of our ventilation through secondary systems that, it has become apparent as the temperature drops outside, aren’t temperature regulated at all. As a consequence my office, the two down the hall, and the two up the hall, have been hovering at some where around 60 degF for the past week.
Now, 60 degF is a great temperature for a spring day after a long winter. It feels positively balmy and certainly makes me smile but it’s not something you want to sit in all day while you try to work. It’s particularly not something you want to sit in all day when the people with the primo offices are nice and toasty warm and you work in a dark hole in the ground with no access to outside light (no, I’m not bitter or anything).
Yesterday I couldn’t get warm and my job being what it is I decided to go home and work. My coworkers, who also have the choice to go home and work, chose to stay and suffer in the cold. This morning it was apparent that the heating problem was 1) not going to get solved by building management (the sum of their response to our questions about whether or not they could do anything about the cold was a two syllable grunt), and 2) wasn’t going to get solved by the organization’s management (yes, I can go home to work but I shouldn’t be required to and if I am I shouldn’t be required to ever come back to the office again).
How does this relate to the difference between politically liberal vs. politically conservative? Simple: the liberal will sit around in the cold whining about how cold it is and complaining that “management” isn’t living up to its social responsibility whereas the conservative will tell you that you should feel damn lucky to have a job at all.
Me, I went out and bought a space heater.