air conditioning or conditioning?

No, this is not my usual dilemma whether I dare to spend a lot of money on one of these kits installed at home, or continue boiling in my skin now as the summer heatwaves are coming. It's the same old story at work where we are at least a hundred person in the same wing (not even the whole floor) sharing the same air. There, in the office we do have air-conditioners, but we don't use them...

To get to work I take a suburb train (from the fifties) with no air-conditioning, then the longest underground (also from about the fifties) with no air-conditioning. So, even though I take a shower in the morning before I leave home, I might as well take another one when I arrive at the office.

Instead, since we don't turn on the air-con there, I sweat for another hour, while trying to focus on my work, and adjust to the airless, humid heat. And why don't we use it? Simply because some sit under the airholes where the cold air blows off of the system, and they freeze or even develop a cold. 

And when you suffocate or freeze, or both only at different places on the same floor, then you start to wonder:
- are they experimenting with the system,
- are they experimenting with us,
- is it the system experimenting with us,
- who is it experimenting with our systems,
-is there a system in it, at all?

It wouldn't be that difficult to put all the thermostats on the floor on a low-level fan speed with an ideal temperature, then maybe lock them so it couldn't be changed all the time. But then I remember how it was when they did that, and also removed all the window handles at another place I worked at.  Actually it was my first multi-job, and well, to put it mildly, it wasn't quite a humane solution.

Here at least, we have a little committee that used to go around on the floor at regular intervals. They check the thermostats, sometimes set something on them. Then it usually becomes even worse, but sometimes they succeed to help for a while. Today they even asked some of us how satisfied we were with the system. I can foresee an email sent around with voting buttons...

Well, anyhow, as far as I can remember, everywhere I worked at,  this was an issue with no solution.
So, I guess I just have to dress accordingly, as they cannot expect us to boil in the office, and work like that, or can they?