Frosty Welcome

My feet felt like lead weights when I was getting ready for work. The 2 week holiday over Christmas and New Year was restful too restful infact that going to work today was a bit of a struggle.

Although my mother in law was philosophical about the whole thing and said over lunch yesterday that I should be thankful that I have a job to go back to in the New Year. She has a point and hmm, it is not all the time that I admit that she has a point ;-)

Anyway, back to the routine of alarm switch off, open curtains – surprise there is a sprinkling of snow, turn up heating, jump in the shower and then breakfast while watching news and then off to work.

I entered the building and thought it was exceptionally cold. I opened our office door and I was greeted by colleagues in winter gear: hats, gloves, scarves and coats. What’s wrong? Our building’s heating system is not working and email was sent around saying that temperatures are currently well below the acceptable minimum determined by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 and staff are not legally obliged to remain in the building under these conditions and support staff have been advised that they can go home.

But Estate and Buildings are working on it and everything might be okay by mid morning.

I tried to be conscientious and powered on my computer so I could check emails. It is quite impossible to type with gloves on. I took off my gloves – after 5 minutes I cannot feel my fingers!! I was tempted to sit on my computer’s CPU.

I cannot be bothered to put the kettle on so I went to town and have some coffee and toast. A colleague sat in her car and listened to Duffy. Three went shopping.

We came back to the office around 12.00 noon and there was another email saying that radiators are heating up and hopefully temperatures will bring itself back up to something resembling comfortable conditions by mid-afternoon. I was monitoring temperature in my desk and at 12.30 it was still 10 degrees C.

I decided to go home. I loaded up USB stick with stuff and dropped emails in my Inbox hoping to work from home ;-).

Tomorrow I think I will be wearing my vests and shorts – the heating will be running in full steam and I will be hot and bothered.