Sitting at your office desk, you stare at your computer screen, typing away as the fluorescent lights shine brightly above you. While you work, you wrap your sweater around you even more tightly, shivering.

As cold as you are, there isn’t much you can do about overhead blasting air-conditioning; the office managers have already agreed on a set temperature. And so, you’re left to suffer silently as you work while the frigid air is pumped throughout the office.

But this struggle is not only felt within offices. In schools, students are left to sit in classrooms set to the temperate preferences of their teachers, and sit either shivering or sweating as they try to focus on the lecture rather than the uncomfortable temperature.

Julie Shin, a student at the Korean International School in South Korea, said in an interview that since all teachers choose different temperatures for their classrooms, “it’s hard to comfortably regulate your temperature as a student moving from room to room for each class with such varying temperatures. Some are freezing cold and some are so hot”.

Oftentimes, when a student asks to change the temperature, you can hear a sudden uprisal of disagreement. Some other students in the class will ask to keep the current temperature, saying it’s perfect. Others will insist that it's either too hot or too cold, and must be changed. So is there a reason why some people experience temperatures so differently from others?

In an interview with South Korean office worker Armand Jung, he mentioned that during his time working in a large shared office space in the United States, he “witnessed a lot of discrepancies when it comes to female and male workers” and the temperatures that they felt comfortable in.

He explained that “a lot of male workers tended to prefer lower temperatures” while “quite a bit of female workers always felt the setting was a little too cold”. Rob Danoff, DO, an osteopathic family physician from Philadelphia, explains that there is actually a scientific reasoning behind this observation. “Since women have lower metabolic rate, they tend to produce less heat than men do, which makes them feel colder.”

Since men typically have more muscle mass than women, their metabolism has to generate more heat to fuel the extra muscles, which warms their skin and body as it evaporates. Because women typically have less muscle mass and thus would evaporate less heat through their pores, according to Dr. Danoff, “they might feel colder than men in the room with the same air temperature”.

With this in mind, it is likely impossible to find one temperature that would feel comfortable for all in a shared space. For the case of students in a classroom, there is an added variable. Not only does the differences in anatomy of the different sexes make a difference in how temperature is experienced, but so does age.

The older a person gets, the harder it is for their body to regulate its own temperature. Thus, they often feel much hotter or colder than younger individuals  in different temperatures. Teachers in a classroom might push the thermostat to the extremes, leaving students shivering or sweating in confusion.  

The majority of people who work or study in a shared space will eventually become a victim of the air-conditioning war. Unfortunately, despite it being such a common problem, there isn’t yet an easy compromise solution. Regardless of what temperature the room is set to, there will always be some people who find it bitterly cold and some who are melting in their seats.

Without a foreseeable way to make all people enjoy the same temperatures, for the time being it seems as though the air-conditioning war will continue. For those in offices who want to get fancy, a desk fan might come in handy, and if office regulations permit, perhaps a portable heater might even do the trick.

But for the rest of the office workers and students, it seems as if cooling yourself with a makeshift paper fan or wrapping up in a warm sweater may be the best that they can do to make it through the daily struggles.

Letizia Timoni
Grade 12
Korean International school