Fana(n)tics

As you may know, I live in a state that requires the constant use of heaters, both large and small. I have three in my office at the present time, although I can only use one at any given moment due to the fact that everyone else on my fuse uses their heaters as well, and if I plugged in the other two it would pop the breaker within seconds.

Yes, I speak from experience.

In any case, before we got into the heaviest part of our cold season, I was using my little miniature heater. It came with low, high and fan settings so that I could use it in the summer when it got above 60 degrees and we were melting. Which is all well and good but, as mentioned, it's darned cold here right about now, so the last thing I was about to do was to put that puppy on the fan setting, you know?

So one morning earlier this month I got to work relatively early, turned the heater onto high, and I dived into the daily tasks that make up the job that I am not so enamoured of as of late. Except...as the day went on it seemed to get colder and colder in my office. Upon my return from lunch I left my coat on. Several times throughout the afternoon and early evening I left my office to linger in the department, which was so much warmer than my office was. But it wasn't just my office.

The department was frigid as well, and my co-workers were freezing, too. However, we chalk it up to the venting system; it seems that when it's warm upstairs, the vents blow cold air on us, and vice versa, and the vents? They were blowing cold air a-plenty by five o'clock that afternoon! In contrast to how the department felt to our shivering bodies, we would leave the department periodically simply to stand in the hallway, because crossing the threshold brought such a change in temperature that our skin breathed a sigh of relief the second our feet hit the linoleum.

At the end of the day, still shivering miserably and cursing the venting system above me, I leaned down to turn off my little heater only to find...the setting had been on "fan" all day long and, therefore, it had been filling my office with cold air, blown directly at where I was sitting while doing my work.

I laughed, of course. This seemed to be something that I would do, and since it was, there was no point in getting mad, right? So I left my office and pointed it out to the co-worker, who immediately started laughing - she had just leaned down to turn off her heater and found that it had been on the fan setting, too!

As we were laughing, our co-worker waaaaaay down at the end of the hall popped her head into the department to see what was so gosh-durned funny, and once we'd informed her of the hilarity-inducing circumstances, she began to laugh as well - because she had found her heater on the fan setting, too!

At that point we conducted an office-wide survey only to find that every single heater in the office had been set to "fan" that day. Not a one had performed its proper heating function!

We all laughed some more (because it warmed us up, you see), and people just chalked it up to one of the early birds playing a prank, but I know the truth. Since I have to click past the fan setting to turn on the heat, I set the trend this morning by stopping mid-way, and the rest of the heaters? They just followed suit. That's the whole story right there.

The people I work with? Someday they'll learn exactly how powerful I am.

Someday....


(Posted by ETS, as a Christmas present and to make up for the fact that she reneged on an agreement to guest-post during Thanksmas!)