Theo Moore

We are in a new building where I work. It is pretty nice building. We have been trying to get the air conditioning setup correctly for months. The issue is that the zones are off; we have our IT development room on the same zone as several groups that don’t have 30 server class machines. As a result, our room freezes/fries the others do the opposite. It’s balancing act we don’t do well.

One of the founders came up stairs on Monday claiming our lamps were the problem. He pointed to mine specifically and mentioned it was 111 degrees on the outside. I tried to explain that the bulb was very tiny; for all the temperature, it was not producing any real amount of heat. If you place something a foot away for a day, the temperature of the item will not increase. My tiny bulb simply doesn’t have enough surface area to produce any real heat. I said this is likely true of the other lamps in the room (we operate with our overhead lights off to reduce screen glare) and the real problem is the server class machines development uses.

I don’t think this helped. I base this on the fact that when we came in this morning, we found that every lamp in the room had been busted and/or stolen. Broken bulbs everywhere. Cube walls torn down. My personal ($30 at OfficeMax) non-functional. One person’s personal lamp completely stolen.

Now, if the desire was to remove the lamps, I am thinking there is likely a better approach. I have no doubt that should my boss have said something like “Theo, we need you to take your lamp home to help with the heat problem”. Had that happened, I’d have done it. No argument. I’d think it silly, but I’d have complied. Busting my lamp is not the solution.

The founder is up here now distributing lamps to replace the ones taken, but I feel terribly intimidated to ask for one. This is seriously messed up.

EDIT:
My lamp was replaced. The founder handed them out.