Burned

What happens when you put a group of people together in a room? Someone will invariably observe that the temperature of the room is not quite comfortable; it’s either too hot or too cold. The first observation serves to open a general discussion about the less-than-comfortable conditions.

Guilty! I’m one of those people. My personal comfort zone tends to accommodate temperatures that are slightly above normal rather than temperatures slightly below normal. I don’t like being cold while I’m at work. But just two offices away, my colleague almost always has a fan blowing in her office – she’d prefer the temperature much cooler than the normal setting.

I work in an old building and have learned that while the HVAC system is tuned as much as possible to accommodate the changes to the internal space layout through the 20 or so years since it was first built, it’s just hard for the building engineers to regulate even airflow.

OK. I get it.

So I don’t complain about the temperature in my office because I realize they can’t really do that much more. Instead, I sit on a heating pad.

It’s warm. Sort of like those wonderful seat warmers that some lucky people have in their cars to keep them warm in winter. But with a twist. It is an electric appliance, and if I’m not careful the heating pad can burn my skin. Yes, there is a fabric cover over the heating pad and yes, I wear completely adequate clothing, so the heating element is not coming into actual contact with my skin.

Nonetheless, last Friday I noticed that my derriere was just particularly sensitive. So after work, when I got home, I checked it out. To my dismay, there were two bright red burn spots on my very own butt. A startling discovery.

I’m struggling to figure out the metaphor here…