Word of the Day: Egregious

e·gre·gious
adj. Conspicuously bad or offensive.

Some things in my world are just completely unnecessary, including, but not limited to, the whistler, the hummer and random mid-morning vacuuming. The past few days, as you probably know by the photo in a previous post, my coworkers and I have been freezing to death. Each day as I walk into the office I check the temperature to find that it is one degree colder than yesterday. Yes, I realize that 70 degrees is not all that cold, and if I were outside on a spring day in 70 degree weather, I'd probably be wearing short-sleeves, but when you're stuck in an office with no windows, a relentless draft and nothing to do but sit at your computer typing, there's very little you can do to generate warmth. So I complained.

One would think that complaining would actually create change. (It wasn't like I yelled at anyone. I just nicely asked for some more heat...so my teeth would stop chattering.) But no. My attempt to thaw myself and my coworkers backfired when a woman dressed in three layers of clothing (and an extra layer or two of insulation) walked in with a laser temperature gun. "It's 70 degrees in here," she says. "That's well within the acceptable range. We don't have to do anything. It's warm enough in here." Staring blankly at her, Michelle and I could not believe our ears. "But we're wearing scarves and gloves and three coats." She obviously didn't care. "Maybe you need to bring a heavier coat," she said. Michelle and Timoni already bought gloves so their hands wouldn't freeze. There's definitely something wrong with this picture.

The point of this story is just that people these days seem to be very egregious for no apparent reason. If the nazi temperature lady had an ounce of sympathy for us, but still could not change the situation, I would have graciously accepted my plight and returned to warming my hands over the back of the computer. But instead she chose to be especially egregious and treat me like a criminal for even suggesting we turn up the heat a mere one degree. This should be a lesson this season. Does it really hurt you to be nice?????