A thermostat in the offices of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce only displays the current temperature and cannot be used to control the heating and cooling.

There’s an episode on the hit TV show “The Office” in which the staff wages a very subtle war over the temperature of the workspace, even going as far as showing up in the early morning to adjust the thermostat.

That war is being waged in Lawrence, too, but it’s far more subtle.

Such is the case in the offices at ICL Performance Products on Ninth Street. Philip Brown, plant manager, says he usually sets the thermostat at a comfortable level and never receives complaints about it from the other workers on the floor.

Paula Commons, administration assistant and office neighbor of Brown, says that the only real problem that arises is when Brown is on a conference call and his door is shut.

“He’s getting warmer and warmer because the door is closed, even if I keep turning it down,” Commons says.

But Commons does have a backup plan for those conference calls when the temperature falls.

“I always keep an extra jacket at my desk,” she says.

Some Lawrence employees aren’t so lucky. Those in the Kansas Union at Kansas University have no control over the temperature of their offices.

The temperature control is connected to a computer that regulates the airflow of the entire building, in an effort to conserve energy. The system also has special dates and times programmed into it so that the air to a particular meeting room will switch on about an hour before an event takes place.

Wayne Pearse, the union’s building engineer, says that the exact temperature is set by Ashrae, the company that provides the air and heat systems, whose standard is between 72 and 78 degrees. Even though he tries to keep it at a condition where a majority of people would feel content, Pearse understands that you can’t please everyone.

“I’ve never had a situation with 500 people in the room and all 500 are comfortable,” he says.

Union workers don’t seem to have too much of problem with not being in control of the temperature, though. Susan Hoffman, assistant director of union programs, works in the Student Union Activities offices and says that she and her co-workers understand the nature of trying to keep a building as big as the Kansas Union cool.

“We look at it more as, ‘Let’s do what we can to conserve energy,'” Hoffman says.

Workers at the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce are dealing with the same issue. Since the Chamber building is rented from AT&T, the employees there also don’t get a say in where the thermostat is set. However, workers there have found a way to deal with their level of comfort.

Natasha Buller, marketing and communications manager, has her compact space heater running most of the day, even in the summer. Buller says that of the 10 people who work in the Chamber offices, about half bring in fans or heaters while the other half are comfortable with the set temperature.

While this may all seem like a personal preference, there are some practical business ramifications, according to Alan Hedge, professor of design and environmental analysis at Cornell University.

According to Hedge’s research, people did much more computer work, such as keying and mousing, when the temperature is raised up to 77 degrees. The research goes on to show that at 77 degrees, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with a 10 percent error rate, but at 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time with a 25 percent error rate.

Though the research suggests that more work gets done at a slightly higher temperature, Hedge also realizes that personal comfort is important to office productivity.

“Because of differences in clothing and activity levels, there are differences between people’s preferred temperatures, and this may even change throughout the day,” Hedge says. “So giving people some ability to personally control their temperature at work, like how they do this in a car, is important.”

Buller believes that, despite research evidence, allowing employees to find a comfort level is still important to getting work done, as she found out at her last office job.

“I had a little trouble focusing and getting started,” she says. “It’s a little hard when you’re thinking of all the things that could make me more comfortable.”