Bureaucrats have not been keeping their cool over summer, with government offices reporting an average of three forms needing to be filled in before cooling may be switched on.
Due to poor productivity caused by lack of air conditioning, Melbourne CBD offices alone is projected to have lost two million dollars collectively.
The office winning the dubious title of most forms to fill out requires some twelve forms before the air conditioner may be switched on.
An anonymous employee of the comments that he is not surprised that so many forms are involved.
“They just let us sweat, no matter if it is forty degrees plus they still will not switch on the air con because they want us to be more environmentally friendly,” he said.
“Never mind the trees that got cut down for their precious forms. One of my former colleagues once couldn’t take it anymore and switched on the power to their air conditioner- she didn’t even make it to the ‘on’ button before she was fired.”
Of nearly four hundred offices surveyed across the state, less than twenty do not require any forms to be filled out before air conditioning is engaged.
The survey was conducted by the Melbourne Centre for Office Research (CCOR). The CCOR itself requires eight forms to be filled before air conditioning may be approved.
Despite rarely using an air conditioning service, Melbourne offices spend an average of two thousand dollars per year on air conditioning maintenance and running costs. This number is likely inflated by one office spending upwards of five hundred thousand dollars per year on air conditioning costs.
“We expect that the air conditioning expenditure of the business in question is actually allocated to other costs although this has not been confirmed,” said CCOR chief investigator Dr Albert Kent.
“When this business is excluded from the survey, the average air conditioning expenditure is less than one thousand dollars.”
Dr Kent says that a follow-up survey on office procedures for heating will be conducted in Winter.