Trying to Sweat It Out at 78

New federal rules should cool many complaints

Our waiters have to wear tuxedoes," protested Jasper Mirable, owner of Jasper's Restaurant in Kansas City. "They're wet by the middle of the evening. It's destroying everything I've worked for." At the St. Louis offices of the Arthur Andersen & Co. accounting firm, a senior officer reported: "We just turned the thermostat down. In a couple days they'll come around and turn it up, but then we'll turn it back down again." Insisted a liquor-store owner in Boston: "When they turn the air conditioning off in the White House, then I'll turn up my thermostat."

All of that verbal heat last week was over one of the President's more modest steps to conserve energy: his proclamation requiring most public and commercial buildings in the nation to be cooled to no lower than 78DEG F this summer. Although health experts assert that such a temperature is within an acceptable human "comfort range," the moaning over this minor inconvenience was widespread.

Once the rules are mailed out by the Department of Energy at the end of this month, the managers of the 5 million affected buildings will have an additional 30 days in which to file requests to be exempted from compliance. So many reasonable exceptions to the 78DEG standard are written into the regulations that much of the complaining may well disappear. While restaurant owners, for example, have been among the loudest protesters, they will be considered in compliance if the temperature in their hottest room is no higher than 78DEG. Thus if the kitchen is no less than 78DEG, the dining rooms can be cooler. Supermarkets, too, can qualify for exceptions on the grounds that their perishable foods in open cases must be refrigerated; to raise the storewide temperature would mean having to increase the refrigeration, with little, if any, net energy conservation. Generally, it is not the thermostat in buildings that must be set at 78DEG; it is the recorded temperature in the warmest area of a centrally controlled set of rooms that must not be less than 78DEG.

Despite all of the exceptions, the 78DEG decree started a wave of more casual dress. Men were discarding suit jackets (the equivalent of reducing their workspace temperature by 3DEG), loosening or shedding ties (saving another 1DEG) and wearing short-sleeved shirts. Women in offices were turning to halter tops, looser fitting clothes and thinner fabrics.

The whole trend set some of the stuffier law firms and various executive rows into re-examining traditional codes of dress. For the first time, reporters covering Congress were allowed to enter the press galleries without suit coats and ties. But a valiant attempt to extend that right to members of the House was squelched by a surprisingly decorous House Speaker Tip O'Neill. When Jim Mattox, a Texas Democrat, showed up in a light blue shirt and no tie, O'Neill asked him to leave.

"Perhaps the chair reflects the views of his own generation," explained the 66-year-old O'Neill, "but he feels that this is one of those ways he shows his respect for this institution. Through the years, members in this chamber, long before air conditioning, wore wigs and swallow-tailed coats and high mufflers. The chair thinks this history shows respect for the Congress."

Mattox began to protest. "Mr. Speaker..."

"The chair is not recognizing the gentleman," said O'Neill with scorn.

Later, Arizona Democrat Morris Udall joined the issue with a formal resolution that coats and ties need not be worn in the House during the summer months. It was soundly defeated, 303 to 105, as members endorsed the Speaker's sense of congressional dignity.

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