Bless you...but not really...

As it's getting warmer outside, the temperature in the office is getting colder. Seriously. It's like 21 degrees outside now and it's probably 15 degrees or so sitting in my cube. This is somehow the exact opposite of my last job where it got so hot I had to wear shorts some days. If I were to wear shorts here I'd probably get a cold on top of a firm backhand from upper management.

Because of this I now have an office cardigan - a cardigan that I bought specifically for keeping at the office for when it gets too cold. No, I don't keep it on the back of my chair (like the ladies around me who I stole got the idea from), I keep it in my mini cubicle closet (to hide my secret shame).

Sometimes, in the mid afternoon when hell freezes over I need to bust the thing out. Male co-workers are never impressed.

This leads me to my second point. I don't know if its because of the temperature change or maybe dust or something blowing around when the HVAC kicks on, but there's a lot of sniffles and sneezing going around. I'll admit it I'm a victim, and in an attempt to play it cool I've pulled the sanitary sneeze into my shirt's elbow pit but got snot in it instead card but that's not that point, the bless you protocol is.

When someone sneezes, you say bless you or gesundheit even if they excuse themselves - it's just manners. Today, I went on a sneezing rampage and usually the person next to me will say something but since she's away someone else did, so naturally I thanked them.

Trouble brewed when they were the one sneezing? ...and that was the problem: I couldn't tell if they were sneezing or coughing. What the hell, was it a cough? No one else said anything. Should I say something just in case, it can't hurt. But its like 10 seconds too late, I can't say somehting now.

I didn't say a thing.

Fast forward and I'm pretty sure it was a sneeze now. The fact that I didn't say anything the next 2 times they coughed/sneezed, they were blowing their nose and they didn't say goodbye back to me when I left....yeah I'm pretty confident they were sneezes.