The workplace is chilly….

Employees are getting steamed up about a common workplace problem: office temperature.

Research shows productivity falls as offices get colder.

And chilly offices can also lead to workplace tiffs about the thermostat, with unhappy workers toting space heaters, shawls and fuzzy slippers to the office even in summer.

How some cope:

• Amanda Carmichael, 24, at Waterhouse Public Relations in Chattanooga, Tenn., keeps a blanket and two extra sweaters at work. She has also worn long johns under her pants.

“When I wear skirts, I even bring a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and socks to slip on when I’m at my desk,” Carmichael said in an e-mail.

• At Kelley Blue Book in Irvine, Calif., Robyn Eckard, 31, keeps a space heater running in her office even though it’s 90 degrees outside.

“Two girls here have blankets, and you walk by, and they look like little Eskimos wrapped up in there,” Eckard says.

• At New York-based business communications firm CooperKatz, Andrea Martone, a vice president, has used a seat-warming cushion her husband takes on hunting trips to keep warm. She’s also used mitten warmers in her shoes.

“You look like a dork, of course, but you shut your door,” says Martone, 50.

It’s actually a bottom-line issue. When the office temperature was turned up, from 68 degrees to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, typing errors fell by 44% and overall typing output increased by 150% – gaining companies an extra $2 per worker in productivity, according to the 2004 study by Cornell University professor Alan Hedge.

Complaints about office temperature top the 10 most common office complaints in a survey by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA).

“There are temperature comfort ranges. It’s kind of a science and an art,” says Don Young at IFMA. “It’s an issue for keeping people productive. Some workers wear sweaters, and the people next to them are hot.”

Young says some companies even install dummy thermostats, so workers think they can control the temperature.

“It’s the placebo effect,” he says.

Some companies are getting creative. At New York-based Women For Hire, a provider of career fairs for women, cold employees barter for air-conditioning-free time. Last week, one employee bought everyone Diet Coke and Coke in return for 15 minutes of turning off the air conditioner.

Others take matters into their own hands. Jenny Corsey, 25, a senior account executive at Atlanta-based Spizman Agency, brings blue L.L. Bean slippers with snowflakes on them for days when summer weather calls for sandals but indoor temperatures do not.

And when Diane Danielson, 37, was practicing as a lawyer, she coped with frigid air conditioning by plugging in a space heater and wearing long johns under her skirts. “I would hike them up so no one can see,” says Danielson, now CEO of DowntownWomensClub.com in Boston, a women’s business networking organization. “I still had to be fashionable.”