The Grimes Dollar General has been experiencing similar conditions inside for weeks now, according to Tim Souza, who shops there regularly.

“I asked them about it, and they said that the furnace had failed. I felt sorry for their workers, because they had to bundle up and keep moving in order to stay warm,” Souza said.

The Pleasant Hill building’s furnace has been broken for about four weeks, Dollar General spokeswoman Crystal Ghassemi said this week.

Space heaters were placed in both stores to try to keep customers and employees warm, Ghassemi said.

A request for comment regarding how long the Grimes store’s heating system has been defective was not returned by Ghassemi.

Mike Pardekooper, Pleasant Hill’s zoning administrator, visited the store on Tuesday after receiving a complaint from a resident. The local contractor responsible for fixing the furnace has since met with him.

It took them a while to get the new units in, to get them delivered. Once they unloaded them, off the semis and set them in place, everything didn’t attach up. So they went back to corporate to get approval to do more work.

For a few weeks, temperatures have been a little cold inside the Gateway Drive store in Grimes, according to contractor Mark Copeland. There wasn’t an enormous amount of heat coming from the space heaters, but he said it wasn’t unbearable.

Within the next few hours, Copeland expects two new units to be up and running at the Grimes store.

There have been no complaints from Grimes residents, according to city officials.

Earlier this week, Cody Morris, 20, who works at the Pleasant Hill Dollar General, developed bronchitis.

The doctor he visited told him being subjected to cold working conditions would not help him fight off the illness. Morris told the physician that his store has been below freezing for about a month.

According to Morris, reporting to a cold workplace has jaded his view of the workplace.