it's written like a joke though. especially the sexism allegation part of the article. I am naturally warmer than everyone (yes, I'm a male) so I assume that everyone feels colder than me. If I am at work and it's too warm (99% of the time) I don't complain. I just figure that everyone else is comfortable with the temperature or it's too cold for everyone else. I'm not going to complain about the temperature and make the other 100+ people even more uncomfortable.

So here's my thoughts. Suppose you have an office with 100 people. Suppose 20 people prefer the office to be 82+, 20 people prefer 79-82, 20 people prefer 75-78, 20 people prefer 71-74, and 20 people prefer 70-. Those numbers are just made up, but I wanted to put it into groups of 20 percent. If I ran this office, I would keep it 71-74. Here's why.

1. It really is true that you can always put on more clothes, but there's a limit to how many clothes you can take off. I really don't see a problem with 60% of the employees wearing sweaters.

2. Suppose you keep it 77 like the article suggested. 50% of your employees are going to be sweating all day. The office will get musty by the end of the day.

3. Budgeting. If I set my budget for keeping the building cool, and then decide to bump it up to 77 to make people happy, we're saving money on our budget (in the summer).

4. other reasons, personal preference, etc

I'm really not trying to be obtuse but couldn't you just keep an extra layer at the office? It seems a lot easier for cold people to dress up than warm people dress down...

My office solved the issue by either being to cold or to hot for everyone, building management never managed to get it right.