” The women in the office would constantly jigger them around and it drove the building managers nuts, because he would then get calls all day from the rest off the floor.”
Spot On!
I ran a commercial building for several years. The thermostats did nothing if you adjusted then, they were really just sensors for the computer driven HVAC system that was controlled by the computer in my office.
I got many calls a day complaining about it being too hot AND too cold from the same floors. I could print out hourly zone temp readings for the entire building, and could instantly tell if there was a problem. All the temperature problems were sitting behind a desk.
by the way, installing the ghost-thermostats seemed to solve his problem for the most part
the thermostats didn’t read temperature or give a temperature indication, they were the honeywell type that just said like “warmer or cooler” and you could adjust a dial.
he said if the women didn’t know what the actual temperature was, and if they felt they were doing something to control it, they were fine.
I have wondered how much of that is true, I mean the psychological part, and if it differs between the sexes and for what reasoning, or if the psychological part was on his end, where he felt they were pestering him less.
It was the only time we were asked to do that kind of job (we usually had HVAC guys do thermostats), so I wonder how frequent that request is.