This is just super. After reading a study showing that warmer office environments are directly related to greater productivity in office workers, I came across an article ("Some Cold Employees May Never Find Relief") about most building thermostats being non-functional, merely present to make people feel better about being frozen/baked while sitting quietly at their office jobs.

HVAC experts acknowledge what millions of office workers have suspected all along: A lot of office thermostats are completely fake -- meant to dupe you into thinking you've altered the office weather conditions.

The specialists are unrepentant. Fed up with complaints from sweaty men and shivering women, HVAC technicians install dummy thermostats to give workers the illusion of control. In some leased buildings, even the corporate tenants don't know the thermostats are useless. Other times, it's the companies themselves, barraged with calls from workers, who ask the landlord's HVAC technicians to "fix" things.

Richard Dawson, an HVAC specialist from Homer, Ill., who has several landlord clients, says too many office workers feel their environment is "anything but what they want it to be." He estimates that 90% of office thermostats are dummies.