For two years I logged the temperature in our conference room before every meeting. I have the data. I have the chart. I have the receipts. And the room is still set for him.

I work in private equity. I have a corner office on the thirty-second floor of a building in Midtown. The building was designed in 1972. The HVAC was last reprogrammed in 2014. The setting is 68° in summer and 71° in winter. The reasoning, when I asked a building engineer, was: "It’s what most people like." I asked which people. He said: "You know. People."

The "women are always cold" script is not a folk observation. It is the residue of a 1966 study by P.O. Fanger that defined "thermal comfort" using a single subject — a 40-year-old man in a business suit. His metabolic rate became the standard. Women, who run an average 20–30% lower resting metabolic rate, were not in the study. We have been wearing his temperature for sixty years.

The first time I asked to turn the conference room up — I am 43, in finance, no joke about my body anywhere on my LinkedIn — the floor manager told me I was the only one complaining. The second time, I brought a list of the women on the floor who had complained to me privately. The list had eleven names. He read it and said: "Why didn’t they come to me?" I said: "Because you said I was the only one."

What I have learned, doing this for two years, is that the labor of being temperate is itself the cost. Every time I bring the cardigan I am paying. Every time I bring the list, I am paying. Every time I say "Take off your jacket" with a smile so that no one calls me "heated", I am paying. Every dollar that is in the spreadsheet of unpaid managerial work I do for this office is one of the dollars that built the cardigan-shaped industry I am now wearing.

Last month, I broke. We were in a quarterly with our largest LP and the room was 65°. I was in three layers. The LP, a 61-year-old man in a wool blazer, said — friendly, warm, no malice — "Vivian, you look cold." I smiled and said: "I am cold. The room is set for your blazer." He laughed. The floor manager came in twenty minutes later and turned the thermostat up to 71. We have been at 71 since.

I am the one running cold. I am also the one running hot. I am 43 and there are nights when I sleep in nothing and there are weeks when I cannot get warm. My body is currently doing fifteen years of metabolic reorganization without consulting me. The cardigan is in my bag because I do not know which body I will be wearing to the 10 AM. I bring both kinds of armor. The men I work with do not bring any.

What I want, more than I want the room at 71, is to stop spending my Tuesday running a covert temperature campaign on behalf of eleven women who cannot afford to put their names on a list. The campaign is the job. The job is not what I am paid for. The cost of the campaign is, conservatively, an hour a week. Fifty-two hours a year. At my rate. I have done the math.

The room is at 71. We will see how long that lasts. The next time I bring it up — and there will be a next time — I will not bring a list. I will bring a thermometer. And I will set it on the table. And I will not say anything at all.