The overuse of air conditioning in Australia has bothered me for years.I find that most office buildings, retail outlets (and even our trains) are uncomfortably hot in winter and unneccesarily cool in summer.
Many of my associates working in the corporate world find themselves modifying what they wear to work to suit these artificial environments. They take a jacket to wear on even the hottest summer's day and strip down to a light shirt in the depths of winter.
And while I don't have hard evidence, I'm sure it can't be great for your general wellbeing to manage extreme temperature differences as you move in and out of air conditioning.
I grew up with parents whose own parents had survived the Great Depression, so my sister and I were taught to switch off lights as we left a room, to hang the washing on the hills hoist rather than use the clothes dryer and to only turn the heating on when it was almost snowing outside. Air conditioniong was completely unheard of. In winter when we lived in Hobart we'd wear layers (and layers) of thick woollen jumpers and in summer in Sydney and Adelaide, we'd sleep under a damp sheet when the temperature soared.
These days I live in a house that has the luxury of central heating and cooling (evaporative, not air conditioning because it is supposedly a lot more environmentally friendly). On hot days, the cooling only comes on when temperature inside is above 26° C - and we drop it no lower than 25° C. On cold days, we set the heating thermostat at 18° C, wear lots of layers of clothing and wrap a blanket around us at night when we're curled up on the couch. We're lucky enough to have a kitchen and living room that faces west so when the sun is out, we can avoid any heating at all.
My reasons for monitoring the way we use both are more environmentally bound than anything else these days but those childhood habits have been worth remembering.
While it may not be feasible to shift your office thermostat quite as dramatically as we do at home, it's worth pushing for just a few degrees difference. Just as easily as we can acclimatise to 21° C we can also manage very comfortably either side of this.
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