I wear pants to the office, because I'm a grown man and not Pajama Boy

But, despite those truths, here’s the thing: The office is neither the wild courts of Abdul-Jabbar’s day nor the awfulness of the modern airplane. Instead, it is a place in which dominance reigns supreme, assuming HR isn’t paying too much attention; a place where fortune favors the bold. It’s tempting to think that the bold man is the one who shows up in shorts and loafers. He is not. The bold man is the one who knows that there are myriad options at his disposal, from linen to seersucker to lighter-weight cottons. The bold man is the one who isn’t afraid to let them see him sweat. The bold man is the one who embraces being the center of attention not because of his slavish dedication to “comfort,” but because of his slavish dedication to decorum with a splash of swagger.

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For this man is the one who can cause others to cower merely by his presence, for his ability to dress appropriately and ignore mild inconveniences such as the heat he endures between the car and the office door. He is the man who will be noticed not for the hand grenade he’s holding, ready to knee-cap his rivals in a rain of shrapnel, but for the tailoring of his pants, the details on his wingtips, and the pattern of his gingham shirt.

Shorts guy may be cool, he may not be oppressing the ladies with the thermostat, but he is not cool. He is not going to appeal to the retro sexist women in the office and ply them to do his bidding. That job rests with the man in pants. The man in the pants is the one for whom HR is just an abstraction and for whom political correctness is a concept to be trampled beneath his Goodyear welded soles. Man in pants is swinging his heat around with the force of 1,000 suns, despite the heat of the actual sun. He reigns supreme, sweat glistening on his brow, leaving foes in his wake. He is the man who knows if you’re going to go full Lenny Kravitz, you go full Lenny Kravitz and bust out of a pair of tailored trousers, not the basketball shorts your fellow air travelers were sporting. Accept no substitutes and offer no apologies. For you are the man of the office, it is your thermostat, and you damn sure better use it.

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