Companies should never ignore essential building maintenance.

This man worked as a field tech dealing with a notoriously stingy purchasing department.

Repairs were always denied.

So the maintenance team came up with a subtle way to make executives feel the consequences.

Read the full story below to find out more.

No heat for you

Back when I was a field tech, one of my customers was a tall office building.

Purchasing was often super stingy approving maintenance and custodial quotes.

It was always a fight.

The HVAC team planned a quiet workaround.

There was some repair work being done on the HVAC system.

One of the maintenance personnel asked the contractors to add a couple of extra shutoff valves leading to the executive floor.

Whenever purchasing would deny an HVAC maintenance request, one of the support staff would go into a crawlway.

They would throttle the ball valve to the executive loop back by about 60%.

This would restrict the flow just enough to make the executive floor too cold or too hot.

Their tactic forced action from upper management.

When one of the big wigs would complain, maintenance would just reply with:

“Well, we need a new bearing assembly.”

They would say, “We put a quote in last week, and we are just waiting for purchasing to approve it.

But I’ll see what I can do today.”

The trick worked every single time.

An hour or so later, the quote would be approved.

A few hours after that, the valve would be opened back to almost full.

Then, it would be opened completely when the new whatever arrived.

Let’s read the responses of other people to this story.

This person has a valid question.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

Here’s a valid point from this one.

Finally, that was creative thinking, says this one.

Sometimes, karma comes in the form of a thermostat dialed down to 60%.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.