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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/GirlStiletto on 2025-10-16 16:03:38+00:00.

Not sure if this was malicious. But back when I was a field tech, one of my custoemers was a tall office building.

Purchasing was often super stingy approving maintanance and custodial quotes. It was always a fight.

There was some repair work being done on the HVAC (Heating/Cooling) system and 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 maintanance request, one of the support staff would go into a crawlway and 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.

When one of the big wigs would complain, maintenance would just reply with “well, we need a new bearing assembly (or whatever). We put a quote in last week and we just are waiting for purchasing to approve it. But I’ll see what I can do today.”

An hour or so later, the quote qould be approved and a few hours after that, the valve would be opened back to almost full. Then opened completely when the new whatever arrived.