It was such a little thing that would make a big difference.
After I graduated from high school, I worked in a restaurant part time while I went to trade school.
It was a medium sized family restaurant that served American fare. I waited tables and sometimes worked in the kitchen as a prep cook. It got really hot in that kitchen, especially in the summer, and it was miserable to work back there. The place had a decent air conditioning system, I guess, but it wasn’t zone controlled. To cool off the kitchen would freeze out the dining room and the dining room was almost always a little chilly anyways. Well, the day came when the HVAC system needed to be replaced, and a few of my coworkers and I tried to convince the owner to have zone controlled heating and cooling installed but he was too cheap to pay the extra expense. Shouldn’t the comfort of the people working in the kitchen be important to him? One of the cooks got the idea to put a window air conditioner in the kitchen and it helped a lot. And it kept the HVAC system from kicking on so much and the dining room became much more comfortable. The owner wasn’t happy with the increase in the electric bill, but the bill was high anyways so the increase was not that much. And I didn’t mind working in the kitchen anymore. The owner may have been too cheap to invest in zone controlled heating and cooling but we made the kitchen comfortable anyways.