We had what seemed like an acre of fluorescent lighting on a timer, set to turn off at 6pm, but some people worked late in the office. I had a small lamp in my cube, so no problem, but one guy's office was simply sectioned off from the open area and had no other lighting. I calculated he was burning a dollar or two a day by coming out and flicking the timer over-ride switch. So I made a suggestion that some offices (naming no names) might get a floor lamp. Instead, the VP of the division tried to get a new $5000 lighting control solution for a different facility and, to get even more credit, that's what he directed a bunch of summer interns, (who were never allowed to have contact with any engineers) to investigate. Plus he named the intern program after himself.
While a great hoopla was made of the interns working on his self-named tiny company, they eventually discovered the other facility already had a timer lighting control installed and had just never bothered to use it. Big savings there. I wonder how much the interns cost.
So it remained that once a year the lighting controller that plunged me, and that guy who got an office, into darkness an hour early for two weeks because the facilities manager left an hour early and cared not one whit about the start of daylight saving time, and then on every remaining day, that guy would get to walk the 100 feet to the override and 100 feet back to burn a dollar a day (for him, workaholic that he was) so about $300 a year, and never got that $150 floor lamp. I was there about 25 years, so nearly $8,000, not including the summer heat load extraction for the A/C.
