I got home from work last week, and there was a lockbox over the thermostat in my apartment.
I didn’t know if I was upset about the lockbox, or that someone was in my apartment when I wasn’t there. No one had the right to enter my apartment without notice. I called the superintendent and asked who was in my apartment while I was gone. He said he been there, and he had installed lockboxes over all the thermostats in the apartment building. The owner of the building was complaining about the energy use, and he thought it was from the HVAC system. He set all the thermostats at sixty-six, and the lockboxes prevented the tenants from changing the temperatures. I was freezing that night, and remembered my dad had given me a space heater for Christmas. I took it out of the closet and plugged it in. For the first time in a week, I slept comfortably because I was warm. I was sure I was going to get something from the superintendent because I was using more electricity, but I heard nothing. Instead of breaking the lockbox and turning up the thermostat, I was getting warm with my space heater. I even ended up going to the store and buying two more space heaters for the rest of the apartment. The owner of the apartment building didn’t want us using his furnace to stay warm, so I got smart and used space heaters, along with most of the other tenants. When I said something about the space heaters to my friend, she spread the word, and the local home center was soon our of space heaters.