Saying no will sometimes have consequences, and the counterpart is sometimes unreasonable.

1. Who are you saying NO to - Ideally what you are saying NO to should have mattered more however in real world incentives and repercussions matter a lot

2. How are you saying NO - Even if one saying a direct NO the tone matters, other times there are ways where you can add precursor conditions (which make it a automatic NO) or you put it on the backlog way too far down that it never gets a real chance to be acted upon.

Putting it on the backlog is the corporate style of saying no without saying NO. Smart people just avoid getting into backlog and just truncate it if its been in the backlog for way too long.

Is there supposed to be a teaching in here?

> He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand.

> two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want

... Which they would be able to do if you actually listened to the guy instead of dismissing him as someone you didn't understand?

Compromise is about figuring out how to give everybody what they want while letting go of how it happens. Turning on half the ACs is a great compromise. Whatever happened at the end is not.

To be generous to the author though, I can see how standing up for yourself in this way would feel revolutionary to someone who has never pushed back in their life. Just know this is the first step on a much longer journey. The next step is figuring out what the compromise would have been with the authority figure on the phone.