davcams

I have an interesting question that I thought I'd ask here as I may not have adequate knowledge to even ask the question, but something occurred to me while learning thermo dynamics, specifically the second law, and how it relates to the gas laws, pressure, temperature, etc. When a cylinder of gas is compressed, work is being done on the gas in that cylinder. Easy. But could it not also be said that work is being done on the "universe" as (in a sense) it reduces pressure on the surrounding environment, so where is the work really being done? I get it that the universe is infinite, and it is (again, in a sense) nonsense to say the volume of the universe would change, but wouldn't it "decrease" by the same amount that the volume of the container is decreased? Whether this has ANY effect on things, I have no idea at this stage, but for some reason this is bugging me. Does this then have any effect on heat in the same way volume?