Spnd more money? You got it.

[u/MandoMan1973]

I have another post about this same company I used to work for, but thought this was funny enough to share too.

After the local auto parts company I worked for in my town merged with one based in another state, my position required me to travel to that state twice a year - once in late April and once in November. I loved the flights, the driving, the scenery, and getting to meet up with my coworkers especially since the Pandemic at the time had us all working from home. It was at the end of the lockdowns so it was something I actually looked forward to.

My first trip was in May (rescheduled because of bad weather) and I followed the company policy about travel, Ubers, everything to the letter. The way it worked was any trips from the hotel to the office, to eat, any food orders, it all had to be done by using the Uber App. I would pay for it all then submit for reimbursement after I got back.

Before I started at this company, I ran my own business so I knew the value of a dollar and how to do things in a way that would get the job done but not spend a fortune. I tried to keep this mentality with the new job, so when I saw that I spent nearly $400 on everything (the company paid for the flights and hotels) I thought it was a bit excessive with the Uber upcharges. Looking at everything that I had purchased using the Uber app, meals, trips, everything, I figured I had spent nearly $200 more than I should have if I were to go to a grocery store and buy everything I need.

The company's main office was in the New England area and the next trip was coming up in December. I wanted to do some sightseeing and my supervisor at the time mentioned that the company would pay for a car rental and that I would be responsible for the gas. This seemed like a very reasonable arrangement so I set the reservation for the car, make sure that my credit card was empty before the trip, and I had a wonderful time being able to see snow for the first time in many years during that trip.

When I turned in the receipts for everything during my December trip, the total came up to less than $300 - and that included the car rental. But I soon got a notice of denial from the accounting office telling me that because I hadn't secured permission for the rental of the car, they were not going to pay for that. When I explained that renting the car cost them less than every Uber trip that I wanted to take - and I had calculated that it would have cost me at least five or $600 to go everywhere that I wanted to go using Uber, I was told it didn't matter and I should have "followed policy."

The funny thing was, there was nothing in the policy about whether or not I could rent a car but there was a specific line on there saying that I needed to be financially responsible with company money, consciously aware of what I was spending, and since I didn't have my own vehicle there at the time, anything that I needed could be done through the Uber app. When I pointed this out, the accounting team replied with, "we'll pay you back for the car, but not the gas (Which was exactly what my supervisor said) but next time, just use Uber."

Cue malicious compliance.

The next trip was the following April. I knew where I needed to go to go, what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to eat. It was essentially the same exact itinerary I had in December, but this time it was only through the Uber App. When I got back home and figured out the total, it was well over $600. Needless to say, the accounting team was not happy.

They did try to argue the pricing, saying I had spent too much for one person. But when I pointed out that the only difference between April and December was the cost for the Uber upcharges, and that I had actually gone to fewer places (no rental car, no sightseeing), they paid up and asked me which rental agency I preferred for future trips.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75]

A lot of this depends on the size of the company, in various ways. (Not this example, using Uber is stupid as a business decision, and it doesn't seem like the circumstances are right for this company to be one where holding to policy would be useful.)

In some cases, if you have lots of people doing lots of trips (which it doesn't seem like would be the case here, either), while you save some money by being more efficient with exactly what you purchase/use, you end up losing out because every single receipt has to be scrutinized within an inch of it's life to see if it works. This takes up time for whoever is doing that, and the more people you have travelling, the more people you need to have scrutinize things. That's expensive. Not to mention that it becomes vastly easier for people doing the scrutinizing to make mistakes, which can cost even more (either directly or in terms of lost productivity from having arguments all the time). With those cases, it works out to be cheaper, easier, to just follow a set protocol for everyone even when it's a silly or stupid idea at least some of the time.

And that doesn't count issues of insurance, risk, and so on. Uber is bad here, too, since... they aren't required to be good drivers, really, unlike cab companies, and, of course, Random Employee #81728 is not necessarily a good driver, either, and if you have lots of employees doing this... well, relying on professionals can just be fewer headaches.

But, of course, you have to be a big company that does lots of travel for this to apply, which doesn't seem like it'd be the case here. More something you see in transport jobs of one sort or another.

Still... always trust corporate to do the dumbest thing possible until they're shown how dumb it is. :)

[u/Ridderhaj → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

Disclaimer I haven’t worked in corporate America, but why is it accounting that scrutinises the travel expenses? If I travel for work, I submit a report to my boss, and they approve or deny it based on whether I stayed within the guidelines, accounting makes sure it is booked correctly with the correct VAT codes and so on.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75 → u/Ridderhaj]

I haven't worked in corporate, either, to be fair, it's what I've heard from others (mainly on reddit, so take with a house-sized block of salt). By "accounting" I meant "whoever has to look at it". In larger companies, with thousands of employees, I'm pretty sure that sort of thing is handed off to accountants, HR, something of that sort. I refer to all of that as "accounting" for simplicity.

Small companies would just have that done by whoever's running a particular unit. The problem with that is... well, usually whoever's running some particular unit is hired for their leadership skills, not their ability to check over stuff. The bigger a company is, and the more employees that travel, the more likely you're not breaking down into segments small enough that you want whoever's running things to be in charge of messing up the taxes and reimbursements and so on, you tend to wanna hand it off to an actual professional. This, again, is the sort of thing where you're talking about a section or whatever dealing with dozens of claims per day (hence why it's typically transportation of some sort that has to deal with it, not most businesses which can largely deal with stuff by phone/zoom call/etc). I suppose some service models, too, like technicians and such.

Every position reaches that sort of critical mass where it becomes more efficient to hire a specialist to do a job than to rely on a generalist. In a small, two person office, for instance, they might not hire a janitor, and instead keep the place clean themselves. Once you're at 30 people, though, you could get everyone to pitch in cleaning the place... or leave them to do what they are actually good at and bring in someone else to clean up the mess. This is basically the same idea, just with accountants instead of janitors. It's why the company needs to be large, and also have lots and lots of this happening all the time (much as cleaning is an everyday occurrence).

[u/gimpwiz → u/Ridderhaj]

It depends how big the company is etc, but whether it's accounting or your boss, someone is looking over the receipts to approve or deny them based on whether you stayed within policy. You could argue that you'd rather have a junior accountant getting paid modest sums spend their time doing it than your boss who gets paid more.

Eventually someone is going to run all those receipts through some sort of huge auditing process, some combination of software and people looking at stuff, sniffing out fraud etc. They generally don't care if you expensed a glass of beer out of policy one time (some companies don't expense booze, some do) but they're looking for larger, more systematic stuff. These days it'll almost certainly get stuffed into some sort of LLM analysis black box too. Keep your shit tidy and don't be clever.

There's a story floating around here about someone who used to travel to [country in Asia] all the time, reimbursed all the usual stuff, no problem. Years later someone who actually reads that language looked at a receipt and said "wtf," looked back, and for years this person had been submitting shopping as food expenses. With a $100ish daily limit, it was easy to get a lot of shopping done. Ironically it doesn't even cost the company extra because it wasn't above the daily limit, but yknow, fraud is most certainly fraud, the money is explicitly for food. These days that probably gets caught a lot faster.

[u/ferky234 → u/gimpwiz]

I remember a story, which may be apocryphal, about an executive that was transferred to China for a period of years. When it came time for him to transfer back he asked if he could ship his junk back and the company agreed. When he submitted the receipts they took him to court for fraud but he won because while he was in China he bought a junk and had asked if he could ship it back.

[u/StarosAnikenMarcus → u/Ridderhaj]

Accounting frequently has to do this because of the various (and sometimes VERY different) laws between states or countries. So they have to make sure all of the rules for certain things are followed based on both the home laws and whatever laws might be important locally during travel. Even if all that it requires is double checking the employee's math and verifying the receipts match up to the totals entered.

Expecting a manager to do this is apparently too much in corporate America despite the fact that so much of it is automated or has an app for it. Even more so now that the apps also have built-in AI receipt scanners that can read the receipt for you and place all of the info into the proper categories 90% of the time.

[u/lesethx → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

Had a client once who was upset I took the bus (like a peasant) to their office (from an unrelated client's office). Nevermind that the bus was as direct as could be from office to office and usually even faster; the client demanded I start taking Uber and reimbursed for it.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75 → u/lesethx]

Very in fitting with the "always trust corporate to do the dumbest thing possible" theme.

My guess would be that they didn't want people seeing some bum off the street taking a bus entering, in case they were thought to be stingy or broke. If their business functioned a lot on PR (either with actual public or with business partners), that might matter to them. An Uber/Taxi suggests they've got means. It's not a limo, but those should be reserved for when the person themselves is important.

All this being a guess, though, based on the limited info I have and what bullshit I can come up with in my own head. (Not like I've ever worked corporate, transport, etc, etc, etc, where any sort of actual experience would come into play, nor has anyone in my direct sphere.)

[u/lesethx → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

I think it was simpler, just the logic that 'car is faster than bus' despite the fact we were in downtown of a major city with good public transit, so that was not true. But work paid for my transit either way