Employee Tried To Save Their Company Money On Travel, But The Finance Department Wouldn’t Listen To Them So They Bought A Car With What The Company Wasted

Oh, I see…

So you want me to cost the company MORE money instead of cutting down on expenses?

Okay! Great idea!

That, in case you didn’t pick up on it, was sarcasm, my friends.

And it’s what the person who wrote this story on Reddit could’ve said to their boss!

Check out their story and see what you think.

“I was working for a large multinational firm with multiple sites in the UK. I was usually based in, let’s say York, but was sent on a 6 month secondment to head office in London.

Everything was on expenses. The hotels during the week, evening meals and particulatly rail transport to and from London on Monday mornings and Friday evenings.

They had it planned out.

At this time I was living in digs in York which were charged by the nights I actually slept there, so most weekends it saved me cash to go back home and stay at the parents in Reading (relatively close to London compared to York).

As I was in Reading almost every weekend I asked if I could travel from there direct to the London office instead of driving all the way from Reading to York, just to catch the train back all the way down to London, and do the reverse on Fridays. Not unreasonably this was agreed to by my line manager.

But there was a problem…

All was fine for the first few weeks until it was discovered by Finance that another colleague on the secondment had been doing similar to me, but claiming for rail travel to London from her parents house in Edinburgh (a lot further from London than York!).

There was a bit of a stink about the company subsidising her travel home to Scotland at weekends and as a result an edict was issued that said only rail travel claims for York to London would be signed off in the future.

I spoke to my line manager about my circumstances and he referred me direct to Finance (I think he knew what was coming and didn’t want to be implicated).

I spoke to a senior manager in Finance and began to explain my circumstances, but he just cut me off and said, in a tone that would brook no dissension, that ONLY claims from York London would be signed off.

NO exceptions would be made.

Talk about stupid!

As a callow youth I got the message, and thereafter submitted weekly expense claims for flexible return rail tickets from York to London for almost 5 months whilst actually travelling from Reading to London.

I made a surprising amount of money from this, and combined with not needing to pay for digs and meals, I saved enough to buy a nice second hand TVR car after the secondment was over.”

Let’s see how Reddit users reacted to this story.

This reader weighed in.

Another individual spoke up.

This person was surprised…

This Reddit user made a funny comment.

You try to save the company money and this is what happens…

Good grief!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.