When I was most likely to actually get a VDB, our travel time was unpaid. We couldn't (realistically) bill it to a client, nor to an internal unbillable job. We could take all the VDB's we wanted as long as it didn't impact our clients...it was our own time. (In practice, I'd sometimes try to get one on the way home for the weekend. Never on the way out *to* a client site.)

Now it's all murkier in that some of my travel time often is billable these days. Not that I see the big VDB offers of yesteryear anymore... 2 hours for a $150 voucher? :o Um, no, I'll just get on the plane...

While I alluded to this earlier, I will be more concrete now.

I gotta say that I am troubled that this discussion has devolved into a debate about what is a fireable/disciplinable event from the employer-employee perspective instead of what is right or wrong.

I am with Annalisa who applied The Golden Rule. If I were the employer, I would want my employee to tell me. If it was not worth the my/Company's time, so be it but it is not the employee's call.

I believe that ethical standards must be above what one could get fired or disciplined for but that's me.

Do those of you who have entered into the "fireable offense" debate really make decisions based on that?

im willing to accept the viewpoint that an observing strict financial discipline might be good business practice for some

but from my viewpoint, the day my organization starts scrutinizing over 10$ vouchers (rather than trust its employees to exercise sound judgement w.r.t. spending) is the day it starts to show signs of unhealthiness

i rarely fly in the US now , so seeing the 150$ offer this morning was a revelation... now THIS is truly a troubling phenomenon worthy of debate :D:D:D

Make decisions on whether someone working for you steals your money? Yes, I definitely make decisions based on that.

So imagine you're on a business trip for which the company paid $6,000 for the J class fare. You show up at the airport on Friday evening for your flight home, only to be told that business class is full, as the Romanian volleyball team just showed up and sold out the entire cabin. Your titanium-level status gets you nowhere and you are faced with the choice of accepting a seat in Y with downgrade compensation and fare difference refund, or a flight in J on Saturday evening, with a hotel thrown in.

You think about it and decide that you'll stay overnight because that way you can have dinner with your cousin, whom you never see because you're always so rushed on these trips. You get home Saturday night and decide that everyone came out a winner.

Is there anything to report to anyone? No, because it was the sensible solution for all parties. A cloud with a silver lining, if you will.

Of course this being FT, there will be all sorts of ridiculous arguments like:
- you should have flown Y and given all compensation back to the employer because the employer paid for you to get home on a Friday,
- choosing to fly on Saturday clearly benefitted the employee more than the company, so the employee should have self-downgraded and refunded the company,
- you should have checked that accepting a hotel room didn't constitute a bribe or formed part of non-cash benefit that should be taxed somewhere...

Since you made up this scenario, let me make up another.

Business trip...company paid $6K for business class.
You are to return on a Monday night to be at work Tuesday morning.
J is full due to Nigerian football team emergent travel. Y is open though.
Instead of traveling home in Y, you choose to stay another night (meeting with your cousin) to return home in J on Tuesday night, possibly missing important meetings and whatnot in the office Tuesday during the workday. Since we are making things up here, let's even say that you missed a meeting that, because you failed to fetch coffee and take notes, went badly for your employer.

Was that "the sensible solution for all parties"?

I do not think that those who think that, ethically, the employee owes the compensation back are saying that it must be reimbursed in actuality. Some employers will consider it too much hassle or some might consider other factors (as in your scenario).

My ethics dictate that the difference belongs to the employer and it is not up to the employee to decide what to do with the difference. The employer should be consulted. If the employer doesn't care, better for the employee. If both parties agree to your scenario, so much the better for both.

Do you like it when other people (not your wife) spend your money?

I agree and my employer's policies would as well in that scenario.

That's a straightforward scenario IMHO: company bought J, you took IDB, you flew J. It didn't impact your business, it passes any audit that might come about, and any client or employer billing of your time isn't impacted. (I would say the same would hold true for VDB as well.) I don't see any ethical problem here and, based on my understanding of how IDB/VDB are legally treated in most parts of the world, no legal one either.

The problem comes into play if you decide to fly Y and accept several thousand dollars in cash from the airline to do so. That has significantly more ethical and legal implications.

That's just poor judgment, regardless of your own personal code of ethics.

The only sensible choice there is to fly Y and report it to your employer (assuming the scenario of the important meeting which no one else could cover).

Hmmm.

Your employer is out the cost of a hotel room and expenses for 24 hours. Employer -1, You ? (Depends if you had anything good to do arriving 24 hours earlier. If you have no life, +1 for you; if you had a date with JLaw, -1,000,000)

You have preserved your J seat and met with your cousin. Employer 0, You +1

You have lost your Saturday but had some quality time with your cousin which you had wanted to do anyway and that should not occur on company time. Employer 0, you 0

The way I calculate this is it is you +1 (depends on what you would have done with the Saturday), employer -1.

How is this a sensible solution from the employer's perspective?

For LondonElite's scenario, I leapt to the assumption that the hotel room was comped as part of the IDB and he wouldn't expense meals/transportation on the extra day. (I mean, that'd be kind of dumb...)

So I'd score it a nil-nil draw. (Maybe LE and his cousin spent Saturday at an EPL match where they got to see a nil-nil draw... ;))

The employer is exercising poor judgment by relying strongly on an employee to be at full strength immediately following international travel, regardless of the fare class provided.

From the standpoint of "fire-ability," there's no bright line. "Offenses" that could lead to dismissal of a borderline staffer might be essentially overlooked for the star performer. Ethics is one thing; business pragmatism another. I'd like all my employees to have entirely blameless ethics, but I have to be realistic - not all of them do. The key is whether their ethical lapses put my business at risk, and those that do need to find another job.

Deleted...erroneous re-post after edit.

Hmmm. I thought the justification for flying business class is so the employee can "hit the ground running." I'm not saying that you have said that but that seems to be a common rationale for why many FTers "must" fly J or F.

Again, with the fireable offense. Don't any of you have standards above the bare minimum?

It's not an all that bad metric for deciding what is right or wrong. A great many people would otherwise accept anything as justified that fills their pockets.
Isn't ethics more something that we exclusively apply to third parties? As we feel that others should behave whereas for us there's always precedence or a rationalisation?
Oh that one is easy from the ethical POV: if my employer expects me to work after a night in longhaul coach, then the downgrade comp is mine as a reward for the suffering. If they let me sleep the following day or take the Biz ride the next day then any difference is theirs.