Believe me I tried, and while all agreed, not one single person was interested in logic.

I've never received grief from a boss but from co-workers. I'm not the one who expenses each and every item and if on my own would prefer a quick takeaway meal in my room instead of dining alone at a fine restaurant. I also never expense alcohol unless entertaining clients or local colleagues. It's not the company's business what and how much I'm imbibing. Meanwhile, I watch others expense gourmet meals, hotel spa visits, in-room movies and mini-bars, etc.

However, if the company is giving me grief, nickle and diming, or treating me like a white collar criminal when I submit expenses then I get very "creative" in my submissions. ;)

I know someone who had to pay $600 for a round trip flight from PHL-BDL as well as the associated expenses instead of being allowed to drive his own car. He preferred to drive himself. Mileage reimbursements would have cost much less than the flight and several taxis. He lives an hour northeast of PHL so he had to backtrack, whereas he could drive it in 3 hours each way

A lot of companies have policies against employees driving their own cars on long trips. Years ago at former employer I needed to travel from near San Francisco to visit a customer in Reno, NV. Southwest offered nonstop service OAK-RNO. Figuring it'd be 4 hours door-to-door whether I drove or flew, and driving let me choose when to depart, I drove. At the government rate I billed about $300 for mileage. Compare that to $275 for airfare (that's what a colleague paid for his) plus about $150 for ground transport if I'd flown. Clearly a win.

My boss approved the mileage expense without comment but the back office sent me a warning not to do it again. They suggested renting a car to drive. Hmm, that could be cheaper. That wasn't the explicit policy at that employer. It is at my current employer, though.

I rather suspect #1 in expenses was the boss.

Long, long ago: Conference. My father went and his boss went.

Father: Stayed across the street from the conference, spent reasonably. Boss: Stayed in the conference hotel, spent high, brought his wife along and paid her costs. The end result was the boss's expenses were 4x what my father spent. The boss was not happy!

Yeah, at that range it's most likely cheaper to rent. I've done it on occasion but generally the timing doesn't work.

my employers have had contract rental car rates on the order of $30-45/day with unlimited mileage, so that SF<—>Reno trip (depart midafternoon, all day on site with the client, and drive back that night or the following morning) could have realistically been made for ~$100 plus gas ... and of course the taxes are even lower if you pick up the car at an off-airport location

corporate legal also breathes easier since you’re covered under their insurance policy when driving a rental car on company-authorized travel

I actually prefer to rent a car for lengthy trips, which tends to be cheaper for the company compared to expensing miles. Plus, I hate putting more miles on my personal vehicle.

Foolishly, I had never thought of that. You are likely correct. I'm about as frugal as it gets, and if I'm not with a client, I'm content with Subway for lunch. I've always taken pride in saving the company money.

Anyone highly skilled enough to think big picture wouldn't be working for long in a job reviewing ERs. There's much better jobs out there for those people...

I've run into this before. At a former job, trips from Houston to Austin/San Antonio/Dallas were fairly common, and I didn't mind driving them. I mean Austin and SA your all in time to drive vs airport/security/BS is about the same. Dallas is marginally longer. If I wanted to drive to Dallas and expense the mileage I'd get push back because they "didn't want other people to feel they had to drive vs fly" because the company would rather you flew.

As a US Federal employee, there just isn't that much room for interpretation. Max hotel rates are published, food is a location-based per diem, and most air routes have a contract fare that's required to be used. The only time there's any real room for interpretation is when you're doing something creative like spending the weekend after the trip or driving instead of flying, but even those boil down to "don't cost the taxpayers extra and be prepared to prove it". That doesn't stop some GS-7 on a power trip from telling you what to do, but when the rules are in black and white a little persistence will nearly always prevail.

but, since we're sharing ridiculous travel/expense stories...

When I lived in the DC area, my boss who lived in the District and didn't drive insisted that we had to take the least expensive flight regardless of airport. I lived 10 minutes from BWI, but the flight from IAD was $20 cheaper so I was ordered in writing to fly from IAD.

Unsurprisingly, the travel section (who worked for the boss's boss) was not happy when I submitted $230 in cab fare to get to and from IAD for a $150 flight but had no choice but to approve it. That 'policy' was quickly changed to "you must compare costs between airports" and I never took another domestic trip from IAD.

In the federal job prior to that, I had a travel person repeatedly try to deny $4.50 in bus fare to the airport for lack of receipts (can you even get a receipt from a city bus anywhere in the US?). I started attaching a screenshot of the regulation that said receipts aren't required under $75. In retrospect, I should've taken a $50 cab ride.

I guess neither party considered Greyhound?

I'm supposed to rent cars for long trips too, but I don't usually have to and usually don't. I would rather put the miles on my own car (which I drive into the ground anyways) and just collect the mileage reimbursement (even at my state-legislature cheaper rate) really for one reason and one reason only --- I hate spending that extra 10-30 minutes (dependingon the line) that is often required to get the paperwork and everything set to go for a rental plus the extra paperwork involved in collecting quotes etc.

I do have to collect airline quotes for any trip I drive 'out of state' though, which gets real fun. So, if I need to run to NW Arkansas, a 6 hour round trip drive, I have to compare the mileage reimbursement to the airfare from SWO-DFW-XNA and back (usually, some ridiculous $400-1000 fare that nobody in their right mind would ever spend money on and would take minimum 6 hours of flight/layover time each way) and attach that to show that mileage was cheaper.

Well, one possible thought people might get out of all this is that having an 'expense account' is not necessarily the advantage many people who don't have one, think it is. :rolleyes:

I've never worked for a company where I had a problem with expenses. Most have been fairly liberal in their interpretations. Where something has been questionable, I'm a salesman, I got creative. Perhaps that's more of an issue for people who are less creative in their way of thinking. In the case of government employees, obviously creativity of any kind is frowned upon.