I tell this story often, when I was first out of college and at my first job, I was able to go on a business trip to a customer in a big city. A coworker joined

I tell this story often, when I was first out of college and at my first job, I was able to go on a business trip to a customer in a big city. A coworker joined me, he was around 30 years older than me, and had been at my company for about as long. It was looking like a long trip, our product wasn't performing well at the customer, so we were at the hotel bar and were looking at their extensive bar and he was explaining the ins and outs of expense reporting, "As long as you buy food, you can expense your drink", he said. The shelves behind the bar housed hundreds of different bottles of liquor. One set caught our attention, there was around 30 bottles with the same label, but pretty obviously from different years. The oldest one's label was torn and visibly brown. The bartender wasn't around, so we consulted the price book. We found that these were a brand of Armagnac, and the bottles spanned the years from 1980 to around 1870 with prices that went from $20 to $450. $450 was an interesting number, it was also our hotel rate. We hatched a plan, we'd buy just one drink, and put it on our room bill. Then we'd 'add' an extra day to our stay when we did the expense. My peer was confident that he had known our expense person for 20 odd years, and was sure that this would pass. There was a problem, we had no idea what Armagnac tasted like, how would we know if what we were going to drinking was any good? The solution, we'd buy a 'decent' Armagnac ourselves, pay cash, then buy the expensive one. By this time the bartender asked us what we'd like, so we asked for a 'good' Armagnac. The bartender reached up and grabbed some VSOP bottle and poured us a glass each, then left. We were curious as the relative cost, and we saw in the book that the cost was $50 a glass. That was a shock, it was a lot to me, as much as I would spend in a weekend of drinking, but in our minds we got our drink and we had to drink it. It tasted incredible, so smooth, just one of the best drinks I had ever had. I could only imagine how much better the $450 one would taste. My coworker agreed, which meant a lot to me, given the age diff. However, the bartender came back, asked "how is the drink?". We said, "Its incredible, however, I know we asked for a good one, but the book says this is $50". The bartender was put back, "Sirs, I would never do that to you!" And went over and punched it into the til, it was $4.50. and to drive in the fact it was cheap, above the til it said that 'well' highballs were also $4.50. The very next sip I had, it might as well have been a dusty plastic bottled, no-name whiskey from the bottom shelf of a CVS. It was harsh, bitter, and tasted horrible. My colleague felt the same. We never did get the $450 drink.