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This reminds me of a job I once had that was about 50% travel; the company required employees to charge travel expenses to their personal credit cards, saying t

This reminds me of a job I once had that was about 50% travel; the company required employees to charge travel expenses to their personal credit cards, saying they would be reimbursed. The company consistently dragged its feet on the reimbursement, sometimes for several months. They scrutinized reported expenses to an absurd level, or simply refused to pay. I once had a layover on a flight (because the company required the least expensive flight, which was generally not direct) that was cancelled. I was stuck in Denver for 9 hours, waiting for an available flight. I got something to eat and reported it as a travel expense. Denied; I was told the expense didn't occur in the city where I was working, so it was personal, not business-related. A colleague had her credit card maxed with business travel charges, and could only afford to make the minimum payment for several months. She requested the company pay the interest on the carried charges. Take a guess how that went? Denied. She ended up quitting, and last I heard the company refused to reimburse her because she was no longer an employee. I ended up quitting, too. But yeah, this article reminded me of that situation. When it's known that you're basically powerless to collect on a debt, you can expect to get screwed.

tpmx 3y ago
I suppose many of us are lucky to work in high-margin software businesses. I spent 15 years often travelling for work (typically very distributed companies) before the pandemic. Four separate companies. Everything paid on my personal CC. I preferred it that way so that I could optimize the flights/etc to make it fit my personal life. Everything reimbursed swiftly with zero questions since I never did anything really stupid. The only real bottleneck was myself; filing all of those damned receipts for every trip. Having some kind of centralized travel booking service that "took care of everything" would likely have caused me to find another job. For one company I did a monthly 6h travel + a few days of hotel + 6h travel thing for a decade. Not being in total control over that would simply not have been feasible. I have no idea how people doing a large amount of travel for stereotypical low-margin large companies manage to get by.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > high-margin software businesses. I've heard similar stories to this from people working at high-margin software businesses before too. It could be something along the lines of "depends which team you're in", as to who's being screwed over or not.
  - tpmx 3y ago
    That's a great sign your company actually sucks and you should quit. Probably likely: It wasn't actually a high-margin company.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      > Probably likely: It wasn't actually a high-margin company. Definitely was. Bad HR people can exist anywhere. :/
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
  > Having some kind of centralized travel booking service that "took care of everything" would likely have caused me to find another job Having worked at both kinds of companies, I vastly preferred having a travel agent that took care of everything. For example: one time I had a later flight with a layover. The initial flight was delayed on the tarmac before takeoff, and immediately upon landing, a person called me telling me there were no more flights that evening to my final destination, but they'd already booked me a hotel near the airport and the first flight out in the morning to my final destination, and asked me if I'd like any modifications. Perhaps someone else who wants more control would like to handle that stuff themselves, but for me, it was a massive luxury to have an experienced professional automatically smooth over any problem I encountered during my travel. I certainly didn't miss keeping all my crumpled receipts and submitting expense reports either.
  - tpmx 3y ago
    Yeah, that kind of service would have been awesome.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      A great example of self-service actually making things worse for people. There are many, many more of those, and it leads me to believe that software's transformation of the economy isn't as positive on the net as people seem to believe.
      - pbronez 3y ago
        Perhaps that’s one reason the economic productivity numbers haven’t moved as much as one might expect.
  - fatnoah 3y ago
    In theory, having a third party would be nice. In my experience, it's merely added substantial friction to the process. Any changes required going back through the third party, which means waiting to talk to someone for changes that I could normally do online.
throwaway290 3y ago
Why not name and shame?
justinclift 3y ago
The "Denied" are probably only "Denied" because you didn't want to push back hard. You could always take them to court (even small claims court) or just outright get debt collectors involved. Probably better once you've quit though. ;)
- em-bee 3y ago
  why wait until after you quit? before you quit you get to use your worktime to deal with the lawsuit (just because) and if they harass you at work for suing them, you add that to the lawsuit. if they fire you, add that too.
akamia 3y ago
This is the reason why I refuse to pay for any work travel expenses with my credit card. I once worked for a company that had a similar travel process. When I was asked to travel, I insisted that my VP have his assistant schedule and pay for everything. When I arrived at the hotel on one trip, the hotel asked me for a credit card to pay for the booking. I stepped out of line and called my VP to have him fax his card info to the hotel. I understand this wouldn't work for everyone but I think it's ok to question the policy and see how much flexibility there is. In my case, I was able to avoid taking on personal liability for my employer's expenses by pushing back and working with my VP to find a solution that I was comfortable with.
gamblor956 3y ago
While it's legal for employers to require employees to use personal credit cards for work-related expenses, it's a huge labor code violation not to timely reimburse employees for such expenses. As in, huge mandatory fines on top of reimbursing employees for 100% of their costs (including interest and other charges incurred related to late reimbursement) type of violation. If you're not willing to name and shame here, please report it to the state's Dept of Labor if this was within the past 5 years so current employees can be protected.
jiqiren 3y ago
if this is US, file a wage claim with local state government. Reimbursement for expenses while traveling is valid. Depending on the state you can file many years later after you've left the job. So feel free to get a new job and file a claim with a spreadsheet of what they missed.
- therealpygon 3y ago
  From the time you arrive at a departure airport, to the time that you arrive at the destination airport, is general considered “paid” (non-exempt) travel time. However, to my knowledge, there is no federal law that an employer is required to reimburse you for any of your travel-related expenses. (Which is, in itself, ridiculous.)
mbar84 3y ago
I'm trying to think how I would ideally set up such a system. The person traveling is in the best position to determine the most cost effective way to travel. Ideally you could somehow determine or negotiate ahead of time what travel expenses should be and then just pay that to the employee. Then they would just travel as they like and either pocket any savings they can find, fly cheaper if they value their time less than the saved money or pay extra if they value flying first class. Good incentive structures are hard.
- Doxin 3y ago
  I'd set up some base rules. Semi-obvious stuff like no first class tickets or caviar dinners. And then I'd trust my employees to be adults. Putting your trust in people is a great incentive structure.
- shaftway 3y ago
  The way Google did it was that you listed where you were going and what dates and they did some sort of magical formula to figure out your max allowable costs for the trip. They were always well above the minimum costs. For every $2 below the cap, you got $1 to be able to exceed the cap in the future. It ended up working out so about every 5 economy trips you could do one business class trip (depending on how economical you were). I felt like it aligned the incentives well.

tpmx 3y ago

I suppose many of us are lucky to work in high-margin software businesses. I spent 15 years often travelling for work (typically very distributed companies) before the pandemic. Four separate companies. Everything paid on my personal CC. I preferred it that way so that I could optimize the flights/etc to make it fit my personal life. Everything reimbursed swiftly with zero questions since I never did anything really stupid. The only real bottleneck was myself; filing all of those damned receipts for every trip. Having some kind of centralized travel booking service that "took care of everything" would likely have caused me to find another job. For one company I did a monthly 6h travel + a few days of hotel + 6h travel thing for a decade. Not being in total control over that would simply not have been feasible. I have no idea how people doing a large amount of travel for stereotypical low-margin large companies manage to get by.

justinclift 3y ago
> high-margin software businesses. I've heard similar stories to this from people working at high-margin software businesses before too. It could be something along the lines of "depends which team you're in", as to who's being screwed over or not.
- tpmx 3y ago
  That's a great sign your company actually sucks and you should quit. Probably likely: It wasn't actually a high-margin company.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > Probably likely: It wasn't actually a high-margin company. Definitely was. Bad HR people can exist anywhere. :/
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
> Having some kind of centralized travel booking service that "took care of everything" would likely have caused me to find another job Having worked at both kinds of companies, I vastly preferred having a travel agent that took care of everything. For example: one time I had a later flight with a layover. The initial flight was delayed on the tarmac before takeoff, and immediately upon landing, a person called me telling me there were no more flights that evening to my final destination, but they'd already booked me a hotel near the airport and the first flight out in the morning to my final destination, and asked me if I'd like any modifications. Perhaps someone else who wants more control would like to handle that stuff themselves, but for me, it was a massive luxury to have an experienced professional automatically smooth over any problem I encountered during my travel. I certainly didn't miss keeping all my crumpled receipts and submitting expense reports either.
- tpmx 3y ago
  Yeah, that kind of service would have been awesome.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    A great example of self-service actually making things worse for people. There are many, many more of those, and it leads me to believe that software's transformation of the economy isn't as positive on the net as people seem to believe.
    - pbronez 3y ago
      Perhaps that’s one reason the economic productivity numbers haven’t moved as much as one might expect.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  In theory, having a third party would be nice. In my experience, it's merely added substantial friction to the process. Any changes required going back through the third party, which means waiting to talk to someone for changes that I could normally do online.

throwaway290 3y ago

Why not name and shame?

justinclift 3y ago

The "Denied" are probably only "Denied" because you didn't want to push back hard. You could always take them to court (even small claims court) or just outright get debt collectors involved. Probably better once you've quit though. ;)

em-bee 3y ago
why wait until after you quit? before you quit you get to use your worktime to deal with the lawsuit (just because) and if they harass you at work for suing them, you add that to the lawsuit. if they fire you, add that too.

akamia 3y ago

This is the reason why I refuse to pay for any work travel expenses with my credit card. I once worked for a company that had a similar travel process. When I was asked to travel, I insisted that my VP have his assistant schedule and pay for everything. When I arrived at the hotel on one trip, the hotel asked me for a credit card to pay for the booking. I stepped out of line and called my VP to have him fax his card info to the hotel. I understand this wouldn't work for everyone but I think it's ok to question the policy and see how much flexibility there is. In my case, I was able to avoid taking on personal liability for my employer's expenses by pushing back and working with my VP to find a solution that I was comfortable with.

gamblor956 3y ago

While it's legal for employers to require employees to use personal credit cards for work-related expenses, it's a huge labor code violation not to timely reimburse employees for such expenses. As in, huge mandatory fines on top of reimbursing employees for 100% of their costs (including interest and other charges incurred related to late reimbursement) type of violation. If you're not willing to name and shame here, please report it to the state's Dept of Labor if this was within the past 5 years so current employees can be protected.

jiqiren 3y ago

if this is US, file a wage claim with local state government. Reimbursement for expenses while traveling is valid. Depending on the state you can file many years later after you've left the job. So feel free to get a new job and file a claim with a spreadsheet of what they missed.

therealpygon 3y ago
From the time you arrive at a departure airport, to the time that you arrive at the destination airport, is general considered “paid” (non-exempt) travel time. However, to my knowledge, there is no federal law that an employer is required to reimburse you for any of your travel-related expenses. (Which is, in itself, ridiculous.)

mbar84 3y ago

I'm trying to think how I would ideally set up such a system. The person traveling is in the best position to determine the most cost effective way to travel. Ideally you could somehow determine or negotiate ahead of time what travel expenses should be and then just pay that to the employee. Then they would just travel as they like and either pocket any savings they can find, fly cheaper if they value their time less than the saved money or pay extra if they value flying first class. Good incentive structures are hard.

Doxin 3y ago
I'd set up some base rules. Semi-obvious stuff like no first class tickets or caviar dinners. And then I'd trust my employees to be adults. Putting your trust in people is a great incentive structure.
shaftway 3y ago
The way Google did it was that you listed where you were going and what dates and they did some sort of magical formula to figure out your max allowable costs for the trip. They were always well above the minimum costs. For every $2 below the cap, you got $1 to be able to exceed the cap in the future. It ended up working out so about every 5 economy trips you could do one business class trip (depending on how economical you were). I felt like it aligned the incentives well.