Techie expensed a bag of oranges and then juiced up a stupid security incident

WHO, ME? Many people start the day with a glass of orange juice to give them energy. Here at The Register, we start the working week with a new instalment of Who, Me? – the reader-contributed column that we hope gives you the little kick you need to avoid making workplace mistakes by learning from fellow readers’ confessions of …

[KittenHuffer]

I like a nice juicy story first thing on a Mongday morning!

---------> It's a splatting Orange! Honest!

[Korev]

I'm pleased you could squeeze that in

[Aladdin Sane]

Well done, pip pip and all that.

[Korev]

A pithy comment

[Jonathan Richards 1]

... a clear zest for an off-beat story

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

A very appeeling anecdote.

[Korev]

Yes, a good segment

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Kirk should have been named Terry & his co-worker Pongo as in how did they destroy the remainder of the evidence a la "Seventeen Oranges"

[RobDog]

A Goalkeeper’s Revenge

Brilliant reading from my youth. I bought it for my son. Spit Nolan made him sad.

[Pope Popely]

Clearly an SOP for orange incidents needs to be written.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

We've needed that since 2016

[KittenHuffer]

Hopefully the need will no longer be there in two and a half years!

[chivo243]

it may be sooner, declining health and such?

[Anonymous Coward]

That won't stop Them, They'll keep him as an upright* symbol of the American Ruler for decades to come.

* As soon as the heart stopped pumping, the orange embalming fluid he's been using for years had its chance to set into its gel state, keeping the body fresh, flexible and posable. The exoskeleton servos can be glitchy, but They explain away the inappropriate grabbing and the arm wrestling as "power moves". The voice synthesis has always been rough, as the push to avoid the "Stephen Hawking monotone" meant they had to sacrifice the vocabulary and coherence, but nobody worth bothering with has ever spotted the lapses. Most importantly, the Presidential brain is still as sharp and active as it ever has been.

[El blissett]

Breaking news: Pipsqueak finds fresh new use for taxpayers' money

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Are we back to discussing the one that resembles the Tango Ad Man.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60cb1bed3b0cf9305037362d/00652493-4d7a-4f35-88e5-3ccb0683eb15/Tango+Man+Ad.jpg

[Ken Shabby]

Apparently it takes two to tango

[Bluto Nash]

Mango* ad man. FTFY

[GlenP]

I don't recall ever sneaking anything through expenses except beer!

In one job I was working away and the expense policy was £12 for food and £3 for drinks each evening, which was fairly generous at the time. We mainly dined in a pub that was quite happy to write the bill anyhow we wanted so as they did a decent meal for under £5 we had around £10 for our drinks.

I've also had "unlimited" expenses but that's a different story as you didn't really know where you stood - the only rule when I was working in the States was that you could only buy stuff you couldn't take home with you.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

I once was pulled up by the beancounters for having spent too much on drinks at a conference late one afternoon before dinner. I reminded them that I had declared the cost of just one pint, and had the receipt to prove it, but Stockholm prices were outrageous. I got the refund. On a similar note, they complained about the cost of a hotel at a conference in Samara, Russia (long ago). I countered that this was just the conference hotel, and that taking any other hotel would mean transportation costs through Russian traffic, with an added risk of some gun violence (there was some gang rivalry going on, and the conference hotel was surrounded by a wall, and had armed guards). They conceded this was a good reason to go for the more expensive conference hotel.

[Anonymous Coward]

One company I worked for didn’t, at first, require receipts for expenses whilst on business trips. The big spends (travel and accommodation) were arranged direct, but we (the engineers) had to cover meals and local travel ourselves and then claim it back. The only caveat was that we couldn’t claim for alcohol, newspapers and phone calls*. I don’t think any of us really abused the system - one of the benefits of trust. A couple years into my time there and the auditors (USA HQ based) were horrified we didn’t need to show receipts; rules were changed and the compromise was that we didn’t need receipts for local taxis/buses and meals up to £10 - but alcohol, newspapers and phone calls were still out. It meant that we never charged alcohol, newspapers and phone calls to hotel bills (as we’d have those items deducted from our actual claim); evening meals usually needed a receipt (over £10) but many a lunchtime sandwich cost around the £9 mark.**

* This was a time before mobile phones, so newspapers were still a common source of news and phone calls home made over the standard network. The alcohol ban came from the parent company’s home state…

** We were aware of research that forged expense claims could be identified from the frequency of the pence amounts, so we were usually careful to make the amounts believable. Notwithstanding, I don’t think any of us claimed more than we actually spent - the main “adjustments” were to cover the evening bar bill, to which we felt entitled (especially if we were with clients).

[Antron Argaiv]

At the first company I worked for we had the same "under $10, no receipt needed" rule. I couldn't be bothered to keep track of everything, so after a 2 week trip, I wrote a spreadsheet. Total expenses minus total receipts amount equals undocumented expenses. I divided the undocumented amount by the days I was there and randomised the amounts, assigned them to breakfast and lunch, job done! Never tried to get away with anything, just wanted to make the whole process less annoying.

Never had any issues with it, and filing expense reports ceased to become such a burden.

[pirxhh]

Many, many years ago (1990s), I was on a project where the manager weekly handed us our expense allowance in cash, no receipts needed. It was something like $100 daily, from which we had to pay meals, transportation (cab rides and buses, not flights), and calls. Hotel was covered by the company directly.

We actually paid... way less than that. I don't think I managed to spend even half of that at any single day out of the 6-months project.

Never did I make that much take-home pay (corrected for inflation), afaik.

[GDM]

Didn't get to do Christmas shopping on expenses one year but was sent from London to Edinburgh to do an office move. As we were shipping a load of kit back to the office by courier, I just added all the presents I'd bought to save me the faff of carrying them back, probably on the plane at the time, myself. They even all arrived intact.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't recall ever sneaking anything through expenses except beer!

One place I worked we took it in turns to sponsor the local Devs Meetup, along with a few other companies. The deal was that the company sponsoring would of course have a few promo items around the place, and it return would arrange some food for the tables and also put some money behind the bar. Once I got left in charge of sorting out the bar tab for my company and was told I just had to claim it back on the entertainment expenses budget. I did and it was paid.

Successfully claiming a £300 bar bill is one of my career highs, if I'm being honest.

[GlenP]

That's reminded me of the time a team of us spent a weekend in the Hilton at Florence while on a European road trip before the Euro was introduced. The lead person got the bill for everyone for 3 nights plus restaurant, bar, etc. - she nearly had a meltdown when it came to over 3 million!

In truth the person who'd done the bookings had negotiated a great rate for what was effectively a weekend off for us in the middle of two weeks visiting all the offices in Europe.

[Caver_Dave]

I was doing some work for the Lotus F1 Team (shows how long ago it was!) in Monza.

I was the last to check out of the hotel that morning and was handed the bill saying 6 million Lira. It did 'take a second for the penny to drop' and I realised that I was not being given the bill for the entire team.

[Korev]

I used to help organise a meeting for the local datascientists with the local universities and other research facilities. The unis just booked a room and nipped to the supermarket for crisps and beer. The company I worked for had some agreement signed with a catering company that said that we could only get food and drinks through them. That meant we had to hire them which included having two people handing the food and drink out and a huge markup on the drinks which ended up costing loads; we only offered to host it once...

[R Soul]

I'm reminded of the (apocryphal?) story about the beancounters in parliament quibbling an MP's expenses claim. [As if they ever did/do that.] The MP was claiming for plane tickets between London and his constituency in Orkney and Shetland. The beancounters told him to travel by train. Until they found out the nearest station to the MP's constituency home was in Bergen.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can quite believe that.

As a civil servant, we have fairly strict rules - partly based on "would it pass the Daily Mail test ?" As a result, I am out of pocket on just about every trip - you try travelling by train and managing on just £5 for your day subsistence ! (evening meal is a separate item if staying overnight) But sometimes we find that a hotel room with breakfast included is over the cap rate, so we're expected to book the cheaper room and put breakfast on expenses which usually costs more. Technically we're allowed to go over caps, but given we need to agree in writing with our manager in advance for each trip, it's more hassle than it's worth.

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked with someone who told me on a previous job he had to visit an office in Norway every so often. The problem was he could never allow anyone to ever buy him a meal there as the cost there put most meals above the company's anti-bribery limit

[ricardian1943]

And the nearest British railway station was Thurso on the Scottish mainland.There are ferries from Aberdeen or Scrabster to Orkney or you can take out a second mortgage and fly Loganair between London and Kirkwall

[Anonymous Coward]

I was called into a project manager's office because I was observed arriving and leaving in luxury cars. That location had policies in place that everyone was obliged to use taxis, so they got a tad jealous and assumed that I was wasting money, but try as they might, they couldn't find the assumed excess in my expenses. That had a good reason.

When I had a long term on site assignment, I always spent some time looking for an outfit who had a number of cars, and made a deal with those interested. In exchange for not charging me more than a taxi fare, they would get all my business. It had three advantages: I could call ahead and have a car waiting, I always had decent transport, and I only paid one bill at the end of the week.

It was that last one that threw them: not only was I not spending more on transport, they could actually reclaim VAT so it was cheaper. So, they asked me to organise that for the whole site.

That bit of out of the box thinking made me rather popular there :).

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was working in California I remember a fuss someone visiting from the UK office for a couple of weeks had when his expense claim included 2 nights in a hotel near Yosemite over the middle weekend. Accounts initial refused to "pay for a weekend holiday" until he pointed out that he'd saved the company money by going hiking in Yosemite while staying in a $100/night hotel over the weekend and cancelling 2 nights in the $300/night hotel in Silicon valley that the company had booked.

[Already?]

When I first started at a well known Crap IT outsourcers the working away expense policy was something simple, maybe £15 to be split between a ‘sensible' number of drinks and a meal. This was binned when it was noticed that each developer was having a £3 bag of chips that left enough for a decent piss up especially when a dozen employees were pooling their funds on a nightly basis in the pub over the road from the hotel. The new edict limited us to one alcoholic drink and one meal, at the hotel where possible with justification required for eating elsewhere. Gawd it was petty.

My favourite was the night porter cum barman at the hotel that became my regular haunt up north, who in one swift move introduced me to Malbec in place of Merlot and to his enthusiasm for billing said red as a hot chocolate late night drink. It was questioned once by our finance woman, why did I have 3 and sometimes 4 hot chocolate drinks so often? Why hot chocolate? Coffee would keep me awake. Probably. She knew, bless her.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

I worked both as a contractor and directly (as a Civil Service employee) for the US government and never expensed anything other than direct travel expenses (hotel, rental car, if any, and air fare).

At one point, the director of the lab called me in and asked why I wasn't expensing meals. I told him the annoyance of filing receipts outweighed the amount of money I'd get back and because at the time I was single and I ate mostly at restaurants when I was home, anyhow, there was no particular hardship. It was simply more trouble than it was worth.

[DS999]

Unlimited expenses

I only ever worked one contract where the expenses were truly unlimited, at least when it came to food and drink. Our small group of consultants were constantly testing this policy with ever more expensive dinners. On our final dinner together at the conclusion of an 8 month project with lots of 80+ billable hour weeks in the last 2 months we had a real blowout where mostly thanks to the cost of the wine it ended up at almost $7000 Canadian for six of us. Lucky me it was my turn to expense that bill, so I told everyone I had their contact information in case we had finally found the limit! But no, I submitted the receipt plus list of people at the dinner and it was paid without issues.

I learned later the reason why that probably worked is that we were a bunch of Americans consulting in Canada, for a managed services provider who was providing service to a company in the US! It turned out our billing went through four layers just to get to the managed services provider in Toronto, including a trip through Bermuda, so I'm sure the ultimate client back in the US never saw our receipts. Always wondered how much my time (which was quite generously compensated for despite so many layers) was marked up by the time that company back in the US paid for it.

The unlimited spending might have had something to do with this contract starting about a week after NASDAQ reached its 2000 peak. Even after we got out of the recession that followed my clients were always a bit more careful with their money. After 2008 I never worked another contract that wasn't either 100% remote or close to it so there wasn't much in the way of expenses I could even claim, so no more blowout dinners but on the other hand no more airports or rental cars so I was fine with it!

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Re: Unlimited expenses

A friend of mine was in Petrus, one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, in the mid-00's. He was eating with a client, so his high 3-figure bill was expensed.

Also in the restaurant was a group of four city types who managed to run up a 6-figure bill which included several bottles of insanely expensive wine and cuban cigars (pre-indoor smoking ban).

The next day, my friend noticed that all four guys had been arrested for insider trading, they were probably spending the last of the proceeds on the wine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Expenses

While working for a company, we did a trip to South Africa where everything was so cheap. Expenses cleared - no problem, no matter what we ate or drank.

We did another a while later in Copenhagen. We spent most of the week just getting quick 'n' dirty Pizza's to the office. They liked that, The last night when we had finished we went out and got a decent meal - basically Steak and something else. They refused to pay it all as they said it was too expensive. did point out it is the cost of Copenhagen and surely the offset from our SA trip a short while before.

Nope we got 50% back..... And it is not as if it was anything odd. just a ribeye

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Expenses

Back when I traveled on the company, I had one policy - the first time an expense was refused or written down, I would travel no more for the company. When I first did so it was not a problem but iy eventually did happen, and I no longer accepted travel requests. The Boss couldn't say anything either, as I'd tell him flat out that I had kids to feed and could not afford to subsidize travel for a multi-billion dollar company on the pittance they paid.

Not long after, a buddy made manager in a different department and invited me to move over, a decision that took all of a second to make. Wasn't a hard decision to make as The Boss was a superprick. Long story short, he wound up destroying the department and everyone quit; I was just the first out the door.

[FBee]

Week-long support job flying from cold New England to sunny Florida in November. After finding a delicious taco emporium right down the street from hotel, ate there all week 'cept for a quick coffee/pastry in the morning thus way underspending my food allowance.

Halfway through the week, somehow lost the key to the rental car requiring a tow truck & forced entry into vehicle by tow truck driver as well as a ride by same to car rental agency for replacement vehicle. Upshot - $400 extra charge during my deployment. Back home afterwards, pleading with my boss, I pointed out my extreme under-budget food bill so they "ate" the car kerfuffle.

To top it off, found the key buried in my backpack before returning the 2nd car, so turned it in along with same!

[Lazlo Woodbine]

I used to work for a small security product distributor.

A colleague was field support, and had unwritten permission to expense two coffees a day.

We were taken over by a huge US globo-corp, who brought in a new expanses claim system. No longer could we simply take a reciept to finance and emerge with cash, now we had to fill in an online claim, then fax the printed form along with reciepts to the globo-corp's Indian outpost.

My colleague couldn't be bothered doing this daily, so he accumulated enough reciepts to make the effort worthwhile.

Naturally the Indian office wanted to know why someone was claiming for 90 coffees, sent an authorisation request to the globo-corp's US HQ and the US beancounters decided they were not honouring the claim, nor could we expense coffee anymore, and this extended to the free-vend Maxpax machine in the office, and the daily supplied tunnocks caramel wafers,

One person's disdain for filing daily claims led to the whole UK wing of the company suffering.

That chap was never invited to Friday afternoon drinks ever again, especially now we coudn't expense the first round anymore...

[Antron Argaiv]

I feel your pain. My last job was pretty much the same situation: small operation working by trust with seldom an issue, with all approval and finance on site. We were taken over by a multinational megacorp where *everything* had a process, and multiple approvers in foreign lands. Our two tremendoulsly competent and helpful local IT folks were stripped of their powers, and IT HQ was now overseas, support was by Teams, and located literally half a world away, which made real time chat rather hit or miss, and round trip messages were frequently "next day" instead of a few hours.

We in Engineering, who made multiple orders to vendors daily, were a foreign idea to a company whose main business was software development. Their PO system was complex, and very much oriented towards ordering of office supplies, done once a month. Approval now required the input of a project manager (located overseas) and who had absolutely no sense of urgency. Unpaid invoices skyrocketed, along with the consequent blocking of new orders. This, as you might expect, negatively impacted our ability to respond to customer requests.

It was at this point that I retired. I cannot believe that life has gotten better since then, but it is no longer my problem.

[Excused Boots]

"It was at this point that I retired. I cannot believe that life has gotten better since then, but it is no longer my problem.”

Of course, it never was your problem, it was always the company’s. But I do know what you mean, you want to do a good job for your customers only to find that the bosses are actively making it impossible for you to do the job they are paying you to do.

[KarMann]

One person's disdain for filing daily claims led to the whole UK wing of the company suffering.

I mean, I suppose that's one way of looking at it, rather than joining in solidarity against The Register's your new American overlords.

[Jellied Eel]

We were taken over by a huge US globo-corp, who brought in a new expanses claim system. No longer could we simply take a reciept to finance and emerge with cash, now we had to fill in an online claim, then fax the printed form along with reciepts to the globo-corp's Indian outpost.

Ah, processes! Used to cause me much pain, especially when SAP was involved and no exception mechanism. So then rulez stating that any travel costs >50p had to be pre-authorised and booked via the travel office. They'd find the cheapest option and issue travel warrants, tickets etc. Which lead to FUN! situations like cheapest flights being out of Gatwick, but I lived in Reading and the chances of getting to Gatwick for an early morning flight were slim to none when the trains weren't running. And a flight from LHR might cost £20 more, but I'd be able to make boarding and it'd cost a lot less to get there.

Or my favourite, requesting authorisation. Can't do that, computer is down. Yep, I know, which is why I need to get to the computer (ok, network) to fix it. Like NOW please. After a few of those, we got made an exception, but the processes were still a PITA given we sometimes needed to buy stuff where the delegation of authority amount exceeded what the country manager could sign off. Plus that stuff tended to be group-level infrastructure spend.

As for unusual expenses. Think the strangest I saw were an invoice from a Navy to pay them to patrol a cable route and chase off fishermen. Or some I heard about when Etna erupted and lava flows were threatening the Se-Me-We landing station. So costs to divert lava flows, and have cargo helicopters on stand-by to move kit if necessary. Or for some 'interesting' countries, managers being told that employees didn't appear to have completed mandatory training. Then manager trying to explain that those employees only existed to prevent the office being firebombed, so book them as 'security' and dont worry about the foreign & corrupt practices implications.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

The best part of working for this company was travel, because they simply wouldn't let anyone use their own car for any work related journeys.

This meant you either got a pool car (ex-sales car, so worn seat but well maintained, usually BMW 3-series with the odd 5-series or Skoda Superb) or a hire car, usually Mondeo or equivalent Vauxhall. The cars came with a fuel card, but usually only enough fuel to get you to the nearest Tesco, and never instructions how to open the fuel filler, which for some cars wasn't obvious. The Skoda Octavia I got once had a button the dash to open the filler, no way I would have found that without asking the guy in the petrol station for help...

[phuzz]

My last job wouldn't let us use our own cars (because most people's insurance didn't cover driving for work, just commuting) so we'd either get a hire car, or be told to take one of the manager's company cars. After all, they were already being paid for by the company, so it was technically cheaper than a hire car.

All sorts of fast Jags, Mercs and Beemers were 'tested' on site visits. I'd usually leave the manager an empty fuel tank to fill too. As they also had company credit cards, and it saved me having to fill out for expenses :)

[Xalran]

Fear the Dreaded Indian Expense Checking Outpost.

In my previous life in $TELCO, after the internet bubble they brought in the Dreaded Indian Expense Checking Outpost...and SAP

What it meant for us, local frog Engineers was the following :

instead of filling a basic excel sheet with our expenses, stapling the receipt to it and giving it to the secretary (about 10 minutes of our time), we now had to create the expense in SAP, fill each and every single expense, per type, scan all the receipts (one trip to the printer), attach each scanned receipt to the revelant entry, then print the barcode that appeared in a PDF file after finishing the expense claim (another trip to the printer), stapling all the receipt, in front of the printed sheet, but not covering the barcode, and then putting it in the mailbox in the office lobby... if the mailbox was not already full. (about an hour of work coaxing SAP and going back and forth to the printer, just for a simple one day trip expenses)

As for the weirded expense I had to make... 5 meters of 400V 3 Phase+Ground cable, along with 5m of Single+Ground phase 240v with several IP64 63Amps (3Phase+Ground) and 63Amps (Single Phase+ Ground) male and female plugs. (honestly a few IP64 16Amps Caravan Plugs would have done the trick quite well, it's not as if the stuff to be connected was ever going to draw 60amps... At worst it was going to pull 10 to 12 amps)

[Andy A]

I had a somewhat different experience.

For many years I had a filter coffee machine on the corner of my desk, with the arrangement that anyone could help themselves. If they emptied the pot, they had to refill it; coffee is in the desk drawer; training provided if needed. Good arabica coffee is surprisingly cheap.

Having started for an outsourcing company at a fresh place, my filter machine quickly replaced the "instant" for the two of us in the office. It became known. The best people would visit our dungeon to grab a cup and we would learn the important gossip.

The our MD came for a meeting with the customer. Naturally she visited our office and had a cup.

"I notice that you have decent coffee. Is that because I was coming?" No. We like to be civilised. "How do you organise it?" If it's running low one of use will go and buy some. There's a kitchen along the corridor for washing up.

"Well the big office has a machine on free vend. You should have the same benefit. In future, you put it on expenses."

[KittenHuffer]

Saving pennies losing pounds

Working remotely it was necessary for me to drive to the orifice when required for meetings. Which works out on average as once a year. I nearly drive past the front door of a colleague, and had no issue picking them up as I passed, saving the company considerable expense for that person.

Then the penny pinching started! It went from driving down the day before the meeting, two nights in hotels, then driving back the day after the meeting. To only being allowed one night in a hotel, and having to pull some rediculous driving (very early start or very late finish) to manage this.

Then a stop to eat on the way home was not reimbursed according to some 'rule', even though we didn't arrive home until 8:30 & 9pm.

.

My solution is to now refuse to drive, which the 'rules' allow. But it means that train tickets have to be bought for myself and the colleague, and if no other employee is available to drive then a taxi must be used to get into the orifice and to/from the station.

This all means that I get to relax and read on the train rather than end up with a thousand mile stare from driving, and the cost to the company nearly doubles.

[Horridbloke]

Indian takeaway with 2 pints of Stella, on the receipt as "dessert" while I waited. Most nights across a 5 week on-site stint. 1998.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Another tale of woe due to being bought by a US globo-corp.

One Christmas, a party at our owner's New York office ended in a fight and many arrests.

The next day, the company board reacted in the typical US manner, by banning the purchase of alcohol with company funds, and the consumption of alcohol on company premises. This was a global edict.

Naturally, we in the UK didn't take this lying down, and soon managed to work a way were we could still expense booze at the two hotel chains we used while travellng, both chains agreed to invoice all alcohol as food for an additional guest in our party...

[Anonymous Coward]

A good friend does field engineering for a Saudi owned company who are fairly generous about hotels and food but alcohol is absolutely verboten.

He invested in several different types of small cheap receipt printers and wrote some code that would take a receipt and massage the non-alcohol items to reach the same total. The other field teams rewarded him handsomely for his service.

[Potty Professor]

Expenses queried

When I spent a week working at customer's site in northern Germany, I stayed in a small family run hotel just adjacent to the site. On the first evening I saw an item on the menu which was "Toast", but which looked rather expensive. I enquired what it was and was told that it was a slice of toasted bread, covered by a sirloin steak, then a poached egg, topped off with a Bechamel Sauce, plus a side salad. I dined on that for the six nights I stayed there. When I submitted my expenses, the fertiliser definitely hit the ventilator, and I had to go to the Financial Director's office to explain why I was not eating properly and why the meals cost so much. My explanation was eventually accepted, but only after I had given them the phone number of the hotel and they had rung them to obtain the Chef's explanation.

[trevorde]

Cost of expenses

Worked at a company many years ago where you had to file an expense claim for everything. The finance people pointed out that it cost them $100 AUD (c1992) to process each claim and they'd be better off just paying any claim under that amount. Common sense did not prevail.

[MGyrFalcon]

"Food and Drink"

Many moons ago I worked for a large international bank, a Swiss bank. I had travelled to London for a work conference of some sort. After the meetings one day, one of the guys wanted to go out for dinner and drinks. All good so far, he expensed that bit. After that he wanted to go to a strip club, he was lightly intoxicated. We jumped into a mini cab and went to one of his favorites. At this point I'm really tired from the jet lag and all day meetings, but he is rearing to go. He had apparently spent all of his cash shortly after we got there and asked me for some. I didn't have much, and was in no mood to pay for his entertainment out of pocket so I had the bar tender give me cash on the company card. I ended up doing that 2 more times, total somewhere north of £500. I had the bartender give me a receipt for "Food and Beverage" and submitted it with my expense report. Turns out the expense report went to the person I was with for approval, no muss, no fuss, I was reimbursed.

Side note, he was so drunk after he didn't know his address. We ended up in another minicab driving around a neighborhood until he thought he was on his street then I kicked him out of the cab to figure it out and went back to my hotel. Cab rides were expansible with a receipt, so I got a bunch from the cabbie. It was pretty well known you could cover random things just by submitting a cab receipt. I usually came out ahead of the game by the end of a trip.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: "Food and Drink"

So I worked for a offshore survey company....Policy was x amount without receipts per day for food & drink, but that's not the point of this story.

Myself & a local colleague, plus two colleagues from Aberdeen branch got sent for a two week manufacturers course in Nantes.

Two Swedish guys on the same course (Though I imagine they didn't get drunk much after this) wandered into a very expensive looking neon lit bar near the railway station (Lots of French servicemen came out of that station, looking for a different sort of service) with another attendee (Said other fellow did notice the cost of the first drink & how scantily clad the ladies were, then swiftly made his excuses & left just before they made a query of their drinks & how much that cost).

Their query was somehow translated into how they wished to buy a round of drinks for all the whores.

After they got taken for every Franc they had & managed to kept their teeth, the following day was a flurry of them leaving the classroom in turn, making lots of phone calls & faxes, that resulted in them being given a cash advance by the manufacturer & that amount charged to their employers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Food and Drink"

"Side note, he was so drunk after he didn't know his address. We ended up in another minicab driving around a neighborhood until he thought he was on his street "

Many years ago colleague found a solution for that. He wrote his address on a suitably denominated banknote and put it in his back pocket. After a few tasty beverages, he'd be incapable of coherent speech and his wallet was empty. At which point he'd hand that banknote to the taxi driver. This was of course back in the days when taxis only took cash and there was none of those Uber thingies.

[Sam not the Viking]

Re: "Food and Drink"

I've been reasonably fortunate in having almost all of my expense claims paid in full; my reason being that if the company didn't trust me to be fair/reasonable they shouldn't send me to site.

One employer had a policy where the most senior person on the trip has to pay the bill, in order to avoid a subsequent fiddle by signing off an underling's expenses. I've had a great time on this wheeze: At the end of one project my big boss came along to press the flesh with the customer and accept the praise and honours all non-participants deserve. About eight of us went for lunch, and it was a very, very good lunch...... When we left at about 4:00 p.m. the boss paid the bill: £2000..... He was driving home, I had my hotel..... I didn't have an evening meal that night.

We did get more business from that customer but the big boss never intervened again.

[goblinski]

One of the local Bronx customs I first saw eons ago was how to suggest people to not honk in the middle of the night.

Some guy stopped in the middle of the street at some unholly hour way past midnight, and started honking and calling a friend's name. This was back when mobile phones were not yet widespread, and I guess the driver didn't care much for doorbells. So off he went, literally glued on the horn vuvuzella-style, for minutes. Literally pressing the horn for minutes, occasionally yelling his friend's name.

As this went on, windows started to open and people started yelling, to little result.

Then a window at the top floor opened, and a hand threw down a mineral water plastic bottle. Looked quite small, not a 1.5l, something smaller. I suppose - full, with no cap on.

The thing landed on the roof of the car and splashed out with a sound that probably awoke whoever was left sleeping. Sounded like an explosion.

Zero damage on the roof of the car though. At least it looked like it for the two seconds it took the brave driver to blast away

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing policies...

Some years ago we had a visit from a US-based employee who was on a long (4-5 week) tour of various European company and customer sites. Half way through his trip he was informed that the expenses policy had been changed, and the previous "anything under $10 didn't need a receipt" rule had been removed. Of course, by that stage he'd had 2 weeks of not bothering to get receipts for small stuff like coffees and snacks, and was very annoyed at the though of being so much out of pocket when he returned and filed his claim. So much so that for the rest of his trip he made a point of eating in the most expensive restaurants he could find, and taking local employees with him for "hospitality". We had some very nice dinners, with even nicer wines, for the few days he was with us. Nice guy, too, so the evenings were no hardship.

[PRR]

> What’s the dodgiest item you’ve ever...

Not 'expensed' but certainly fruity......

At the end of the school year, coworker J-- brought in a watermelon. And left it in a storage closet. All summer. A particularly hot summer. And the summer they had to shut down the coolers for repair. People came back in the fall. There was a smell. There were fat flies.

[Chairman of the Bored]

A dozen tubes of KY lube

My team was preparing a spare parts kit for a very large (>>100kW CW) transmitter that was heading overseas to an austere location.

Large vacuum electron devices with water cooling jackets have o-ring seals that need a little motion lotion during installation.

KY is fantastic because it doesn't foul the closed-loop cooling systems.

So, I went to the local pharmacy and bought out their entire stock of KY on a corporate card, went to the cutest young thing at the register to pay, and tried my darndest to look nonchalant

She said, "Uh... Have ... A good day, uh, day... sir!"

And I said, "Oohhh, yeah - gonna be one hell of a party."

[PRR]

Re: A dozen tubes of KY lube

> seals that need a little motion lotion

I use that on the O-rings in my water filter housing. (Carefully... some rings with some lubes cause undesired swelling...)

[Smartass]

Re: A dozen tubes of KY lube

Anusol..... Great for protecting new tattoos. I try to ensure the cashier at my local pharmacy is the crustiest old lady just to see her look of disgust when I buy a couple of tubes.

[RMclan]

Re: A dozen tubes of KY lube

At university back in the 1980s our hall of residence decided to hold a "fetish party" event while at the same time promoting safe sex. The hall events manager framed the credit card receipt he got for a purchase of 1000 packets of condoms on the hall credit card.

[Potty Professor]

Re: A dozen tubes of KY lube

Reminds me of when I was pledging for a Fraternity at school in Louisville KY. We each had to go into a department store and ask a young counter assistant for a bra. When the assistant asked what size, I held both hands out in front of me as if I was cupping her breasts, and said "About THAT big". The assistant disappeared in double quick time and a rather severe looking older lady took her place and demanded to know why I was harassing the young girl. I shamefacedly admitted that I had been put up to it in order to pledge, and her demeanour softened to a mixture of amusement and pity for this poor innocent lad, who was by this time very red faced. I eventually was sold a suitably large bra, which I later used as a slingshot to fire jelly doughnuts at a fellow pledger.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me, but ...

Not myself (I hasten to add), but at a previous job in the UK, some 30 years ago, some of the sales people took a prospective client out to a local brothel for the evening, and tried to expense it on the company card. This did not go down well, considering that it was illegal. It must have also been quite pricy if the place was classy enough to take credit cards.

I did one time accidentally mix up the company credit card and my own, and charge a few hundred quid's worth of tools at B&Q to my employer, but I preempted censure by owning up to the error before they found out, and they just deducted the amount from my next paycheque.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Re: Not me, but ...

One place I worked, they had accounting codes for "ladies of negotiable affections", apparently the MD used them frequently...

[the.spike]

Why pay half when you can pay double?

Years back I was looking for a Perl course. With QA I could go to London or Dublin (based in the Midlands at the time). Tried to persuade the company to let me go to Dublin. I'd pay for the flights, they pay for the course and hotel. I'd fly the Mrs over and we'd move to a different hotel and have a few days away.

Would have been much cheaper than a train to London and a London hotel. They refused as it was "against the rules". They ended up paying double what they could have done.

[Ian Entwistle]

Re: Why pay half when you can pay double?

I used to work for a UK bank and had cause to visit Barcelona for a training course at IBM ( Websphere business components composer, Circa 2000) . Luckily back then the bank was actually a decent place to work and had a standard gig that if you were away for > 3 days and wanted to take spouse with you they would pay for the double room and my flight and my standard overnight allowance and I would pay for wifes flight and her meals.

The overnight was a decent amount so rarely did it cost me more than a fiver a day out of my pocket and she got to sunbathe and wander round Barca whilst I learned WSBCC

[BartyFartsLast]

Anyone done "zest for life"?

[Mark__H]

A bit late but a true story

Back in the 90's we had a small sales team that lived local to there sales area. The guy who covered the south east of England submitted his monthly expenses to the head office in the east midlands some 200 miles from home. The head bean counter notice that he had purchased a packet of mints with his petrol and refused to pay all of his submitted expenses. The sales guy was told to do the expenses again 'correctly'.

His solution was to cancel his appointments for the next day, drive to the head office, sit at a desk and do the expenses, take them to the said bean counter, wait for him to approve them, go to accounts and get the payment IN CASH, then drive home. Estimated to have cost over a £1000 for a £0.10 packet of mints.

[Emjay111]

It's always beer o'clock somewhere in the world

In most places I've worked, expensing one alcoholic drink with a meal was perfectly acceptable. The evening meal allowance was quite generous, so it was easy to have a light meal, and then use the remaining allowance for a few drinks. The trick is getting the serving staff to produce a hand-written bill along the lines of 'meal and drink' to the full amount of the allowance. Never had a problem getting those paid.

Expenses apps are making things like that more difficult I feel.

Most costly cup of tea I ever expensed was at the Hyatt Regency Hotel at Paris CDG. It was £8 in 1988, which is the equivalent of £28 today ($52 USD). Insanely expensive for a cuppa.

[Andy A]

Sometimes managers are NICE people.

Our company once did a series of tech roadshows for our dealer network. The locations were decided entirely on the availability of decent beer.

At one event (within sight of Wadsworth's brewery), my manager decided that we would be staying overnight rather than driving back that evening. I was instructed to pay for the rooms and the evening refreshments. That let my manager sign off the whole lot on expenses.