r/maliciouscompliance | Company won't pay for Air Travel? I guess I'll drive!

hey everybody my name is Stephen and welcome back to the story time Channel without wasting any time let's get into our stories of the day company travel always a rich vein for this sub reading some of the submissions here of laid reminded me of a company I worked for around ten years ago I was an IT tech this company had factories in three corners of the UK Southampton Newcastle upon Tyne and Belfast as well as more factories and offices around the globe being the IT base in Southampton we'd quite regularly have to fly up to Newcastle or over to Belfast to fix an issue or just for a routine maintenance on their kit often the higher up managers would be making the same journeys so we'd arranged with their PA to share the taxi from the office to the airport make sure we're on the same flight then share the taxi at the other end to the factory there these were executive taxis long wheelbase BMW 7-series and Merc s-class usually at the destination there'd be a man with a little sign for the exec who grabs his or her bags and takes us to the car all very nice if the visit required an overnight stay they'd put us up in the same 4-star hotel as the execs as it was near the factory on an industrial estate and again we could share taxis this was a pretty sweet and sensible deal until the company was owned by a larger group who decided on a top down edict that the all jobs below exact level didn't get business class travel didn't get exact taxis no four-star hotels we could also only eat at the hotel's restaurant unless we were entertaining guests from another company obviously this was going to affect us as an IT team so we tried to push back on it not happening you have to follow the letter of the law the PAS we had one for IT as well as the couple who worked for the execs got their heads together and came up with a plan first thing was our flights had to change we were previously using an airline which operated small aircraft in a business class only configuration they left Southampton at around 8 a.m. meaning we'd arrive in New Castle ready to start the day work the return flight started at 1830 ish meaning we could leave at 5:00 and get home in time for dinner the only other option was a commercial airline this flight left mid-morning and because it wasn't business class it took longer to get through security etc meaning we had to present at the airport at 9 s for the 11:15 flight not arriving in Newcastle until lunchtime wasted half a day working right there rather than sharing the executive taxi to the airport with which we had an account we were to stand on the street and hail a hackney which turned out to cost nearly twice the pre-booked exact option the return flight departed at 1530 so unless you only had an hour's work to do you now had to stay the night somewhere we were only allowed to book from one of two chains Premier Inn and Travel Lodge turns out the Premier Inn in the middle of Newcastle cost more than the four-star place out on the Industrial Estate Plus now I've got places to go out and a much longer taxi ride from the office as anyone who's stayed in one knows these chain hotels have generally crapped but hugely overpriced restaurants I can see cheap options which I'd be fine with like Nando's rzz from my room but no I have to go to the on-site restaurant in order a 25 pound steak my favourite trip was one where I had to take a newer server up there the company wouldn't pay for it to be couriered as it was too heavy they wouldn't pay for the baggage allowance policy was only cabin baggage on the commercial flights they would have taken it no probs on the other airline so I had a drive company standard was to pay 45 pence a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a taxi ER I had recently bought a cheap diesel that would do 70 plus miles per gallon if I kept it below 60 miles an hour and as I'd be driving on company time why not 350 miles each way cost me a little over 50 pounds on diesel at that time and I got paid 315 pounds and expenses for doing it the airfare on the business class jet would have been around 250 returned our departmental PA worked out that travel as a whole was now costing the IT department roughly three times what it used to under the old system and that's not counting them missed hours when we could have been working of course nothing ever came of it because the people who make these decisions never bother looking into the impact of them or probably never even get a report that would highlight it from our point of view it meant a problem that could be sorted in a single day now took at least two and we were away from the office a lot more so if given the chance would you try and rack up all the driving miles that Opie was doing let me know what your strategy in this situation would have been in the comments section down below no more per diem no more cheap lunches years ago I worked for a company that was acquired / merged with a much larger company there were of course management changes and policy changes that's to be expected we were told that pretty much everything would stay the same for us though health benefits mileage reimbursement travel expenses etc well almost everything made the cut except for the per diem per diem was easy with the old company have you spent the night in a city accounting looked up the GS a per diem rate for that city and you got reimbursed automatically all you had to do was present a copy of your hotel receipt which you had anyway for expense purposes per diem for meals incidentals and entertainment mi and E normally works out to forty-five to fifty-five dollars a day which is supposed to cover pretty much everything except car rental fuel and major project expenses I like to eat well when I travel so $55 doesn't always cover my meal expenses but it's better than nothing and I can afford it of course some of the guys would spend like $5.00 a day on canned fruit and sandwiches then pocket the rest more power to them during the meeting where they announced the merger they mentioned that per diem is ending and that all expenses will now be reimbursed directly meaning that we have to submit receipts for everything we want to be reimbursed for this is a huge hassle especially on long projects with a lot of expenses it irritated me enough that I asked one of the VP's about it lunch so what's with the change in per diem it's a lot easier to deal with and no one has to keep track of a dozen of receipts I bet you guys like making a few extra bucks from per diem don't you not really it doesn't always cover the full expenses but it's easier to keep track of well in order to keep expenses under control we will only reimburse exactly what is needed this struck me as condescending and stupid the guys this affected were making 75 grand to 125 grand plus a year so it's not like we were seriously patting our paychecks with an action a twenty to forty dollars per day for per diem it also meant expenses took an extra hour per week because of dealing with the receipts of course I put that hour on my timesheet as overhead as part of the stupid policy change they didn't ask for itemized receipts just the signed copy and the limits from meals were quite high $15 breakfasts $25 lunch $45 dinner looks like I'm about to start eating really well I normally skipped breakfast because it upsets my stomach if I eat early but not anymore if there wasn't a restaurant where I could blow fifteen dollars on a healthy meal I would at least pick up a couple energy drinks in a box of breakfast bars even if I wasn't going to consume them right away no more Whataburger or Wendy's for lunch unless it was in a hurry now I'm going to Chili's Friday's or any other place where I can spend close to $25 for a decent lunch same for dinner $45 space for a decent steak in a beer at Texas Roadhouse or Outback or I could just sit at the bar order chips and salsa then drink $35 of beer in the liquor they didn't ask for itemized receipts so they would never know now they're paying out close to $85 a day just for meals plus dry cleaning and whatever else I had the Bible traveling not to mention the hour or two I have to waste submitting receipts every week honestly like despite the fact that they have to spend an extra hour with their seats they still get paid for that time and they get even more money to spend on goodies that sounds like a win to me make my son wear uncomfortable shoes so it's uniform get ready for the ugliest shoes you have ever seen I found out my son was a genius and the public schools around here are lacking I put my son into a private school where I had the most difficult time ever finding all white shoes my son can wear then an announcement was made that some non-white was allowed his feet are wide and he has high arches I searched until I found a pair I thought would work high-end shoes wide with a small silver stripe $90 after the first day of school I got a letter that my son's shoes were unacceptable because they had to have uniformity in their pictures and that he couldn't attend class without all white shoes I went to Walmart and bought the only pair of white shoes they had close to his size no wives were available and none of the shoes had arch support q of the malicious compliance I set my son down and asked if he remembered me talking to him about taking care of his uniforms when he played son said yes well I want you to forget all of that with these shoes I want you to make them as ugly as possible get red playground dust all over them rub them in the grass to get grass stains and purposefully scuff your shoes when he go on the stairs less than a month into the school year those shoes looked like they had been through a war the school was stubborn though they knew what I was doing and never confronted me they knew he had a perfectly respectable pair of shoes at home but had him in his atrocious orange green grace shoes instead honestly I'm surprised that the school didn't freak out and say oh well you can't have these extremely dirty shoes here either they need to be clean respectable all-white uniform shoes tell me not to come in I'm more than okay with that I reserved minded of this today and wanted to share this with you guys once many moons ago actually it was just over a year I was working for a big-box store in their back room as a packaging slash shipping clerk the company I worked for is notorious for how they treat their employees and at the time it was right after they changed their sick pay I accrued it pretty fast and had 34 hours in there sick pay with 49 hours for vacation and I also worked overnight and never took sick days overall it was a pretty sweet schedule for me because I loved being up all night and I had Monday Tuesday Wednesday off in fact I'm one of the very few people who worked my department overnight on weekends even though people were trained they were always stolen and one of the very few who can work a register which I would do when the store opened as I would cover the electronics desk until I left for the morning I was one out of two people who could work electronics but the other was a manager and had managerial stuff to do alas we come to my malicious compliance I hurt my leg plain and simple I was able to deal with it in my department because we had wheeled stools so I kept my leg on it and had somebody do my heavy lifting they were sympathetic and it was Saturdays so the plan was I would rest up and hopefully it would be better by Sunday evening at least it was fine until I got called to electronics I asked for a stool but I was told they couldn't accommodate me because I got hurt off property / shift ok that's fine the assistant manager then started saying how it's unprofessional for me to sit on the job and I just can't be doing that they even pulled the if we did it for you then we'd have to do it for everyone finally she told me if you're injured use her medical leave and call out Wow okay I know she's new but if she's gonna see that then I will so I told her never mind about the stool by then it was 30 minutes until I had to go anyways and that I'll manage as soon as I got home I called out I rested on my couch all day playing persona and then I rested for the next three days and then for the heck of it I called out on Thursday because my legs still had a little bit of pain which was more than easily manageable but I like spying people my department got super backed up she had to cover electronics for me my department manager was upset over the backlog and I could despite my poopy assistant manager just for the fun of it if they're gonna be cold and uncaring and there probably violating some kind of employment rules and regulations of some sort then i think opee's totally justify to call out and use those hours what it's in the uniform guidelines many years ago when I was driving cabs the company supplied shirts and had guidelines of the pants had to be navy blue or black shorts or long pants or skirts all good so far except that one driver of my acquaintance wanted to wear cargo pants one of the road supervisor saw him and said he had to wear what was in the handbook the driver said that they were black pants what more did he want apparently cargo pants were too long to be shorts and too short to be trousers so he had to change them if he didn't he'd be taken off the road until he complied fine said the driver on his next shift he presented wearing a black knee length skirt with the cargo pants underneath predictably management hit the roof what the heck did he think he was playing at etc etc etc well he said the handbook did not specify that skirts were only for women to be wearing after all of woman could wear trousers men could wear skirts they looked at the handbook it did indeed fail to specify which gender was to wear what but then they put it at the cargo pants what the heck was that about they wanted to know oh he said that's my underwear there's no specification anywhere in there about what kind of underwear I can wear under a skirt now I'd like to see they caved in and let him wear the cargos in an ideal world that would have happened but he did get to drive like that for about six months while they tried to figure out a way to stop him from doing it without actually going to the trouble of printing up another employee handbook he even made it into the papers eventually they bit the bullet and had the employee handbook reprinted in its entirety at company expense the relevant section now specifies that men can only wear pants that are either trousers or shorts and not cargo pants and that women can either wear those or skirts on the day they handed him the freshly printed hand book and told him to take that dang skirt off he handed in his resignation chin quit cab driving and got a job doing something else he'd been intending to pull the pin for a while but he held on long enough to force them to follow through it was not a good time PR wise for that company I'm quite proud of the guys sticking all the way out until he forced their hand to actually finally change it and then revealed that he was leaving anyways but with that being said that's all the stories we have for today so what I want to know is which of these stories is your personal favorite and why let me know which story was your personal favorite in the comments section down below and thank you all so very much for watching and listening to the storytime channel if you haven't yet please consider subscribing and don't forget to turn notifications on so you'll never miss an upcoming video from the story time channel thank you all again for watching and listening to today's stories on the story time Channel [Music]

Channel: Storytime

Views: 48,706

Rating: 4.9262671 out of 5

Keywords: storytime, story time, life stories, r/maliciouscompliance, r/idontworkherelady, r/entitledparents, r/entitled parents, entitled parents, maliciouscompliance, malicious compliance, prorevenge, r/prorevenge, r/pro revenge, reddit stories, funny reddit stories

Id: NWUN2Lk_Rco

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2020