‘I should read the company policy more often!’ Employee Learns They’re Owed Hundreds After Responding To A Snippy Email From Accounting

Most people don’t take the time to read a whole policy, or the fine print, or to be honest, any of the work policies we operate under at all.

OP has a short busy season at work where long days and overtime are required. During this period his company will reimburse its employees up to a certain amount per meal.

I work for an office and we have an 8 week busy season with mandatory overtime (12-14hrs/day). During this time, the company agrees to reimburse us for dinner, up to $13/meal.

We just have to submit a claim with our receipts at the end of the busy season.

Of course, not everyone eats out and OP brought their meals most of the time. For the meals when they didn’t, they went over the allowed expenditure by $1.50.

Food options around my work aren’t great so I usually brought my dinner from home. But sometimes I was too tired to cook after a long day so out of the 8 weeks, I purchased maybe 10 meals. 3 of those meals I spent $13.50, going $0.50 over the limit.

His boss said not to worry about it, but when he turned in the expense report, accounting told him that wasn’t allowed.

This resulted in a whopping $1.50 overage which my manager said it was no big deal and that I could include on my expense claim. He signed off on it and everything.

A few days after I submitted my report Head Office emailed me saying they rejected my expense claim and that I could resubmit after I removed the $1.50 overage.

I wrote back saying my manager was fine with the $1.50 overage and even signed off on it, and they responded by telling me that they do not allow overages under any circumstances, that the $1.50 must be removed or they wouldn’t approve any of my meal expenses.

Additionally, they added a snippy comment about reading the entire policy before they submitted a new report.

They ended their email with the advice that I should “actually read the company policy next time”.

Fine, they were right and I was wrong. So I decided I’d read the policy very thoroughly before redoing my expense claim.

So, OP did read it…and he learned that he could also claim a $10 expense for every meal he brought from home.

Yes, the policy clearly stated a $13/maximum on purchased meals. Oh, and what’s this?

The policy also allows a $10 per diem for meals you bring from home.

This added up to an additional $300, and he’s glad he read the policy.

Maybe he’ll even read more in the future.

I very happily removed the $1.50 overage and added an additional $300 for the 30 meals I brought from home.

I should read the company policy more often!

I wonder if Reddit has any experience with things like this!?

The top commenter wondered whether or not the accounting lady was trying to tell him something the entire time.

This person agrees that people in accounting likely want the employees to get what they’re entitled to.

This commenter suspects the same.

They say we’re all just cogs in a wheel.

Does it really matter in the end if they were trying to be helpful?

I kind of think the accounting department wanted to be secretly helpful.

But of course, it’s not their money.

Either way, all’s well that ends well!