Although there are some people who go into their places of employment looking to get paid for doing very little, most of us accept a job in good faith.
We report our time accurately, and we follow the rules we agreed to when we were hired.
So, it can be more than a little insulting when your employer says you’re trying to steal from them.
OP and his partner are doctors who spent a lot of time seeing patients out of the office.
I’m a physician, my coworker is a physician. We practice nephrology somewhere in the USA.
We do a lot visits to dialysis centers along an interstate, 8 of them, and it involves a lot of driving to see the patients while they’re on dialysis.
They are reimbursed for mileage, etc, and had an understanding with the company who paid it.
The system we work for pays us mileage plus a good salary.
Originally we submitted our own mileage reports and they always approved them. We were not trying to maximize the money, we both just wanted about $1,000 a month to offset wear and tear and gas on the vehicle.
We were actually just photocopying the same report each month, signing it and turning it in. The original company we worked for was totally fine with this arrangement.
Then, a new company was put in charge.
Well the system got bought by another system who apparently believes all their doctors are thieves. We were told we were scamming them and from now on a middle manager would be reviewing our billings and using Google maps to calculate out our mileage each month for us.
And this person would make sure we were adhering strictly to their policy for reimbursement.
Starts from the office each day no matter where you started from, doesn’t pay you to drive out somewhere if you didn’t see a patient but just went to sign forms for nurses, and other stupidity.
Because of the way they talked to OP, he decided to follow the rules – to the letter.
Now I don’t like being accused of thievery. Especially when I was sure we’d been under billing for the mileage just to keep things easy and simple.
These people dont know me but I had an excel sheet with all my patients, their clinics, and a schedule to drive out to them and see them all in as little time and mileage as possible. It was really efficient.
So I dove into their travel policy and reconfigured my schedule, not to minimize mileage, but, within their policy, to maximize it.
As a bonus the new schedule actually has me home each day for lunch on days I so dialysis rounds so it saved me a little bit of money and improved my mood.
For example since they start it from the office and end it from the office no matter where you actually start and end, i start my day at the one close to my house but far from the office.
And end my day at the one on the other side of town by my girlfriend’s house, where id usually hang out after work anyway.
Mid day I’d go him for lunch, get a nap or nooner, and then see a couple people in town so I’d get paid to drive back, and then head out for the regular visits that day.
Now he’s living high on the hog.
All together, my average mileage, far from being less like they expected, is actually 90% greater.
And on top of this they’re paying this middle manager to deep dive into all our billing to examine the locations and compile the report, she said just to do our 2 it takes almost 8 hours!
An expense they never had before.
I bet Reddit is fist-bumping their computer screens right now.
Why does it seem companies never learn?
Because everyone on Reddit has read this story before – more than once.
And in this situation, things could go deeper still.
Sometimes the higher-ups don’t even notice.
As taxpayers, though, we’re all a little concerned.
A tale as old as time…
But man, I sure wish now was the time to change it.
If you thought that was an interesting read, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.