Business meetings are essential to working with a client, but when those business meetings involve travel, business expenses can go up quickly!

In today’s story, the employees try to keep the business expenses as low as possible when traveling to business meetings, but one client insisted on a certain dress code that made the business expenses increase significantly.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Dress code

This didn’t happen directly to me, but a person I used to work with a couple of years back.

We worked as system consultants and would travel to the sites we were assisting during the phases of the projects that required being there in person.

As travel costs for these trips would directly impact the budget of the project or were passed on to the client, we were encouraged to travel as lightly and plan as much ahead as possible, choosing the lowest fare within reason and not go overboard with the hotel and meals.

Most of the time this worked well enough.

One particular customer didn’t seem grounded in the real world.

If something was out of the ordinary, usually a quick call to whomever to explain the reason behind it would clear things up, our expenses would be approved and we’d carry on.

Until the company was hired by this one customer.

People there seemed to operate out of some parallel world where the constraints of the real world would not apply.

Anyway, the usual policy of being cost conscious also applied there and the controller from the customer made a point to let us know that they would not approve expenses our company or my “colleague”, who was a directly hired contractor, submitted, if we weren’t mindful of costs.

The customer didn’t approve of their attire.

It inevitably happened that we flew in for our first in-person meeting and, booking the lowest available fare within a reasonable schedule, meant we flew without checked luggage and showed up in button down shirts, dark chinos and black slip on shoes.

Not the most formal attire, but certainly not in pyjamas, and perfectly acceptable for every other client up to then.

Well, not for these people.

We were taken aside and told that their C-Suite management was very taken aback that their provider couldn’t even manage to show up in suits, proper shoes and an ironed shirt.

There was a second visit to the same customer.

I was stumped, but my contractor colleague retained his cool and simply asked for a quick two sentence email with the requirement for suits, ironed shirts and formal shoes.

The client surprisingly obliged.

Queue our next trip and when coordinating with my colleague to book similar flight times and the same hotel, things got interesting.

First, we were flying in the evening before, second, we were checking luggage, third the no-frills hotel a little further out of town, but close enough to the client’s office wouldn’t do this time.

This time they brought suits.

Since they wanted formal attire without any creases, we’d have to check in trolley, because two suits and a fresh shirt for each day plus a spare weren’t going to fit in our carry-on.

And since we’d have to iron any creases out, we have to book a hotel that has ironing facilities, so the business hotel downtown it has to be this time.

And the time spent ironing will be invoiced, or at least my contractor colleague will…

They submitted the expenses.

I’ll skip over the uneventful meeting and go straight to when my company’s invoice and the contractor’s expenses claim got rejected.

Since we had the email requesting formal wear, we argued that this was done at the client’s request.

The controller wouldn’t budge.

Here’s how it played out…

So the contractor immediately stopped working for the client and told my management as much, recommending I do the same.

After missing a deadline and a couple of remote meetings (all with a short but sweet answer that there was an outstanding payment), the controller relented, the C-suite dropped the dress code, and we dropped the client the moment the contract was done.

I have since been contacted by them again through LinkedIn in an attempt to recruit me. LOL

That was truly a battle between the dress code and the expense budget!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader doesn’t understand the point of a suit and tie.

Another reader loved this story.

They should’ve kept the client.

Here’s a rewording of the client’s perspective…

The client wasn’t being reasonable.

The work should be more important than the appearance.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.