Some companies create expense policies that cost them more money than they’ll ever save.

So, what would you do if your company suddenly changed its policy, expecting you to cover a cost they used to pay?

Would you just pay for it?

Or would you find a way to make the policy work in your favor?

In the following story, a defense contractor employee finds himself in this exact predicament.

Here’s what he did.

They want us to pay the tax on our hotels, we started checking out over 30 days..

So, I work for a defense contractor – one of the big three.

We are based in Guam but in Florida for Training until the summer.

We are all in hotels.

Here we are, a few months into our trip, and all of a sudden, the person doing our expense reports keeps kicking them back.

Now we are incurring late fees, which we all refuse to pay.

She says that after 30 days, we are responsible for the room tax, which is $13 a day, almost $400 a month.

In our contract, the company has stated they will pay for a trip to our home of record once a month, which none of us have been doing because we have been so busy.

Here comes the MC.

Now, we are all scheduling trips home each month to break up the 30 days so we don’t pay the hotel tax, while the company is now paying for flights to our homes of record.

One guy is from Guam, and his tickets are almost $2,000 for a round trip.

So now it’s costing them another $700-$2000 for flights each month.

The company is notorious for this behavior.

In another instance, years ago, when I came home from Japan, my flight had an 8-hour layover in Tokyo.

I found a flight that was shorter but cost $200 more.

They rejected it because it wasn’t the lowest fare available.

I’m paid doorstep to doorstep when I travel, meaning I’m on the clock from when I leave my house until I get to my hotel at my final destination.

Many of these travel days end up being around 23 hours.

I thought the company would be cool with me saving them 8 hours of me on the clock, but nope.

Okay, then…13 hours of double time at $100 an hour, so $1300 over a $200 price difference.

I’ll take all that money.

The people who write these contracts really don’t think stuff through.

Wow! What a terrible policy!

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say about it.

Nice! Gotta have clean clothes!

This was well played.

Here’s some excellent advice.

According to this comment, this is why they are strict about company travel.

At least they got to go home!

That was probably better than being stuck out of town the whole month anyway.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.