New policies can disrupt everything at work.

If travel were a part of your job and the travel policies changed, you would be forced to change to comply with the policies. For example, if you wouldn’t be reimbursed for your favorite form of transportation, you’d have to use another option.

Read how one Redditor struggles with their company’s new travel policy and what they decide to do about it.

Let’s read all the details.

Following new travel cost of my company

We [have] an office in the capital of my country (Paris, France) and an office in the countryside, still a medium-sized city by still countryside.

The company [wanted] to reduce travel fees for the employees. They made new rules allowing to be [refunded] for expense by using only one mode of transportation and no reimbursing parking fees anymore.

For most of the company, this seemed logical.

This makes sense for Paris. This is utterly ******** rules in the countryside.

I need to go each week to Paris. To reduce expense costs and gain a lot of time, I use my personal vehicle that I park and travel by train, then proceed to use [the] metro to get to the office.

However, under the new policy — this would be two modes of transportation and wouldn’t be covered.

This is an expense with parking and two modes of transportation (personal vehicle + public transport).

This is allowing me to get into the office in the morning, do my day of work there and come back the same day.

Thanks to the new rules, I can’t do that anymore.

I, then, [tried using] taxis to avoid parking fees ([it’s] double the price of my expense) and still use train + metro.

Shockingly, this still wasn’t covered.

I [received] an expense rejection because this is still [two] modes of transportation (taxi + public transportation).

Ok, I will follow the rules.

I live in the countryside. Taking [the] train to get to the medium city in order to get to Paris is hard and [comes] only after 7 a.m.

Oh, but this is just the beginning.

I take the train to go to my nearest medium city. I, then, take the train to get to Paris.

[I arrive in] Paris at 2 p.m. I can’t do my day of work, and I can’t leave the same day.

I need now two nights In a hotel, one night for the day I travel and one night for the day I work In Paris because I can’t leave the same day.

And it ain’t over yet…

To get back home, I need to leave after 2 p.m., and I come back at my house at 7 p.m.

Expenses details:

Before the rules, my expense was: 12€ from personal car, 30€ of parking, 5€ of metro and 120€ of train, 25€ for a meal = 192€ of travel expense

After the rules, taking a cab to avoid parking was : 80€ of cab, 5€ of metro, 120€ of train, 25€ for meal = 230€ of travel expenses

After getting the cab rejected, my new expenses to follow the new rules was:

20€ of local train, meal x2 first day 50€, meal x2 during Paris work time 50€, meal x2 for getting back 50€, two nights at hotel 250€, train tickets 120€, metro 5€ = 640€

The math isn’t mathing — but at least there’s good food?

I miss two days of work because I’m traveling, and it cost three times what it was costing before the new rules. Yeah, why not. At least I can eat good stuff.

Before the rules, I was doing, on the same day, 5 hours of travel + 8h of office work + 5 hours to get back at my house. It was very tiring, but I was doing that to not lose productivity and to be cost-effective.

But because of this trek, this OP’s work suffered.

Fallout:

My productivity went down the drain because I lost two days of work per week, due to travel time and the cost of travel from my part exploded.

There is no real comeback to that because I think, overall, they did manage to reduce expenses fees, as I said it was something that made sense for Paris.

Work wasn’t done in time because of the lack of 2 days of work per week from my part.

My manager (on a team of three people) had to go back coding and take some features to do because I had not enough time to do them anymore.

But the company’s hands were tied.

Not working during my travel or not being able to work properly during my travel was legal, they were no possible outcome to force me to do what I did before.

Even though they would make an exception for me, I had enough of their policies to not got back to what I did before and would not allow me to do another 18h of work one day per week.

Does Reddit think this journey is worth it? Is this malicious compliance? Let’s find out in the comments.

One Redditor still had questions about the revised journey.

Another reader recommended simplifying the trek.

And one user was surprised the company complied.

People didn’t totally understand why someone’s work day was so long though.

All signs point to getting a new job or taking that long cab ride into Paris.

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