Sometimes a company’s attempt to save a little money ends up costing them a whole lot more.

What would you do if your boss refused to reimburse you for miles driven to your first job site, even if it was part of your regular schedule?

Would you push back?

Or would you take the boss’s advice and see how it goes?

In the following story, one employee finds himself in this exact situation and decides to follow the rules.

Here’s what happened.

No mileage reimbursement for the first stop of the day

At my last job, I lived 5 minutes from a customer I had standing appointments with first thing in the morning, twice per week.

The office was about 30 minutes away.

I had another customer who was about 45 minutes from me, who was over an hour from our office, where I had to go at least once per week.

Management told him to use one of the company cars.

Management started refusing to reimburse my mileage because it was the “first stop of the day” and said to use a company car if it’s an issue.

We had 2 cars for like 8 techs, and one was permanently assigned to someone.

I told them my work day starts at 8, and I’ll be at the office to pick up the car at 8.

They fought that at first, but there wasn’t anything they could do because the employee handbook clearly stated working hours.

Everything was great until he let the wrong person in on his secret.

Unsurprisingly, the car was never available, so they had to reimburse me for significantly more mileage, as I was taking my own car anyway.

Even when it was available, I was extremely late to every appointment that we were contractually bound to.

I might have let what I was doing slip to a couple of other techs, and within a week, they removed the handbook from our shared drive and rewrote the policy for the next year to reimburse partial mileage for first-stop appointments, but I quit well before it got rolled out.

Nice! It seems like he got very lucky.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about what he did.

This person explains IRS regulations.

Yet another person explaining the rules.

According to this person, the company was right.

This person dealt with something similar at IBM.

This guy did it right!

Too bad he ruined it for others by revealing the secret.

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