Dealing with corporate rules can feel dehumanizing.

In this case, an employee had been saving her company money every day since she kept her expenses under the $30 a day limit.

But one day, when she went over the limit by $1.50, they made her realize that saving the company money wasn’t going to be appreciated.

Read the story and see how things played out.

Sure, I’ll keep my meals under $30 as per the policy. I’ll make sure it’s $30 Every. Single. Time

I do a lot of fly-in, fly-out travel for my job.

Usually, I am so busy with work while onsite, or I am stationed somewhere with food options I don’t want to waste my calories on and I don’t eat anything the whole day, or just buy a coffee.

Our employee expenses policy at work is $30 a day, which is mostly fine.

She doesn’t usually spend that much, only once in a while.

But there are some high cost of living cities and sometimes my meals go above that policy because there are not many options, especially if I want to eat healthy, which is important when you are constantly on the road.

So I submit my expenses one month and I have gone $1.50 over the daily limit because I treated myself to a coffee that morning, as well as a lunch, because I was tired after the god awful early flight I had to take.

It wouldn’t be an issue normally, but this time it was.

The company had recently changed their policy, and now a different set of people are approving expenses.

The previous people didn’t mind going over by a few bucks because it balances out with trips where I didn’t eat anything, but this new group are absolute sticklers and rejected the expense, citing I was over the daily limit.

I tried to argue I had 10 other visits that month in which I didn’t eat a single thing, but they still weren’t budging.

It really left a sour taste in my mouth.

So she made a decision.

Now every single visit I force myself to spend as close to $30 as I can because screw them.

My husband is happy because it means I now bring back (slightly squished but free) food for him.

I feel bad for wasting food, but often I just buy a meal and eat a few bites and throw it in the bin.

However, the expense policy is $30 a day and by God, I am going to stick to it now.

They made a mistake.

While in the past I might have billed $100 for the entire month because I didn’t bother to eat, I am now billing twice or three times that.

I also used to push myself to keep working all day, but now I religiously take my 30 minutes to go and buy some food, so that’s 30 minutes less work they are getting from me, too.

Arbitrary rules are the worst.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

A reader shares their thoughts.

This commenter shares a similar experience.

Another experience.

A compliment.

Another reader chimes in.

Someone shares advice.

Their corporate greed backfired.

Finally.

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