It seems like having a company car would be a good thing for employees who have to travel a lot for work.

If you had a company car and your employer told you that you needed to turn in the company car and find another way to travel, would you be upset, or would you find a way to make this work to your advantage?

In today’s story, the employees are in this situation and take a close look at the travel policy.

Let’s see how this story plays out.

Company saves cost by taking away company cars.

About 6 years ago I worked for power supply company in the UK

I worked in a small project team that coordinated all the companies major infrastructure projects and the role required travel to meetings all over the country.

We’d average around 800miles a week in company miles over the year, depending on time of year and location of projects etc.

The finance department made a decision without looking at all the details.

Some one in the finance department had reviewed our expense claims and calculated that over one quarter we’d not covered the required number of company miles to meet the companies policy on company cars.

For that one quarter with out looking at any other data.

We lost our company car entitlement and the company told us we had to return the the the fleet company at the end of their leases.

Malicious compliance activated.

They knew how to use their skills to help the company.

As we were project engineers we had a very particular set of skills for knowing how to follow rules to the letter and how to do so in a manner that benefitted the company or project or individuals.

Usually if it benefitted the company it benefitted all involved.

This was not one of those occasions.

They were smart about paying taxes.

We pay benefit in kind tax on our company cars in the uk, the rules around this changes as and when the government feel like it.

My team had all carefully chosen out cars to be zero cost to our selves by choosing cars that were below the allowance of £300 month so the remaining allowance covered the tax obligation.

We’d all be screwed by the benefit in kind tax changes that year and were now paying tax.

So for starters we reviewed the company car policy, and found the company had no way of stopping us handing our cars back with immediate affect, whilst the company was still responsible for the leases.

So we all made arrangements for personal cars and handed our keys over at the next team meeting.

They used the travel policy to their advantage.

We’d also reviewed the company travel policy.

We started using hire cars and trains for travelling. (Trains and hire cars in the uk are not cheap) As non of us were willing to use our personal cars and claim the 50p per mile.

Usually we’d work a long day and book a bit of over time or lieu to drive to and from meetings with out staying over as we would prefer to be at home even if it meant getting home late.

They weren’t going to do that anymore!

That stopped with immediate effect.

We’d only work the mandated 7.5 hour day then stop book into a hotel and take full advantage of the £25 food and drink allowance for dinner.

Then work from home the following day as we’d been away from home the previous day, as per the policy.

The managers noticed a big change in their expenses.

After about 8 weeks we were called into a meeting with our line manager and dept manager about our expenses.

Our expenses for the first month after the cars had been returned were more than they were for the previous 12 months combined.

Our line manager agreed that our expenses were inline with the policy otherwise he wouldn’t have signed them off.

The manager wanted things to go back to the way they used to be.

The dept manager told us we were getting company cars back and he expected the expenses to return to previous levels.

We declined the “offer” of company cars and let management know we’d be adhering to the travel policy to the letter.

Taking away the company cars seemed like a bad thing for the employees, but it turned out to be a bad thing for the company!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person would’ve done the same thing.

This person loves how these employees used the policies against their employer.

Here’s more praise for how this story played out.

This person shares what happened when the company they worked for changed the travel policy.

This person has the right idea.

Making cost-cutting changes can really backfire!

And very often does.

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