Sometimes companies will try to outsmart you but you should always come prepared!

This guy shares how he found his way around the cost of transport for his work trips.

Check out the full story!

No car service to/from airport on business trips lasting less than 4 days? OK!

Once upon a time several moons ago pre Uber/Lift (but still this century!) I worked for a company for which I ended up having to do a fair bit of travel over time.

Let’s call this company Acme.

This is where it gets tricky…

The original travel policy was pretty good, and included paying for a professional car service to and from the airport.

This was great because I was flying at odd hours to save the company money and more importantly increase face time at the customer site, which was VERY important.

They were, shall we say, cranky.

He was going an extra mile for this job!

This wasn’t even part of my job description – I wasn’t supposed to be customer facing.

But I volunteered one time to stop in on my way back from a week-long conference to see what was going on as the system engineer “assigned” to that customer had more important things to do – for months.

I didn’t know anything technical about the part that was breaking, but I was a manager, I could take notes, and I was most importantly providing the warm body “we care!” experience. Yay me.

He knew he had to do something about it!

Now, the airport I had been using was Logan International.

As with most old-time built-in-the-city airports it’s a pain to get in/out of, more than an hour each way, but airfare saved the company money and generally more likely to get direct flights while still meeting company requirements.

That didn’t come to play with this customer – they were just a hop, skip and a jump away.

At some point during my tenure at Acme some bean counter decided we were paying too much for the car service and that we were no longer to be provided with it on trips lasting less than four days.

That’s INSANE!

Are you kidding me?

I’m either going to the airport really early/really late, or coming back from the airport really early/really late, or both.

The last thing I wanted was to be driving an hour+ in addition, and stressing driving into big city traffic.

Now, I happen to have a regional airport much closer to me, much easier to get in and out of (airport was real close to the highway, the parking was very easy to get to, it was very easy to get from parking to the terminal, short ticket lines, short security line, short distance to the gate) and serviced by multiple airlines.

He wasn’t going to let this slide!

I’m sure you all have them.

The only downside is the tickets are generally $100+ more expensive than flying out of Logan. I’m sure you can see where I’m going here.

We may have had a policy saying we couldn’t use a car service, but there wasn’t anything dictating which local airport we had to fly out of….

Finally the cherry on top!

The company ended up a) paying for my miles to/from the airport, b) $20/day for parking in the parking garage (why would I put my car in long term parking for a trip lasting less than 4 days???), c) my more expensive flights.

I don’t remember how much the car service cost at the time, but I do remember having a discussion with our admin about the relative costs and figuring out that it wound up being a net loss for the company.

YIKES! That’s crazy!

Why would his workplace not make arrangements for his transport as needed?

Let’s find out what people on Reddit think about this one.

This user suggests taking a limo to the airport!

This user shares how they found their way around transport for work trips.

This user knows how to tackle such situations!

This user knows that Europe is great with public transport to the airport.

This user knows this policy is pretty bad!

The bigger picture is hard for these people to see.

You’d think they would learn, though.

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