Imagine working on a construction site that’s 45 minutes from your house. Would you drive home after work, or would you prefer to stay in a hotel close to the construction site?

Many people have commutes that are longer than 45 minutes, but the person in this story decided that it was a better deal to stay in a hotel than to drive home.

Keep reading for all the details.

Booked a Hotel just for a Meal

Several years ago when I was working for a construction company, I used to spend a lot of time out on construction sites. My company had a pretty good travel and meal policy so i never had any issues.

But one rule they did have was that you could purchase meals on the company credit card only if you were doing an overnight stay. The idea was that they didn’t want meals to be charged to the company if you were just driving back home each night anyway.

Most of my work sites were pretty far off so this never made much difference to me as I always stayed at a hotel during these trips.

Going home meant not eating first.

One project needed me to work at a place that was 45 minutes away from my home.

I wanted to go home each night and sleep in my own bed. But i was told I couldn’t incur food expenses as I was not staying overnight.

I just wanted to eat dinner before I went back home. But I wasn’t allowed.

It got pretty expensive.

Cue MC: I began to book hotel stays costing $150 a night AND incurred food expenses of $50 a day – now I was charging lunch, dinner and the morning breakfast.

So in the end, the company paid for close to $1000 of expenses because of a policy that would have otherwise cost them max $50.

Nobody asked anything about it because firstly it is a very large company, and secondly, they knew I hadn’t broken any rules.

Here’s the real question. Was he even staying in that hotel room?

It would probably be within the policy to book the hotel but still drive home every night. Regardless, it definitely worked in his favor to book the hotel to eat for free instead of driving home and paying for dinner.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This policy sounds reasonable.

I’m wondering this too.

This person found a workaround to their company’s travel policy.

Here’s how another company handles travel expenses.

Some companies don’t really think through the logic of their travel policies.

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