Sometimes, policies can be useful until they’re too strict to work in real life.

So, what would you do if a well-meaning but overly detailed rule required you to get approval for even the smallest purchases?

Would you keep jumping through hoops every time you needed a basic part?

Or would you go straight to the top and see if there’s a way around it?

In the following story, one IT guy finds himself doing just that.

Here’s how it played out.

I have great respect for accountants, but . . .

Any competent accountant has at least a touch of OCD.

It’s really necessary for them to do their job properly. But some have more of it than most.

At one time, we had a controller who really put the obsessive in obsessive-compulsive.

She decided that we were a little too fast and loose with the company credit card (which we were at that point).

So, she created a “payment request” form and wrote a policy to accompany it.

The form wasn’t unreasonable (in fact, we still use it today).

The policy was another story.

The form was to be used (per the policy) for all uses of the company credit card (which we used for *everything because the owner got airline mileage on it—it had a six-figure limit, and it wasn’t unusual for us to have to make a mid-month payment to keep from going over—he got a lot of miles).

All uses, no matter how small.

The policy required specific signatures.

The policy?

Each form had to be signed by either the owner or two higher-ups, one of whom was frequently not in the office.

I’m the IT guy.

We’re a retail store chain (and a pretty successful one), so there are many IT issues that are extremely time-sensitive (we have to keep the cash registers running full speed) but can be fixed with very cheap parts.

I had to get signatures to order $25 parts off the internet every time, with one of the signatures coming from someone who was in the office less often than the owner.

It didn’t take long for the policy to backfire.

It was pretty obvious to me that the correct solution was to have the owner sign it all by himself.

He always understood – all I had to do was tell him a cash register was down, and he got it. (I do like working for smart people.)

Until the day I took the third form into his office within an hour or so for his signature because one of the other two people who could sign was out of town.

He said he’d “Look into this” as he signed it.

As I walked by the controller’s office on the way back to mine, he was already there, having a (very polite, they were both professionals) conversation.

From that day forward, the executive VP (who’d been around from the beginning and was trusted as much as the owner’s own family) could sign my form all by himself (and I now have signature authority up to $500, as well as my own company credit card – with a much smaller limit).

While it was a well-meaning policy, it seemed to have been a drain on company time.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this situation.

This person brings up a good point.

Exactly, there should’ve been a minimum.

This person is not wrong.

She definitely gets it.

That was a nice try!

Although the accountant was only trying to help, there was no way that policy could survive long.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.