Travelling by train can take a long time, but it’s easier on your body than being stuck in a car.

The working world seems to favor cars, though. See the worker in this story find a way around this.

Company will only reimburse parking, not transit? alright then.

A few years ago, I was working in Downtown Los Angeles, but living in San Diego. For those of you who don’t know, that’s over 175-mile per day commute.

I wasn’t about to put my car through that, and so I took the train every morning to Union Station, then backtracked via Subway to the job site.

That’s what makes this complicated.

The cost of the Amtrak weekly pass was basically the same price of gas, but I thought I’d try to get that extra $3.50/d from the subway covered since I wasn’t using the “parking reimbursement” in my contract. The $17.50 per week wasn’t going to bankrupt me, but I figured I’d try.

I came to the boss and asked, basically, “Since I’m not driving to work and getting reimbursed for parking at $10, could I submit my subway receipts at $3.50 and get that covered?” And was told to pound sand.

The way the reimbursement worked was that you pulled a parking slip when you got to work and paid it at the end of the day. Then, on Mondays, you would submit all 5 parking slips from the previous week, and the $50 would be added to your paycheck (untaxed, obviously).

But there was an easy workaround.

So, every day from then on, when I took the train into work, I just walked into the parking structure and pulled a ticket.

I didn’t have a vehicle and so I didn’t need to worry about paying for the ticket to leave, but the contractor didn’t know that. They didn’t have access to the system (which is why they didn’t validate everyone’s parking and skip the middle man).

As far as they knew, I was just driving in like everyone else.

Here is what people are saying.

Good idea!

At least on the train you can get up and stretch your legs.

It wouldn’t be the first time a company did things that didn’t make sense.

It is confusing! I doubt it’s weekly.

Know your rights, people!

I work from home, so can’t imagine any of this.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.