'Save £80 on flight cost? No problem, pay £1000 instead' : Employee plays petty game of malicious compliance with incompetent boss who attempts to cut travel costs on work trip

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    Motor vehicle - You want me to fly 12 hours earlier because it's cheaper? TL/DR: Company changed my flight to save £80, fine, two hotels, two taxis and an extra day's pay please.
  • 02
    Font - Posted by u/Warm_Tomato2126 2 days ago You want me to fly 12 hours earlier because it's cheaper? MOC 2
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    Font - TL/DR: Company changed my flight to save £80, fine, two hotels, two taxis and an extra day's pay please. Disclaimer: English is my second language but I've been speaking it since I was 5 so really should know better. I'm on a laptop so any formatting errors are because I'm dumb. I (56M in the UK) was working in Africa as an operations manager for a large global security company from 2009 to 2014.
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    Font - The country I was working in had been through a long civil w and was very under-developed (Think no paved roads, people living a very traditional African lifestyle). At the time I'd been working there on a 10 weeks in country, 2 weeks at home rotation for about 4 years. I'd flown to and from work so often that I had the journey down to the bare minimum travel time, and it worked out the cheapest option for the company because travel days were paid from when I left home. The shorter my jou
  • 05
    Font - Someone in the head office had looked at cutting down on travel costs, probably to make themselves look good and get promoted. As a result i got an email after a week at home saying they had changed my normal flight which was 5pm on Sunday from my nearest UK airport, via Amsterdam, then on to Nairobi, connecting with a 9am flight to the war torn country on Monday morning. The change was from the from a 5pm departure to a 5am departure the same day, same route, and saving about £80.
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    Font - To clarify, the 9am flight from Nairobi was the first flight to w torn country because the destination airport was the only surfaced runway in the country. It had had no runway lights or radar so all flights had to be in daylight. Anyway, I agreed to the flight time change, but they had to move it to the Monday so I don't lose a day at home, (All will become clear) they agreed because still saved £80 on the ticket, no skin off their nose.
  • 07
    Font - Once I got the flight confirmation I contacted the travel desk asking for hotel and taxi bookings, when they asked why I need these I explained that to make a a 5am departure required a check in at 3am, so I needed a hotel at the airport on Sunday night because no trains were running to get me the 3 hours to the airport from home for that time of the morning. The flights they booked would get me into Nairobi for 7pm - after dark - so I'd need a Hotel there and a taxi each way to and from
  • 08
    Font - A couple of days go by and I got a phone call from the company travel desk telling me the travel plan was confirmed. I was on the 5am flight with a hotel reservation at my UK airport the night before, a hotel in Nairobi after landing and the taxi would collect me in Nairobi and drop me at the airport for my final connection. I asked about the cost saving, they said £80. I then asked about the hotels and taxis... They replied, oh, they don't come out of our budget, that's the operations bu
  • 09
    Font - I was happy, I was arriving back at work a day later, still paid the same amount with a night out in Nairobi to sweeten the deal. My Boss on the other hand went nuts! Nobody had told him of the changes. My deputy flew out on the plane I flew in on, meaning I didn't get a hand over of the work that was going on. On top of that the cost for hotels, taxis and extra day's pay had all come out of my Boss's operational budget. I think the total amount added was almost £1000, but hey, they save
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    Font - CriticalStation595 2 days ago So many penny wise pound foolish stories of companies doing stupid sł like this. 2.6k Reply Share 740 +1 - 1 day ago Rodyland It's the p incentives that are put in place by (incompetent) management, coupled with petty tyrants who refuse to remove their blinkers. Reply Share
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    Font - Ceico_ +32 days ago yup, different budget buckets... this is why travel budget was in my company dissolved all into operational budgets of individual services.. no more stupid savings that cost 10x more somewhere else 2.7k Reply Share
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    Font - mWade7 1 day ago edited 17 hr. ago . • Kinda reminds me of a story my dad told me from his working days. He was in a telecom union (in the US) and had to travel with his manager to somewhere out of state. Originally planned to travel on Monday, but his manager wanted to leave on Sunday afternoon instead. So they get to the airport and plane is delayed. Hanging out and the manager made some comment about the wasted time, and my dad was like, "well, I don't mind - I'm getting triple pay." M
  • 13
    Font - responded along the lines of, "what are you taking about?!" My dad said, "well, according to our contract: 1) travel time is paid time. 2) this puts me over my 40 hrs for the week, so now getting time-and-a-half. And 3) it's Sunday, which means time-and-a-half AGAIN. But you wanted us to head out today instead of on a Monday...sooo..." EDIT: I chatted w/ my dad this morning, and a slight correction: he was getting time-and- a-half for being over 40 hrs, and then DOUBLE time (on top of 1.5
  • 14
    Font - aDvious1 2 days ago I'm feel like I'm very fortunate to be able to book my own travel accomodations with no oversight. I do what makes sense based on when/where I need to be, without much regard for economically driven "savings". For example, if I find out that a customer needs me in San Francisco on Monday, and I'm in Charlotte on Friday, and the only seats left available are first class, it's first class. No one ever questions that for me. Thankfully. My bosses understand the impact and

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