'Two petty victories over Finance Karen': Employee finds loophole in company's travel reimbursement policy, goes over HR's head to get approved

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Apr 28, 2023 8:00 AM EDT

There's nothing like finding a niche loophole and getting some money back in the process. If we were this employee and if we had made the same discovery, we would 100% proceed in the exact same way. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/beefjerk22, who learned that technically his car could be considered a hybrid and therefore he's entitled to reimbursements of 45p per mile rather than 11p per mile.

Not only did Karen from HR try to reject this claim, but she also said that his commute to work was under an hour and therefore definitely did not qualify for any reimbursement whatsoever according to company policy. That's when this employee demonstrated to someone above Karen on the totem pole that his commute during rush hour is actually five minutes over an hour, thereby proving that he qualified for reimbursement and not just any reimbursement but 45p per mile. Job well done, sir!

For more victorious work tales like this, here's one about an employee's honest response to a work survey.