'Your wish is my command': Bookkeeper ends up costing their company a fortune after demanding employees take 'cost effective' routes to work

Author image for Sienna Varady
Sienna Varady
Jan 16, 2024 1:00 PM EST

An excellent example of the saying 'Don't judge a book by its cover' is the business world. Even while everything appears ideal from the outside, things aren't always bright and sunny on the inside. 

The story that follows is from a resentful employee who has to commute every single day between the main office and his secondary office. Everything was going great, and OP was doing rather well despite spending long hours on the road; however, when a new bookkeeper joined the company, everything took a sharp turn for the worse. The company's new bookkeeper was adamant about cutting costs and making the most use of their resources. Upon reviewing OP's spending report, the newly hired bookkeeper determined that forcing OP to take the longer route—which makes a lot of sense in theory but necessitates many tolls in practice—would be the best method to prevent the company from going bankrupt.  

So, check out the story below to learn the specifics of what happened and how the bookkeeper's petty behavior ended up costing the business a lot of money! After you're done, check out another satisfying story about an IT employee who gets his manager fired after finding a bug in the system!

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  • 01
    100 "Expenses multiplied by 500 percent? That's what I call karma!" ANNITEDSSTEMPESTOEL IN GOD WE THENS
    via Canva
  • 02
    You only pay mileage for the shortest possible trip? Ok, then you have to pay my tolls.
    via u/newtekie1
  • 03
    At my job, every day I have to travel between two offices. I start at my main office, then have to travel to the second office, then back to my main office. Because I'm using my personal vehicle for this travel, the company pays me mileage.
    via u/newtekie1
  • 04
    Well, there are basically two routes you can take between the two offices. One is about a mile round trip shorter, but has tolls. So I always took the 1 mile longer route and avoid the tolls. I did it this way for a year.
    via u/newtekie1
  • 05
    Well in comes the new bookkeeper and she is hellbent on saving the company money. And where does she think all this wasteful money is going? Expense reports, obviously. So she starts knit picking every report. Like if someone is out and
    via u/newtekie1
  • 06
    has to buy some pens for work. She goes online and finds the cheapest price possible for those pens, and only reimburses for that cheaper price. It, obviously, has p sed several people off. Well, she eventually decided to target me. I submit my report for
    via u/newtekie1
  • 07
    2 weeks, and a few days later get the reimbursement payment. Well, it's $5.85 short. I ask her about it, and she says I've been ripping off the company for the past year by taking the longer route between the offices. She
    via u/newtekie1
  • 08
    will only pay mileage for the shorter route from now on. "And I'm lucky she doesn't go back and take back all the extra from the past year." I say Ok, but to please send me that per her I must take the shorter route and that this is
    via u/newtekie1
  • 09
    office. Before I even made it to my desk I had the email from her confirming what she said. 2 weeks later I submit my expense report. I reported the shorter route, so the company saved $5.85. But tolls added up to $136.
    via u/newtekie1
  • 10
    A net loss for the company of $130.15. It's been 6 months and I'm still "taking the shorter route" costing the company an extra $130.15 every 2 weeks.
    via u/newtekie1
  • 11
    mybossthinksimworkng. 2 yr. ago If they ask you to change to your former route, please make sure you demand you will only do it AFTER they reimburse you the $5.85 they stole from you.
    via u/mybossthinksimworkng
  • 12
    TellThemISaidHi · 2 yr. ago As someone who travels for work, dear lord this is beautiful. There are few things more annoying than someone who never
    via u/TellThemISaidHi
  • 13
    travels going line by line looking to save twenty cents so they can write themselves up for an award.
    via u/TellThemISaidHi
  • 14
    __pm_me_your_ni les 2 yr. ago edited 2 yr. ago I once had to justify the concept of traffic to an accountant. At that company we weren't allowed to make our own travel plans, the travel department picked the
    via u/__pm_me_your_ni**les
  • 15
    cheapest flight that vaguely fit the requested schedule. One time I was running late leaving the office, so I took a toll highway instead of the normal route to the airport because there was much less
    via u/__pm_me_your_ni**les
  • 16
    traffic (the 407 instead of the 403 in the Toronto area, if you're familiar). After I filed that expense report (on paper of course, because Expensify costs too much) I got an email from
    via u/__pm_me_your_ni**les
  • 17
    someone I had never heard from before. "Why are there tolls? Those are very expensive. You should have taken the other route. Also why did you have to park a car if you were going home?" "Well, I was booked by
    via u/__pm_me_your_ni**les
  • 18
    the travel department on the last flight of the night. I was running late and saw that there was a lot of traffic on the normal route. I figured that a $45 toll would be cheaper than a new flight. Please see the attached email from
    via u/__pm_me_your_ni**les
  • 19
    <this person's boss> confirming that I could park a company car for the weekend because it was cheaper than a taxi both ways." After several days:
    via u/__pm_me_your_ni**les
  • 20
    "OK, fine. But don't do it again. Also in the future please use this website to get a coupon for the airport parking garage because you went over on that too."
    via u/__pm_me_your_ni**les
  • 21
    Almacca 2 yr. ago Any company that's counting their pens is a company about to go under.
    via u/Almacca
  • 22
    WinginVegas 2 yr. ago Not sure why OP didn't talk to their manager. Bookkeepers do not get to set policy. Once had one for a very large company who decided he wanted to "fix" some of my teams expenses that he decided were too high
    via u/WinginVegas
  • 23
    or " not right". After the first time he did that, he got a call from me explaining that if the report was approved, he needed to pay it. Next payroll he did it again to three people and the call he got was from the Executive VP who ran our group and was very clearly told that his job
    via u/WinginVegas
  • 24
    was to process expenses, not evaluate or approve them and if he had a question about something he could ask his manager or the person who approved the report but if a nickel was missing from anyone's expenses again, he would be unemployed.
    via u/WinginVegas
  • 25
    merlinou 2 yr. ago Reminds me of the time where I was travelling a lot. As our customer was a government oeg, they had daily flat fees for travel so I always just submitted proof of travel and stay and got my per Diem.
    via u/merlinou
  • 26
    As the new bean counter started, he rejected my report stating that flat fees were illegal. Bro, it's paid by our government, you can't beat that. Still had to submit detailed expenses. As the company would be
    via u/merlinou
  • 27
    pocketing the difference, I made sure to expense more than the allocated per Diem. He didn't care, he could pretend to be doing his job.
    via u/merlinou
  • 28
    GrumpyCatStevens 2 yr. ago Penny wise, pound foolish.
    via u/GrumpyCatStevens

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oddly specific corporate cash manager the office malicious-compliance-reddit finance reddit story petty revenge driving Office Horrible Bosses emloyee Reddit business money oddly satisfying
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