Manager declines employee's requests for in-house training, claiming there's no budget, employee convinces higher-ups to pay for an entire master's degree instead: ‘They ended up paying me $12,000’

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Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Feb 24, 2025 3:00 PM EST

While bosses constantly claim they have no budget for anything they deem unworthy, we all know they simply would rather use that budget for things that fully benefit them. 

"No we cannot afford to restock the supply closet with more pens and paper, but we sure can afford to fly the entire management team to a 'work conference' in Europe". Sure, boss.

It's unbelievably annoying when your manager has this type of attitude, but it also forces you to be much more resourceful and… innovative, if you will. You have to come up with clever ways to still get what you need, even if it's without your boss's approval. For example, if your boss claims they cannot afford to pay for a new laptop, you can make sure your current laptop cannot do any work whatsoever, and leave your boss with no choice but to approve a new one.

Or, if you think you can benefit from some training paid by the company, you have to find clever ways to ensure you get what you're after, which is exactly what the employee below did.

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  • The boss below constantly denied their employee's request for in-house training that would cost the company a mere $1500. All while she traveled on company dime to seminars and conferences. 

    This led the employee to go over their boss's head and ensure they got what they asked for, and more. Keep scrolling to read how they pulled that off. 

  • ONE LUNDRED DU UNY M.B.A.
    via zimmytws's Images

  • "Thanks for my master’s degree!"

    I used to work for a manager who was just terrible. All she was good for was approving time off.
    via reddgrrl
  • She spent most of her work time planning her vacations, delegating her actual work, and taking credit for her employees work. And she would
    via reddgrrl
  • travel on the company dime to seminars and conferences and come back with no work related information to share but tons of stories about her vacation... I mean...her work trip.
    via reddgrrl
  • She also did not believe in developing her staff. Opportunity for additional training, education, or certifications? Not for us. But she would go out of
    via reddgrrl
  • her way to take those opportunities for herself. And then give up on them as soon as she realized she would have to do the work.
    via reddgrrl
  • I had requested some in- house training to that would have opened up some career opportunities for me and she kept making excuses for why I
    via reddgrrl
  • couldn't get the trainings... it's not in the budget, we can't spare you, etc. Because she was my manager, it was completely up to her to approve it.
    via reddgrrl
  • Well the training was $1500. And it included the tuition, the books, and the certification testing. I finally gave up on asking and decided to apply to a
    via reddgrrl
  • graduate program in a related field to the training I wanted. Bc tuition reimbursement was a company benefit and didn't require manager approval, I got accepted,
    via reddgrrl
  • and submitted my tuition reimbursement to the company for the following 2 years. In the end, the company ended up paying for my
    via reddgrrl
  • graduate degree to the tune of 12k. All becuase mypy boss wouldn't approve in-house training for $1500.
    via reddgrrl
  • Cheezburger Image 10471622144
    via studioroman

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • Bawkalor Manglement will almost always step over a dollar to pick up a dime. Glad you got your degree.
    via Bawkalor
  • Itchy Appeal_9020 Not excusing your manager, but I could see something like that happening at my company. Actually, I would encourage employees to take advantage of the corporate
    via Itchy_Appeal_9020
  • benefits. I often don't have room in my baseline budget for my employees to take training, but the cost of enterprise-wide programs doesn't hit my budget at all.
    via Itchy_Appeal_9020
  • III_Industry6452 I love this! Not only did you cost them a lot more, you have a degree that could be useful other places too.
    via III_Industry6452
  • butterfly-garden You mastered the art of malicious compliance to the highest degree!
    via butterfly-garden
  • Lucky Flamingo Your degree is portable, and frankly more valuable than in org training. Congratulations on your achievement!
    via Lucky_Flamingo
  • Aussie_Potato They want us staff take the freebie webinars and coursera courses while they do the week-long overseas executive education courses.
    via Aussie_Potato
  • Coolbeanschilly It's amazing how quickly things get done once the middle manglement gets removed.
    via Coolbeanschilly

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Tags

degree boss workplace-stories employee manager job malicious compliance tales-from-the-workplace reddit story ceo overworked-employees workplace Reddit company malicious compliance reddit money
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