Employee forced to commute 200 miles a day is denied a promotion, quits and retroactively demands reimbursement for commute: 'In the end, [it] amounted to well over $21,000'

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Mar 7, 2025 8:00 AM EST

Let this story serve as a reminder that your boss does not necessarily have your back. Even if they try to rationalize a decision that actively inconveniences you, they may very well reframe their decision-making by making it seem like it's beneficial for you when it is anything but.

Always be on the lookout for these red flags because you might miss them in your own self-rationalizing as you try to justify why the poor treatment you might be receiving is worth it. Don't be fooled because if they get away with inconveniencing you once, they will surely try to do it again and again!

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    "Boss lied to manipulate me into commuting 200 miles a day for 2 years"
    via Unsplash+ (Curated Lifestyle)

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

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    A few years ago, I worked at a big retail company and had for many years. Eventually I went through enough gradschool education to get my license to work at a higher level. Much more pay, more job satisfaction, more responsibilities, fancy title, but the job market was rough. I stayed on with my company to work in a 'floater' position, where I would cover a large area and work at all the stores within that area on a rotating but irregular basis. Eventually I wanted to get a staff position, where
    via ClubWag
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    have a single store assigned. The area was huge, the furthest store being over a 100 miles from my home, and that is exactly where I was assigned to train for the new role.
    via ClubWag
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    It was a rough store, folks in my position were robbed and a ted at gu int, neighborhood was very unfriendly, volume at the store was among the highest in the state. Staff turnover was, as you might expect, extreme.
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    Well, after training I wasn't really being scheduled to float to other stores. Once a month, at most. I asked to be scheduled a little more diversely, since most of the stores in my area were much closer to my home and didn't require 4 hours of driving a day. Bossman told me that I was the only floater experienced enough to handle that store. I didn't buy it, but what can you do right? Well a colleague told me about the mileage reimbursement policy. Floaters working at a store more than 50 miles
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    over that 50 miles each way, can even include meals. So I filled a few of these out and sent them to my boss to sign. He didn't quite refuse, but he never actually signed and filed them. I suspect as soon as I left his office at our district center he tossed them out. Bossman tells me later that they must be "lost in the system." Eventually the same colleague showed me how to fax those same forms to accounts payable, bypassing the district bossman. So I started doing just that.
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    One day Bossman calls me in a panic. He wants to stop my filing the forms. I ask to be floated closer to home, but he won't budge. He needs me at that miserable store. He promises me he'll make me a staff role at that store if I promise to stop faxing those forms. Staff roles are a promotion and usually come with better pay and a few other little conveniences, so I agree. Bossman says there won't be a paybump right away, but that it'll come down the road. That never happened.
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    2 years later the situation at the store has become too toxic for even me. I ask to step down from the staff position to be a floater again and be allowed to float to other stores. Bossman says that I am already a floater, never was in a staff position, but that he can't let me work at other stores because it's better for me and the customers if I stay there for "familiarity." 'Floaters' do not get scheduled to stores exclusively, so I am being singled out because they are still desperate to cov
    via ClubWag
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    I'm livid, so I start looking. It took me months, but eventually I found an opportunity to make my dream career transition. I put in my formal notice and that's when the fun started.
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    Remember that whole mileage reimbursement policy? Well I kept meticulous track of all my shifts, and there is no statute of limitations baked into the policy, so I started filling out those reimbursement forms to retroactively cover every single shift from the past 2 odd years.
    via ClubWag
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    I skipped the meal part since I didn't want to go through all that effort of finding receipts. I had a friendly store manager sign off on them, and I started sending them to Accounts Payable directly again.
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    I didn't fax them all in at once, but for each shift in my final 2 weeks I faxed a few dozen in (we still have fax machines in that line of work, believe it or not) I figured, what do I have to lose? Worst case scenario, Accounts Payable declines the forms.
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    INVOICE 20000 O 00 TAX &
    via Unsplash+ (Behnam Norouzi)

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

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    On my last few shifts I started getting the checks from accounts payable. Not added to my paycheck but sent to me directly. Mileage reimbursements are non- taxable income, so this was all tax-free money coming to me.
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    It must have taken a while for the charges to show up on a balance sheet, because a few weeks after my final paycheck I got a call from my now former Bossman. He wasn't happy. He got some big loss- prevention manager involved and together they started saying I was breaking some rule by requesting the payments. They specifically claimed I was ineligible because I agreed I wouldn't be eligible in a staff position. They then threatened legal action against me if I didn't remit the full amounts back
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    But I had the email chain from when Bossman said I was never staff, and always a floater. I politely referenced that email chain before letting them know firmly that because I was lied to, our prior agreement didn't apply and I was fully eligible all along.
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    Corporate policy, as confirmed by HR, agreed with me, so I let them know I wasn't returning a single penny. In the end the reimbursements amounted to well over $21,000 USD, and I transitioned into my dream job. I
    via ClubWag
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    could say that I would trade that money back for the time I lost commuting to that miserable store (4 hours every shift), but all that pressure motivated me to making the best career move of my life.
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    The great satisfaction of not only professionally surpassing my old boss, but getting to tell him that his lies cost him way more on the way out is almost priceless.
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    I also shared my story and method with MANY colleagues who were being told wrongly by the Bossman that they didn't qualify for this policy.
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    Tl;dr: Boss lied to manipulate me into commuting 200 miles a day for 2 years without policy allowed reimbursements. I found out and quit for my dream job/career then filed reimbursement retroactively for a total of $21,000 USD
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    EDIT 1: Thank you all for the support and comments. As many of you correctly guessed, I was working as a community pharmacist. I do want to clarify that most of my coworkers (Technicians, Pharmacists, Front-end staff) and customers/patients were amazing people. Between them and my subscription to Audible with a long list of books I always wanted to read, it made the situation such that I could tolerate that commute for all that time. The job market for retail pharmacy was/is also very rough and
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    this and other ways and that also endangers patient care not to mention staff mental health. I spent more than 10 months searching before I found an opportunity and that involved me leaving the profession entirely. The District Manager "Bossman" and the store General Manager (who was fully complicit in the lie) are both still working for the company, last I saw.
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    The Moral of the story: Please understand your company policies and ignore any verbal agreements or HR-unsupported decrees otherwise. And be kind to your pharmacy staff, the job and companies are not always kind to them.
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    Techgruber Not to this degree, but I've had to deal with onsite managers lying to me about wages and benefits as well. Sometimes it was to make their own budgets look good. Other times, it just seemed to be a personal quirk that they had to grind down people under them.
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    Barflyerdammit · I worked at a company where Director level jobs got an extra week of vacation, but weren't eligible for annual bonuses. I argued all the way up to C Level that I should get the extra vacation. They argued that my title was director but wasn't really a director (even though I had the second largest team). So, I asked for the annual bonus instead. They said that Directors didn't get bonuses.
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  • Here, we have a “floater” at a retail company who had to commute over 200 miles every day for two years with the dangling carrot of a promotion to a full-time staff position. As you might expect, that promotion never exactly happened, but this dude found a way to get back at his boss. He found out from a fellow coworker that any commute that exceeded 50 miles would be covered as long as he submitted the proper request. This, of course, ended up making his manager look pretty awful, given that now the company had to pay this guy back over $21,000.

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    8 weeks later, I was gone after working there for 5 years. No one else in that job since has lasted more than a year. Bet that week of vacation is looking mighty cheap compared to the chaos that's been there since.
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    sawskooh. Remember: A promotion without a raise IS NOT A PROMOTION.
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boss workplace-stories employee work stories toxic-workplace job work i quit satisfying quitting story overworked-employees Horrible Bosses company quitting toxic-work-environment
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