Employee goes $1.87 over lunch budget and HR denies reimbursement, so he digs up $6K in petty expenses just to prove a point: 'Never be team player when it comes reimbursement'

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Isabella Penn
Jun 1, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

Some employees are lucky enough to work for companies that offer generous reimbursement policies, including lunch stipends, mileage reimbursements, and even perks like work-from-home equipment or home office spending allowances. Honestly, that sounds like a dream. Meanwhile, plenty of people are stuck fronting the bill for things that should be covered, like driving across town for a meeting or buying basic office supplies when the company printer runs dry.

But then there's the other extreme: employees who take advantage of every loophole, expensing things like artisanal water or a $15 "client meeting" that's suspiciously just brunch with their roommate. Reimbursement policies can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how petty people are willing to get, which brings us to today's story.

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  • One employee tried to be a team player and not expense his employer for minuscule charges... until HR denied his expense report over a $1.87 lunch overage. Cue the petty revenge.

  • Lib.
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

  • "You're gonna reject my lunch expense for being less than $2 over? Time to go back and claim absolutely everything I've neglected, and then some."

    So I started working in a sort of consulting role about 6 months ago, and there's tons of stuff we can expense when we're out at the client's location. However, I'm pretty lazy about all that, so I usually don't bother. I
    via Talonis
  • get it, stuff adds up, but HR, my managers, and the partners have all been reminding us to keep costs down, and I wanted to be a team player. Plus, to me in general, it just never felt necessary to expense like $3 in mileage.
    via Talonis
  • One of the things I do regularly expense is we have a daily $25 allowance for lunch. Well, a couple months ago, I decided to grab an extra bottle of water with my lunch, and whoops, the total came out to $26.87.
    via Talonis
  • When I submitted my expenses, HR sent back my entire expense report asking me to fix $1.87 on a $2,000ish expense report. Well guess what. All those expenses I wasn't
    via Talonis
  • expensing before because I didn't feel like they were worth my time? You better bet they're all worth it now. I went back through my calendar, on company time mind you, and I claimed every little bit of mileage I could,
    via Talonis
  • going all the way back to my third week at the firm when I started going out to clients. I went through the handbook as well, scouring it for things I could expense. Suddenly, I'm claiming all the
    via Talonis
  • business supplies | purchased. I'm claiming all the Starbucks runs I thought were a personal expense. Phone line, business cards, laptop accessories, a portable scanner/printer, ChatGPT
    via Talonis
  • subscription, MS Office for my home computer, I went on a shopping spree, making sure of course, to stay within my company's policy on everything. The funnest one is, we're allowed to expense
    via Talonis
  • parking fees at a client's office. The client I've been working with, I've been there every day for about 3 months now. The all- day parking rate is $30/day, but a monthly parking pass is $210.
    via Talonis
  • Being a smart consumer, I bought the monthly pass and that was all I originally expensed. But once my expense report got bounced back I removed the monthly passes and put in a $30 parking charge for every
    via Talonis
  • Lobby Lift Lobby 電梯大
    via Catgirlmutant For Unsplash+
  • day I've been there. So instead of a $630 expense for the last 3 months, it's suddenly a $1,980 expense, of which I'm picking up $1,350 of arbitrage for myself. I feel so petty, but also it
    via Talonis
  • feels amazing seeing a roughly $6,000 expense report get paid out to my checking account after a $2,000 report got bounced back for an overage of less than two dollars. Hope it was worth it, you cheap
    via Talonis

  • Racking up that amount of expenses after only being at the company for six months is pretty bold. Will he keep his job? We may not know for now, but the comment section seems to have some opinions. 

  • tiggers_blood Good! Use the letter of the law. Never be a "team player" when it comes to reimbursement. F that. I don't get it at all.
    via tiggers_blood
  • stdbc02 I appreciate the compliance but in a lot of cases, it is a low-level HR employee verifying expense reports follow company policy.
    via stdbc02
  • However, you should certainly be expensing all these things in the first place. Policy should change if it doesn't meet company expectations.
    via stdbc02
  • RedDazzlr They were so busy flicking a flea that they didn't pay attention to the camel that they were sitting next to.
    via RedDazzlr
  • YupNopeWelp Usually, I enjoy the stories in this sub, and don't comment, but I'm afraid you're going to maliciously comply yourself right out of a job.
    via YupNopeWelp
  • TrashPanda NotACat Fix the "accidental error" on the parking before it's too late. But yeah, claim every single penny that you can legitimately claim.
    via TrashPandaNotACat
  • randumpotato You were covering ~$6000 in legitimate business expenses out-of-pocket for your company? This post. makes you sound like a sucker bro, I won't lie. แบบ
    via randumpotato
  • OLIVEmutt I work at a consulting firm and the lowly finance person who has to process your expenses literally doesn't give a sh. The
    via OLIVEmutt
  • company has rules. They follow the rules. You should have been expensing those other things anyway per company policy. That "arbitrage" is actually expense fraud though. So
    via OLIVEmutt
  • good luck with that one. If you get caught, you will get fired and possibly owe the company money.
    via OLIVEmutt

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reimbursement worker employee hr job expenses malicious compliance work petty revenge human resources workplace allowance company funny karma
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