Traveling employee had an arrangement for the money he gets for the trip, if any funds were not spent, they have to give it back: ‘I get the standard letter through internal mail saying that my expenses are out by 29 pennies’

Doing all that for pennies is definitely a choice.

Being a traveling employee must be really nice. Getting to visit different places as part of your job, even if it is for a couple of hours, sounds incredibly nice. There are quite some jobs that have that perk; they assign employees to travel around for business purposes. For that, they provide a hotel and money for food and other expenses. The way they manage it is very different depending on the company. Some use a company credit card to pay for everything; others spend their own money and then get paid back; others receive money first. And they show the tickets to show how much they used. In this case, the methodology is a mixture: the employee receives money for the trip beforehand, but if they need more, they have to wait to show the tickets and get it. If they used less, then they give it back when they come back from the trip. 

The person in this story had too many trips altogether, so they were using the system to their advantage. They weren’t giving back what was left from the trip after every single one; they just waited till they had done all of them to check if they were owed or had over the amount of money expected. What they were doing isn’t wrong at all; it’s just the easiest and more proactive way of handling the trip’s money. The problem relies on the fact that, after all the trips, the company realized that the amount of money given to the employee for all the trips was more than what they actually spent. You might think from that sentence that it is over $100 more, but no, only 29 pennies more. Now, the way the employee managed the situation is excellent. But what would you have done in this case? Would you have thought of a clever idea like they did to avoid it happening again? Some advisor said they would have started a payment plan for several months; that would have also been hilarious. I would have loved to see the face of the finance department when they received the pennies.