Comment by ragall
17 days ago
It also depends on your legal system and how much discretion it allows managers. Let me give you an example: my startup used to allow people to expense a car rental when travelling to HQ in the Bay Area, which was in general cheaper than Ubering everywhere (a daily Corolla is cheaper than two Uber rides per day unless the hotel is extremely close to the office). Some people decided to abuse that, fly in on a Saturday, rent a rather expensive car, drive the whole day around, then expense all that.
After someone noticed this was happening, the CEO decided to forbid expensing car rentals, instead of having to come up with a very detailed policy. The thing is that in my home country, the abusers' managers would have been allowed to simply deny the reimbursement on discretion, on grounds that those joy rides were unreasonable, which would easily hold in court (where a plaintiff would be automatically forced to pay the defender's attorney fees too). But due to the highly litigious US legal system, a CEO can't allow that and companies must have extremely detailed policies, otherwise they risk very costly lawsuits where even if they win they'd lose a lot of money.
Your rental car example reminds me of my own "pizza dinner for the team" example. A company I used to work for would order pizza on Thursdays for folks who were working late. No paperwork, no expenses, no manager approval--at 7PM on Thursday, 5-6 boxes of pizza would show up in the break room, and people would spend a little more time at work hacking away. Win win. As the company grew, of course, people being idiots, the free pizza got abused. People would walk into the break room at 7:01, take an entire box, and leave the office. So, sure enough, free pizza night ended.
Because it's easier to just forbid than eat the cost or (heaven forbid!) talk to people.
How much was this pizza costing the company? Pennies in the grand scheme of things. How much were the rental cars costing? Pennies. Probably a rounding error in even the smallest department's budget. You can afford to hire an army of engineers making $100K each, but $10 pizza is where you draw the line? $100 rental cars? Really???
It’s not about the money, it’s about power and control.
Litigation can be one reason, but I think the more likely reason is that people want to avoid confrontation.
Could you tell the person taking the pizza that that is inappropriate behavior? Sure. But that is confrontational. The people who might set the boundary are worried both about how they will appear to others (am I being a bully?) AND about the possible repurcissions (is the guy I'm telling off going to yell at me or threaten me?)
Its far easier to just stop buying the pizza.
[dead]
> You can afford to hire an army of engineers making $100K each, but $10 pizza is where you draw the line? $100 rental cars? Really???
If anything it's a double loss. The guys stealing pizza are telling you who they are. Perfect for a paperwork trail to being let go.
If I ran a company like that (I'm very glad I don't; it would stress me out and I'd hate it), I would immediately fire anyone who did something like that. Anyone who would so blatantly steal a communal resource from their peers is an untrustworthy scumbag. Why would I trust them with integral parts of my business if I can't even trust them to not walk away with $20 worth of shared pizza?