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What does your place count as an expense?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by writerdownsouth, Sep 3, 2013.

  1. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    About time here for the apocryphal (perhaps) story about the writer who traveled to cover an event and had his coat stolen from the press box. It was coat-wearing weather, so he bought one and filed for it on his expense report once he returned to home base.

    Editor throws it back at him and says, we're not buying you a coat. That's on you.

    So writer redoes his expense report and resubmits it, with no coat listed but all other figures "adjusted" slightly higher. He attaches a note for his boss that reads: "Find the coat."
     
  2. TwoGloves

    TwoGloves Well-Known Member

    Well, we're not supposed to get reimbursed for alcohol. But you know as well as I do there are ways around it! (I once put down an $8 in-room move -- Groundhog Day -- and my boss wouldn't approve it despite the fact I worked about 16 hours including driving and covered four baseball/softball games. I made up for it the next month.)
     
  3. Smasher_Sloan

    Smasher_Sloan Active Member

    Itemized, of course.
     
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Uh no they weren't.

    Unless they had some evidence (i.e. your admission) you locked the keys in the car on purpose or through blatant and flagrant disregard for normal safe operating procedures, they get to fucking pay for it.

    They're a billion-dollar corporation (or a hell of a lot closer to it than you are). Let 'em write the check.

    If a company sends human beings out to do its work, at times those human beings will make human mistakes. Unless those mistakes were the result of criminal recklessness, the company needs to write them off as acts of god.
     
  5. boundforboston

    boundforboston Well-Known Member

    Agreed -- what if you get lost while driving and go an extra 15 miles? Shouldn't that mileage be included?
     
  6. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    Not anywhere I've worked. You get the mileage that comes up on a maps.google.com search for the directions, not the mileage you actually drove.
     
  7. flexmaster33

    flexmaster33 Well-Known Member

    Expenses are typically mileage (not gas), parking and maybe the occasional lunch for a staff meeting/interview.

    I have swung the hotel thing once in a long while, but it's always been during playoffs and when I'm traveling somewhere that's going to keep me busy. A soccer game in town, along with the state track meet, etc. And if I'm staying a night or two, I can count on covering various assignments for others in our chain of papers. A fair trade in my mind.

    But yes, those 2 a.m. arrival times after a long road trip can be rough.
     
  8. fossywriter8

    fossywriter8 Well-Known Member

    I was once reimbursed for a tire after a dog bit through it.
    The publisher never even blinked at the request.
     
  9. SoCalDude

    SoCalDude Active Member

    Paper I used to work for had the strictest expense policy I've ever heard of. Machine-generated receipt required for anything over $5 ... yes, $5. So tearing off the bottom of a restaurant check was no good. Taxis didn't have machine-generated receipts, so that was the only exception. There were a lot of entries of $4.99 Carl's Jr. or Burger King on the days when I ate press box food.
    I got roped into an expensive dinner once in Seattle, overdid the expense account and got talked to, but they paid that one.
    The only time I got anything turned down was when I was on a roadie and I was sicker than hell. I bought some cold medicine, throat lozenges, stuff like that, and it was rejected.
     
  10. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    We're professionals. We should not be forced to stay in a Motel 6 or a Super 8 to save the company 30-40 bucks. I tend to stay at the lower-level Marriott properties (Fairfield, Springhill, etc.) and that seems to work well for my company. I get the peace of mind of knowing what I'm getting into -- clean room, usually a decent fitness room, sometimes free breakfast, free internet, safe part of town, etc. I usually spend somewhere between $90-$120 a night for a room. If there's some sort of extenuating circumstance -- i.e. staying in an expensive city like Boston or Miami -- I'll talk to the ME about it first just to let them know why I'm staying at a certain place. In Boston, I stayed right next to a T stop so I didn't need to rent a car for the trip. So the more expensive hotel worked out that way.

    Alcohol is not allowed. Old company used to allow one drink with dinner but this one allows nothing. That's fine. I just ask for separate tabs with dinner on one and booze on the other.
     
  11. PaperDoll

    PaperDoll Well-Known Member

    My employer switched from a chart that delineated mileage from the office to most significant destinations (including every high school in the coverage area) to an odometer-based model. We now get whatever our odometer says from our departure point -- be that home, office, or somewhere else entirely -- to the assignment and then to some end point, usually the office.

    I don't live in the coverage area, so I wind up with extra miles to most assignments -- plus even more when I seemingly inevitably get lost.
     
  12. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    One place I worked had a policy of receipts for ALL MEALS. Goodbye, off-night at the movies with popcorn counting as "dinner" (one glance at theater receipt and they considered it personal entertainment not to be reimbursed).

    So instead of some $15 "dinners" being filed for, they were getting hit with actual $28 room-service meals, whether you actually ate them or not. The dumb-ass policy encouraged ordering three meals a day and letting one or two sit on the floor if you weren't hungry, since you were entitled to file for them, rather than spending less to eat/do what you wanted. Their distrustful ways made them think they were somehow ahead even when they clearly wound up way behind.
     
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