Detour de Force

This story reminded me of when I was not allowed to claim expenses for visiting another workplace. (Note: I’ve changed the locations, but they’re still representative for the purposes of the story.)

I was living in Oxford and commuting each day by train plus tube to an office in Trafalgar Square in London. Then my duties changed, and I was required to visit a satellite office in Birmingham on Fridays. This wasn’t a problem at all, as there was a direct train from Oxford to Birmingham, just in the opposite direction.

After my first visit to Birmingham, I put in an expenses claim for my return train ticket from Oxford to Birmingham. HR turned down my claim on the grounds that I was travelling from home to work, and the company did not pay home-to-work commuting costs.

I protested, pointing out that visiting Birmingham was now a work requirement and that my normal place of work was the London office. But HR wouldn’t budge, using the phrase “travelling is part of the job”, and it looked like I’d be stuck with paying for an expensive ticket to Birmingham every Friday. I asked my line manager if he could get HR to see sense, but he didn’t want to take it up on my behalf (I suspect he was wary of getting on the wrong side of HR).

Then I remembered I had previously successfully claimed travel expenses for journeys from the London office to Birmingham for meetings. So, the following week I commuted from Oxford to the London office as normal, took my coat off, hung around doing nothing for ten minutes, then put my coat on again and set off for Birmingham. And after spending just two to three hours in Birmingham, I’d return to the London office, just in time to then commute home to Oxford.

I put in my expenses claim for my London to Birmingham ticket, and HR approved it! This carried on for two or three months until higher management noticed I was hardly there in Birmingham, and I explained the expenses problem. They ordered HR to accept my Oxford to Birmingham train expenses forthwith, so from then on, I was able to do a full day’s work on Fridays.