I shared this over at r/maliciouscompliance but figured it was also appropriate here too.
A few years ago, I worked at a big retail company and had for many years. Eventually I went through enough gradschool education to get my license to work at a higher level. Much more pay, more job satisfaction, more responsibilities, fancy title, but the job market was rough. I stayed on with my company to work in a ‘floater’ position, where I would cover a large area and work at all the stores within that area on a rotating but irregular basis. Eventually I wanted to get a staff position, where I have a single store assigned. The area was huge, the furthest store being over a 100 miles from my home, and that is exactly where I was assigned to train for the new role.
It was a rough store, folks in my position were robbed and assaulted at gunpoint, neighborhood was very unfriendly, volume at the store was among the highest in the state. Staff turnover was, as you might expect, extreme.
Well, after training I wasn’t really being scheduled to float to other stores. Once a month, at most. I asked to be scheduled a little more diversely, since most of the stores in my area were much closer to my home and didn’t require 4 hours of driving a day. Bossman told me that I was the only floater experienced enough to handle that store. I didn’t buy it, but what can you do right? Well a colleague told me about the mileage reimbursement policy. Floaters working at a store more than 50 miles from home can file for reimbursement of mileage over that 50 miles each way, can even include meals. So I filled a few of these out and sent them to my boss to sign. He didn’t quite refuse, but he never actually signed and filed them. I suspect as soon as I left his office at our district center he tossed them out. Bossman tells me later that they must be “lost in the system.” Eventually the same colleague showed me how to fax those same forms to accounts payable, bypassing the district bossman. So I started doing just that.
One day Bossman calls me in a panic. He wants to stop my filing the forms. I ask to be floated closer to home, but he won’t budge. He needs me at that miserable store. He promises me he’ll make me a staff role at that store if I promise to stop faxing those forms. Staff roles are a promotion and usually come with better pay and a few other little conveniences, so I agree. Bossman says there won’t be a paybump right away, but that it’ll come down the road. That never happened.
2 years later the situation at the store has become too toxic for even me. I ask to step down from the staff position to be a floater again and be allowed to float to other stores. Bossman says that I am already a floater, never was in a staff position, but that he can’t let me work at other stores because it’s better for me and the customers if I stay there for “familiarity.” ‘Floaters’ do not get scheduled to stores exclusively, so I am being singled out because they are still desperate to cover that dump of a store.
I’m livid, so I start looking. It took me months, but eventually I found an opportunity to make my dream career transition.
I put in my formal notice and that’s when the fun started.
Remember that whole mileage reimbursement policy? Well I kept meticulous track of all my shifts, and there is no statute of limitations baked into the policy, so I started filling out those reimbursement forms to retroactively cover every single shift from the past 2 odd years.
I skipped the meal part since I didn’t want to go through all that effort of finding receipts. I had a friendly store manager sign off on them, and I started sending them to Accounts Payable directly again.
I didn’t fax them all in at once, but for each shift in my final 2 weeks I faxed a few dozen in (we still have fax machines in that line of work, believe it or not) I figured, what do I have to lose? Worst case scenario, Accounts Payable declines the forms.
On my last few shifts I started getting the checks from accounts payable. Not added to my paycheck but sent to me directly. Mileage reimbursements are non-taxable income, so this was all tax-free money coming to me.
It must have taken a while for the charges to show up on a balance sheet, because a few weeks after my final paycheck I got a call from my now former Bossman. He wasn’t happy. He got some big loss-prevention manager involved and together they started saying I was breaking some rule by requesting the payments. They specifically claimed I was ineligible because I agreed I wouldn’t be eligible in a staff position. They then threatened legal action against me if I didn’t remit the full amounts back that same week.
But I had the email chain from when Bossman said I was never staff, and always a floater. I politely referenced that email chain before letting them know firmly that because I was lied to, our prior agreement didn’t apply and I was fully eligible all along. Corporate policy, as confirmed by HR, agreed with me, so I let them know I wasn’t returning a single penny.
In the end the reimbursements amounted to well over $21,000 USD, and I transitioned into my dream job. I could say that I would trade that money back for the time I lost commuting to that miserable store (4 hours every shift), but all that pressure motivated me to making the best career move of my life.
The great satisfaction of not only professionally surpassing my old boss, but getting to tell him that his lies cost him way more on the way out is almost priceless.
I also shared my story and method with MANY colleagues who were being told wrongly by the Bossman that they didn't qualify for this policy.
Tl;dr: Boss lied to manipulate me into commuting 200 miles a day for 2 years without policy allowed reimbursements. I found out and quit then filed reimbursement retroactively for a total of $21,000 USD and a very satisfying 'screw you.'