This has been an interesting year. We started it, all working from our home offices and waiting for our vaccines to get to some semblance of normalcy. As we close out 2021, offices are starting to reopen, and business travel is finally starting back up (although time will tell what kind of treats omicron has in store for us).
Regardless of what kind of year we’re in, some things never change. And one of those things is that people keep submitting some really crazy expenses. Whether it’s for amounts so small you wonder why they bothered, big-ticket items that make you admire the submitter’s chutzpah, or just downright weird, 2021 didn’t disappoint.
Here’s just a small sample:
Straight from the horse’s mouth
You couldn’t make this one up if you tried. One horse-owning senior executive was worried that their equine friend would suffer from separation anxiety while he was away, so he spent a cool $3,750 on a pet-sitter (heck, I’d do it for half that!). While his company wasn’t willing to reimburse the full amount, they did give him $1,250, which is frankly a pretty good outcome.
Heading off to Europe?
Whenever a coworker leaves, there’s always a good opportunity for a gag gift to remind them how much their team … loved them. One person was the lucky recipient of a pair of $13.25 Speedos. The most intriguing part of this is wondering what the backstory could be. Were they leaving for a new position in Europe, where the more slender forms of swimwear are far more commonplace? One has to just hope that they didn’t model them at the going away party, or a dubious expense reimbursement could be the least of that team’s HR worries.
Do sweat the small stuff
Three of our top 10 expenses are for less than a dollar - combined! In the days of unlimited call plans for most mobile phones, you have to wonder how someone was able to get charged 14 cents for a long-distance call. You also have to wonder how long they had to read through pages and pages of the phone bill before finding the charge!
Our second penny pincher submitted 31 cents for accidentally using their personal card instead of the corporate card for topping off the gas tank. Not only is that seemingly more work than it’s worth, but I’m also curious to know why they felt the need to top it off in the first place. Here in California, we’re paying almost $5 per gallon, so by my reckoning, that’s less than a soda can’s worth of gas.
Our last Scrooge spent a princely 53 cents on … a single, solitary nail. This was needed to complete an office construction project.
You can view the full list of 2021’s craziest expenses here. And whether your team’s expenses are as wild as these or the more mundane meals, flights, and hotels, life is a lot easier with an expense automation solution. Team members can submit their expenses in seconds, and your finance team can let Emburse do the hard work - from auditing expense items to reimbursement - allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks.
You can find all of this year’s eye rollers and mind blowers on Emburse’s 2021 Craziest Expenses list.