TightwadsThere's saving money, and there's being tight: saving money at the expense of other people, or simply for the miserly hell of it.
Tell us about measures that go beyond simple belt tightening into the realms of Mr Scrooge.
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chthonic, Thu 23 Oct 2008, 13:58)
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A bit off-topic but attempted tightwaddery.....may WELL come back to bite you if the Captain's involved.
I used to take regular business trips to the former Eastern bloc countries and I had not one problem with expense claims that were totalled in Dollars, Ukrainian Grivna (sp?), Bulgarian Lev. Sterling and Romanian Leu, all one one claim. Never had a single query until I was given a corporate Gold card by the company as part of a promotion to senior management. I think the £35,000.00 limit made a few people in accounts twitchy, so they started to nitpick every little thing, which pissed me off mightily.
I appealed to the owner of the company who was also my only line manager and he agreed to approve my expenses personally, overriding the accounts bods.
It came to pass that the very next trip was with the aforementioned owner to some suppliers in the Ukraine and Bulgaria. Every time we went out "entertaining" the boss would have me pay on my company's gold card, as if to say "Look guys, even our STAFF have gold cards". The trip was very successful and many debauched nights out were had. We came home, tired but happy. I entered my expense claim and personally submitted it to the boss.
Who went purple.
"THREE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS AT THE SOFIA SHERATON!?"
"IN ONE FUCKING NIGHT!!!??"
"WHAT THE HOLY FUCK WERE YOU DOING!?"
At the time I didn't drink when abroad so I had a very clear recollection of the particular evening. He signed it off like a lamb once I'd mentioned the 150 year-old brandies he'd been buying rounds of for the three hookers he'd had in tow. Not to mention the extra hotel bill for the larger suite that he'd needed to "entertain" his new friends.
Never had a peep from him after that, not even for some VERY dodgy claims from a trip to Russia.
But that's another story...............
(, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 16:30, 3 replies)
Ukranian CashIf I remember correctly it's Hrivna, pronounced "Brivna".
Great country if you want to obfuscate expenses (after all, hardly anyone in Europe can make sense of cyrillics).
(, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 17:05, closed)
Da!All the receipts are in Cyrillic...unintelligible, which is a definite bonus though it is pretty hard to spend that much money . We took 20 people out (food drinks entertainment etc) and barely reached that amount.
Though spending more in a night than the majority of the country earn in a year troubles my conscience. I am by no means tight, I just used to feel guilty.
(, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 17:58, closed)
Yep it's not easy......To spend that kind of money in Bulgaria, unless it's at the Sheraton. It's the only hotel I've ever stayed at that has a lap-dancing bar in the basement! The drinks are extortionate by most standards but astronomically expensive by Bulgarian standards.
I really liked the place but, then again, someone else was paying!
*edit*
The hotel Rus in Kiev has one too as I recall.
(, Wed 29 Oct 2008, 9:17, closed)
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