Last week I filed an expense report for my recruiting trip to
Waterloo. On the same trip I renewed my TN work visa since VMware’s
bumbling immigration attorneys once again (for the second year in a
row) failed to renew the visa by mail as had always been the case with
NVIDIA. (Two hours waiting around in the INS office for fifteen
minutes of paperwork; mark my words, one way or another I’m never
doing that again.)

Yesterday I got an E-mail from EMC (VMware’s parent company) stating
that since I’d traveled to a country with VAT or GST (Goods & Services
Tax), which can be recovered by visitors from abroad, I had to
re-submit my original travel expense receipts so that EMC could
recover the tax. Fine in principle, but I’d paid maybe $20 of GST on
the entire trip. Furthermore I’d already filed my receipts with EMC’s
expense reporting system and no longer had them. Except for the hotel
receipts which I’d misplaced and anyway they were itemized on the
company credit card statement so I figured that was fine.

I pointed out to them it made no sense for me to waste an hour or so
of my time—company time—filing paperwork so they could
recover a few dollars. They insisted. I protested. They threatened to
withold expense reimbursement and suspend my expense account. I had
dark, dark thoughts about what I would do to EMC’s accountants if I
could get my hands on them. Inevitably I had to relent since there was
no way I could win on this one. $60 or so of my time, not to mention
howevermuch EMC pays their accountants on their end, to recover $20 of
taxes.

This is why I hate working for big companies.