Allowance, it's not just for the kids anymore

So, I know, I haven’t posted in over a month. I apologize. Deprived reader, I really do apologize. But let’s put these differences past us and get on the post, shall we? Needless to say my absence is directly correlated to a spike in work hours, so let’s talk about something that suffices to brighten my workday: the meal allowance.

It is standard, at least for any bank that actually wants to keep its workforce, for employees to receive a $30 allowance each night for dinner. Technically, this allowance is contingent on the following stipulations: 1) The meal is ordered after 7PM (ensuring that only true “team players” partake); 2) it is ordered to-go; 3) it is consumed in the office. Pretty straightforward, right? Pretty sweet, right?

Well, Analysts don’t think so. I’m sure most people, given a solid base in reality, would be perfectly happy following the rules and taking the free food. After all, $30 a night, assuming 260 work days a years, is an extra $7,800 in your bank account. Let’s say you work half your weekends, and spend $30 on dinner and $10 on lunch, now that’s $9,880 in your account. Now, it’s unfair to say that it effectively bumps your salary up $10K (unless you were going to spend $30 a night on food anyway…), but still, it’s no chump change.

So what, exactly, are the gripes that Analysts have with this system? Here they are: 1) If you spend more than 50% of your time in the office, and can get out and spend 45 minutes at dinner, you’re going to do that; getting food to-go and eating in your cube every night fucking sucks; 2) after 6 months, the restaurants in the area start to suck (remember in college when we swore the chef at 592 Mayfield was the end-all-be-all of college cuisine, and then got sick of it 4 months later?); and 3) Analysts are generally disgruntled and we tend complain about things for the hell of it.

Moreover, the system is complicated by the presence of loopholes: 1) We can use this dinner allowance however we choose, including purchasing items from grocery stores; and 2) We don’t need to provide itemized receipts to show what we’ve purchased at restaurants (unfortunately we have to do this at grocery stores).

So when you combine these loopholes with the general latent frustrations of Analysts, it becomes a game of what you can slip through the system and get reimbursed by your company. Alcohol at dinner? That’s easy. Borrowing someone else’s expense code if you exceed $30? Standard. Grocery shopping to stock up the home fridge? Well, that’s potentially creative, but it depends on what you purchase; snack foods, soda and other ready consumables are no big deal; produce, poultry, meat and seafood are bit more creative but still easy to get reimbursed; toilet paper, hair gel and toothpaste – now we’re talking!

But the dinner allowance goes beyond dinner. For example, let’s say you turn in a receipt that has a time stamp for Saturday at 12:20AM for a place called Suite 181. Now, who’s to say Suite 181 isn’t the restaurant you went to after working your ass off all Friday night? Who’s to say that Suite 181 is a club? If you don’t turn in a receipt that itemizes the 6 red bull vodkas you bought, who’s to know that you didn’t feast upon a dinner of more than just carbohydrates and ethanol?

Of course, invariably the office managers who approve these receipts for reimbursement start to catch on more and more. Of course, I haven’t seen an office manager last more than 6 months here, so there’s always new blood to take advantage of.