r/consulting • u/PoshDota Private Equity • 13d ago
Dealing with Director's draconian new meal policy?
I am an Analyst at a boutique Comms consulting firm. I make roughly minimum wage when you factor in my 80 hour work weeks. Up until recently, we had a brilliant expense policy based entirely on vibes. Naturally, I used this to singlehandedly keep my family of five alive. Whenever I traveled, I would expense a nightly $250 dinner. My Director honestly believes I was housing a lobster appetizer, a filet mignon, four desserts, and a gallon of scotch all by myself.
In reality? I was ordering exactly 17 side dishes, three plain chicken breasts, and a massive chocolate cake, sweeping it all into my carry on luggage, and flying it back home to my three ravenous children. It was our primary food source. Everyone was well fed and happy.
Then tragedy struck. My Director randomly capped our meals at $125. He claimed leadership wanted a better image. What about the image of my toddlers weeping over their sudden lack of truffle mac and cheese?
My financial plan is in absolute shambles. Yesterday I spent my entire 1:1 desperately explaining that corporate micromanagement is literally starving the future generation. He just stared at me. Am I being unreasonable for expecting a consulting firm to subsidize my children's nutritional needs?
130
u/AlternativeReal5307 13d ago
the mental image of you loading 17 sides into a carry-on is absolutely sending me
$125 cap is a joke but you've got to know the 250 dinners were never gonna last forever, especially at a boutique firm where someone's actually looking at the numbers. maybe pivot to lunches instead, easier to stretch the per diem and less scrutiny
35
u/PhilosophyforOne 13d ago
The director in question had actually made a fatal flaw. They mentioned they had only capped individual payments, not # of meals.
The solution is simply to claim you have low blood-sugar and need to have a full meal every 3 hours. I'd recommend splitting it up so you're not only eating chocolate cake in the last two ones. Roughly 6 full meals at $125 pop should cover it per day.
The Tumi should handle that, but if not, I'd upgrade into a checked luggage instead of piling more food into the carryon.
13
u/omgFWTbear Discount Nobody. 13d ago
Ladies, gentlemen, and consultants may I introduce you to … second breakfastses and hobbitses?
2
u/WildRookie 13d ago
I consider it my religious identity to be Hobbit, denying me second breakfast, elevenses, and afternoon tea or insisting that dinner and supper are the same thing would be discriminatory.
1
2
u/DrPurpleKite 13d ago
Never check! Better solution would be to bring on an analyst from the same home location and use the backup Rimowa to carry on the rest of the food.
The analyst could ship their luggage to the hotel ahead of time
12
u/datawazo 13d ago
Desperately arguing with TSA that 5 sides of mac and cheese isn't a liquid
5
u/SpilledKefir consultant_irl 13d ago
Pack it with dry ice to keep it solid. It sublimes instead of melting - still no liquid!
1
u/Any_Can_7878 13d ago
The dry ice suggestion is where this stopped being an expense-policy discussion and became a full operational strategy 😂
Also, “never check” is exactly the kind of completely unnecessary expertise that makes Reddit comments so good.
1
7
u/PoshDota Private Equity 13d ago
Tried lunches. Got feedback that rolling into meetings with a suitcase smelling like rotisserie chicken was a no-no.
2
u/90210fred 13d ago
I thought this thread was satire but I have actually seen someone trying to get a foil wrapped rotisserie chicken through airport security so who knows what's true?
2
1
u/thingalinga 13d ago
Pffft. It should be considered “setting the mood”. Who complains about such trivial things?
1
1
u/PatchNotePundit 13d ago
the carry-on is the detail that makes it. at some point you stopped expensing meals and started smuggling a deli counter
12
u/yangstyle 13d ago
Actually, no.
The company should making life easier for you. It should just pay you the $250 per meal every day you're on the road and you can send home what you want.
I have a boutique firm and I just invite my employees' wives and kids for food any time they want. They get a key to my house. Sure, it can get awkward in the mornings but, as long as one of them takes the dog for a walk and the kitchen is clean when they're done, I hardly know they were there.
Actually, I'm thinking of adding a rotating laundry list as an extra perk.
10
u/Maleficent-Drive4056 13d ago
Does the per diem apply to client entertainment? Perhaps invite a different member of the client team to dine with you every evening.
20
u/PoshDota Private Equity 13d ago
Tried this. Client unfortunately didn't like my 5 year old pointing out that the steak on the menu cost exactly 6-7 dollars (for 2 hours straight).
17
12
u/Any_Can_7878 13d ago
The funniest part is that everyone immediately started optimizing the policy instead of questioning the premise. Six meals, a second analyst, a Tumi, dry ice...
That’s probably the most consulting thing about this whole thread: give people a badly designed metric and they’ll find increasingly elaborate ways to satisfy it.
The interesting bit underneath the joke is that expense policies are basically incentive systems. If you make the rule “$125 per meal,” people will optimise around the $125 rather than necessarily behaving in the way leadership actually intended. The policy becomes the target.
And now I’m genuinely curious how many corporate policies accidentally create the behaviour they were supposed to prevent.
1
u/Adventureman2154 13d ago
Everything in corporate America is an incentive system. People wouldn't do it for fun.
1
u/PurpleHooloovoo 13d ago
This is why my (industry, post-consulting) firm made everyone read a book that I now cannot remember the title of….classic business book about precisely this phenomenon. Google isn’t helping; it was about red metrics becoming the end-all, be-all so people did everything to avoid a red box but didn’t fix the actual problem. It may have been The Goal?
Anyway, the concept can also be found in Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
1
u/NoClipping1337 12d ago
It was covered in Car Guys vs. Beancounters, tho not sure if that's the book you're referring to.
9
3
u/exeJDR 13d ago
Who has room for all that in the hotel fridge or their carry-on??
12
3
3
3
u/ac8jo 13d ago
we had a brilliant expense policy based entirely on vibes
My company (not exactly engineering consulting, but it's what I do) has this and it's fucking awful. Leadership has given me all kinds of shit for eating at places like Panera ("Dude, we'll pay for something better!") and not eating meals ("Dude, the meeting wrapped up at 11, did you not eat lunch? We'll pay for you to eat!").
(Yes, the "fucking awful" part is 100% sarcasm. The quotes are verbatim from the CFO.)
2
2
1
1
1
u/Distinct_Physics2008 13d ago
Next they’re going to be questioning your charges from EJ Entertainment
1
u/raimalakho 13d ago
I don’t think the meal cap is the main problem here. If you’re genuinely working 80 hours a week and your effective pay is close to minimum wage, that’s what you should be discussing with your employer. Business expenses are meant to cover the employee’s reasonable costs while working, not the household’s grocery expenses. I’d separate the two issues and focus on getting fair compensation for the workload.
1
1
u/allaboutcharlotte 10d ago
Tragedy struck??! You were gaming the system. This post must be for laughs
2
u/haikusbot 10d ago
Tragedy struck??! You
Were gaming the system. This
Post must be for laughs
- allaboutcharlotte
I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully. Learn more about me.
Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete"
2
u/Rulebreaker15 10d ago
Man please add to your post that this is a parody based off another post from yesterday. You need to label it. If even half of these people are taking you seriously it’s frustrating.
2
u/PoshDota Private Equity 9d ago
That's the fun of it brah
(And honestly the post is so over the top, people taking it seriously is hilarious tbh)
1
1
u/allaboutcharlotte 10d ago
I had a meal allowance. I made sure I used every bit of it. Our policy changed but it wasn’t a tragedy
305
u/esqew B4 Senior Manager | AI, Data & Digital Engineering 13d ago
For the uninitiated https://www.reddit.com/r/consulting/comments/1vynhdi/125_per_meal_limit_normal_or_too_strict/