To have claimed this as an expense?

DH is middle management and works out of one office, if he has to go into London instead he claims for the train and it's a lot more than £20. There's no formal questioning or it only being able to be put through by one particular person, he just claims. Denying the OP's claim for 20 bloody quid when she was open about what it was for is petty and pathetic IMO.

It will all be down to who has the ability to authorise what expenses. Emergency travel home due to distress will more than likely be at the managers discretion and they can just put it on their taxi account. Other expenses probably need to go through a different system of approval.

Did you tell your manager than you would rather just get the train as it would be cheaper? Did you ask them if they would cover the difference in the fare? Did you then ask them how they wanted you to submit the expense?

I honestly think this will all be sorted out after a calm conversation with the manager who offered the taxi. It might be a case or removing the expenses claim and sorting it another way, for example via petty cash etc.

So you tried to save the company money and now have to pay for it yourself - no good turn goes unpunished springs to mind OP. Honestly quibbling over £20 when you were obviously in a bad way at the time - I'm embarrassed for them no matter what the company policy is. I'd have paid the poxy £20 myself if i was your manager and it was suddenly an issue with senior management.

I think they wanted you in a taxi due to duty of care and to ensure you got back ok. Whereas the train doesn’t guarantee that. I would just repeat the it was due to illness though and you’d felt the train was more efficient.

If anyone was sick to the point they needed escorting home, in my workplace the most senior person would put it on their company card. They have the ability and the seniority to justify this expense. Me as an employee however, doesn’t have the authority to submit an expense for travel, unless I have a project code for work related travel. If I was to submit a random expense, I would also be formally questioned. Also to note, the finance team who approve these will not have the context (not that this would change the process and what’s permitted). If OP was well enough to take the train home, then she had left the workplace as any other type of sickness (ie I have the flu, I’m going home) and would not be eligible for transport.

What do people think a union is going to do? This this a simple issue OP can address
herself as an employed adult.

I wondered the same. Were they just offering to book you a taxi but not to pay for it. Just sounds like a mix up. Tell your manager about the problem and ask for clarification.

Agree with this.

I suspect that they might think, if you are ill/upset enough to have to go home, you would need the taxi and, if you are well enough to make a train journey, you may not have needed to leave early

There is a significant difference between offering to pay a taxi for an employee possibly incapacitated (physically and/or emotionally) and unable otherwise travel/get home, and paying the difference in a train fare. One is duty of care the other isn’t really, ideally you should have asked before expensing.

Get your union or personnel involved

No because the 'what you would normally have to do anyway' doesn't seem correct. The price was different when leaving early.

The line manager can't overrule company rules though.

I think this is where it may have gone wrong- without your meaning it to.

She explained in her first post that the taxi was 100 pounds and she thought that was excessive.

An I missed that bit. Yes agree. I think this must be a mis-understanding. Hopefully easily cleared up.

It looks like they 'sent' her home early.

She said she takes the train at a certain time and this particular time cost extra. It would be good if OP could clarify, but this was in her first post.

OP needed to go home early.

The usual route and means cost more because it was early. So work pay. But she should have run this by someone first, yes.

"Obviously the corporate world just doesn't work like that at all, and you need to get into the mindset of complying with policy rather than worrying about saving some faceless entity money. But it doesn't come naturally to all of us."

To give another example. I've been pressurised to take a cheaper flight at a stupid time so it costs less, but as it's anti-social hours a taxi is allowed to go to the airport bringing the overall cost higher than a flight at a sensible time. It's not so much about overall costs, but ticking some budget box.

This

Because not everyone is used to the frankly ridiculous sums of money some companies will happily spunk up the wall on things and put on expenses. Their natural inclination is to think 'oh no, thats far too expensive' and of course, if you also don't realise the company has an account with a firm and probably pays less than you would as a private individual, it feels even more crazy.

The company I work for -and I am a sub-contractor not an employee - would have happily paid for me to stay in a £200 a night hotel for two nights.. 5 minutes from my home! Purely because thats the expectation and process for them for sub-contractors attending hotel based all day meetings. As it was, they covered two lunches, two dinners and my normal hourly rate for the whole time I was there!

I am used to just submitting my invoice for my hours, occasionally doing more hours than expected if I have covered for someone else, so this is way beyond what my brain thinks is normal - but it is normal for multimillion/billion pound mega-companies (a tiny subsidary of which I actually work for).

That said, if I included an expense for something out of the norm without running it past my immediate boss first, I would fully expect them to ask for an explanation!

Have they approved the expense previously and are now questioning it??

Or are they refusing the expense now. Because my company often refuse expenses. It doesn’t mean I’m a thief and will lose my job! They simply haven’t agreed to a request which can be discussed if appropriate.

Are you in a union?

I would just use this as a learning exercise. Lots of companies have a specific policy, and if you try and use your common sense to save the company money, it doesn’t fit the policy so the answer is no.

Where I work if you have to go to a medical appointment, you can have all of the travel and time of the medical appointment off For free. Various times I’ve tried to save the company money by working from the office closest to the hospital I was attending. However, I realised that all I was doing is making it more difficult for myself to travel during peak times, and no one actually cared for my altruism.

That was a lesson learned for me.

Do you normally take the train? So they were offering a taxi in the moment only. But you said no and took your normal mode of transport home, so they don’t see why they would pay for your normal commute? That at least would make a semblance of sense, and I agree - I wouldn’t expect to pay expenses to someone for their normal commute, totally different from paying for a taxi because an employee is hurt or upset. I hope you are ok btw,

I cant for the life of me understand why you didn't get in the taxi.