oh, crazy government

[lotusbiosm]

So, today I had class at the Frederick Douglass House, which as you know is where I work. That was nice, because it meant I found out that my check was at the main office. I headed down to drop off some forms that I'd been neglecting to drop off (it's not that easy to get to, though not hard either, but it's not like I could just drop by on my lunch time). Well, one of these forms was my commute reimbursement form. The lady refused to believe that I was asking for enough money. I went to the Metro website, looked up the fare, and multiplied it by the number of days I work a week. I work two days a week, there are four weeks in a month, that's eight days a month. So that's $2.35 each way ($2 for the train, .35 for the bus), $4.70/day, therefore $37.60/month (actually, technically it's probably more than that, because there's no bus-to-rail transfer the way there is rail-to-bus) I even included the bus down by the house, which I don't usually take, in case of really crappy weather (I'd rather walk- it's cheaper and I can use the exercise and the fresh air). But this one lady didn't want to believe that I was asking for enough. She consulted with a colleague, and he double checked with me, and made sure the form had everything on it it needed (which was good). I live two blocks (.20 miles according to the Metro site) from the Metro station, and while there is a bus I can take, I don't, because it's silly, and I could be at the station in the amount of time it takes to wait for the bus. The form tells you not to ask for more, and only to ask for what it costs to get to work. I mean, if I could get more, it would cover my transit to school, but I feel bad using taxpayer money to pay for me to go to class. I didn't expect HR to give you a hard time about not requesting enough reimbursement. If I had asked for $50/month or more, would they have just been happy?