Work trip to Germany
Feb. 9th, 2014 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackWork trip to Germany was quite good. The travelling was easy, as was spending three days in the company of people from work (one from my office, one from one of the German offices).
I coped in Germany only speaking a few tourist phrases, although I need to get better at sometimes jumping into conversations when I know the people speak English, but don't automatically switch to English when I enter the room.
I managed to spend a couple of hours walking around the old parts of the town and looking at the river, and to go to a couple of different places for meals, since most places had some vegetarian dish, but not a very interesting one.
For the first time I had to ask myself what's normal to put on expenses. I have to keep reminding myself that my time is valuable to work, and that if it's worth sending me abroad at all, it's not worth saving a few extra pounds by being extra frugal. But I have to force myself not to think "oh no, surely that's just gratuitous". I think work clothes you don't have any other use for, and meals when you're away from home are the normal standard? And beer with meals when it's cheaper than the water?
The work itself was generally a success, we did everything we intended to, and didn't screw everything up, and I've a good idea of what we want to achieve. But it still feels like banging my head on a brick ceiling that 90% of what I say we need to do is dismissed, I think I should persist with the last 10% but I'm not sure. I'm not sure how much I'm bad at sounding like I know what I'm talking about, and how much I should better have figured out which decisions were taken several months ago but I wasn't told about.
The factory was really interesting. It's like a tutorial in best practices, eg. most of the furniture is on wheels and COULD be anywhere, but there are strips of tape on the floor showing where it SHOULD be. It's about half robots and half people. And people have to ride bikes around when they're going round the whole thing.
I coped in Germany only speaking a few tourist phrases, although I need to get better at sometimes jumping into conversations when I know the people speak English, but don't automatically switch to English when I enter the room.
I managed to spend a couple of hours walking around the old parts of the town and looking at the river, and to go to a couple of different places for meals, since most places had some vegetarian dish, but not a very interesting one.
For the first time I had to ask myself what's normal to put on expenses. I have to keep reminding myself that my time is valuable to work, and that if it's worth sending me abroad at all, it's not worth saving a few extra pounds by being extra frugal. But I have to force myself not to think "oh no, surely that's just gratuitous". I think work clothes you don't have any other use for, and meals when you're away from home are the normal standard? And beer with meals when it's cheaper than the water?
The work itself was generally a success, we did everything we intended to, and didn't screw everything up, and I've a good idea of what we want to achieve. But it still feels like banging my head on a brick ceiling that 90% of what I say we need to do is dismissed, I think I should persist with the last 10% but I'm not sure. I'm not sure how much I'm bad at sounding like I know what I'm talking about, and how much I should better have figured out which decisions were taken several months ago but I wasn't told about.
The factory was really interesting. It's like a tutorial in best practices, eg. most of the furniture is on wheels and COULD be anywhere, but there are strips of tape on the floor showing where it SHOULD be. It's about half robots and half people. And people have to ride bikes around when they're going round the whole thing.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 07:25 pm (UTC)I've never heard of work clothes being okay to put on expenses. Either your company buys them for you (a uniform) or they are your clothes. It's possible that extra changes of underwear for unexpected stays could be expensed under some policies as "incidental costs".
Beer with an evening meal is likely to be okay, some places limit the number of alcoholic drinks, others limit the total cost of the meal, others have different cost limits by country or even city. Some companies will allow you to expense lunches, others won't or will restrict the occasions when lunch is okay to expense. Some companies (usually those where tea & coffee is provided in the home location) allow an amount towards coffee bought commercially.
It's usually a good idea to read the policy before you travel.