On Employee Expenses, Lazy Managers, and AI Agents

Starting in 2000, I worked at Lawson Software as an application consultant. The job typically involved descending on different organizations and setting up their new HR and payroll systems. As you'd expect, we consultants would need to book our own flights, hotels, rental cars, and the like. Even when flying coach, our weekly expenses could easily reach $2,500 or more.

Unfortunately, Lawson didn't provide us with company credit cards.¹ As a result, my colleagues and I had to pay for our expenses out of our own pockets. We would then submit them to our managers for approval. Upon successful submission, Lawson's internal system sent daily short emails reminidng them to either:

1. Approve their pending expenses; or
2. Reject them with an explanation.

In theory, consultant reimbursements would arrive in their bank accounts soon after that. In other words, the float would be ephemeral.

Theory and Practice Collide

Sadly, some employee loans weren't so fleeting. The cause for the delays wasn't technical. As is often the case, it was human.

My first manager (call her Denise here) routinely ignored these emails. A few weeks after I had submitted about $5,000 in expenses, I followed up with an email and a voicemail only to hear crickets.