Exactly what I want to say. He is missed.
“'I am saved by the buoyancy of citrus!”
This is a great prank that I’d expect someone to lose their job over, and Hedberg’s joke is funny, but the premise is off. The receipt is as much for the accountability of the employee to the business owner as it is to the customer. Especially for small-bill items like ice cream, donuts, etc. that are not inventoried, if an employee doesn’t have to leave a paper trail, he/she could easily pocket the transaction, because nobody counts how many donuts are left at the end of the day. Small businesses seem to be very paranoid about this, because I’ve often seen signs that say “if you don’t get a receipt, your purchase is free”.
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Hello time traveller from the 1990s when “per diems” were still a thing! Everything you say about their benefits is true, but all it takes is somebody from accounting doubting that people really spend the entire amount per day, and then the brilliant idea of itemizing everything gets introduced as a money-savings measure.
I typically spend 3 hours putting together all of the receipts for an expense report after a trip (it takes a while because every entry in the report must explain which receipt goes with it and what the business purpose of the expense was. Given what I get paid this probably costs the company way more than I would bother to embezzle.
Heaven forbid someone pockets their leftover $10 after the hassle of traveling and doing work away from home just because they ate at a cheaper restaurant than was originally budgeted.
Of course the accountants want to itemize everything with receipts, it is built-in job security. This practice would die right quick if they were forced to justify the expense of scrutinizing all of the receipts (their salary) vs. the amount of money “wasted” on a per diem system. Not to mention all of the money wasted by the employee getting his expense voucher together on company time.
Companies that do this have not done the time/benefit analysis. It’s probably a bad sign for the rest of the management too, as it sends a clear signal that the managers absolutely do not trust their employees–even with petty cash expenses.
I really hope you attach a doughnut receipt to the order and put “I was hungry” in the business justification line.
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I’ve totally had to do that.
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Don’t you love it when you use actual real life examples from something that you really experienced firsthand and people are like “no that’s not how it works!”
Eh…Oooook… I guess you’re the expert here 
Yep… and I have seen actual embezzling glossed due to cronyism while a 2 dollar bus ride has to have up to 120 characters of justification and a physical copy of the receipt.
But hey I just help build the system, I don’t decide what shady games to play with it once it’s deployed. I’m kind of glad I got away from finance apps and into a different niche. I despair for humanity enough as it is.
If you were a police officer you a) wouldn’t have paid for your donut, and b) wouldn’t know how to read the receipt anyway.
I generally get that these symbols are supposed to represent something, but half the time I have no idea what.
I’m thinking this is an owl with a haughty look, tossing stacks of paper, and a star(?), to a couple of small children.
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hmm. I like it.
it’s supposed to be a wide-open, smiling mouth with closed eyes to denote loud laughter, according to the japanese, anyway. I think that maybe the “papers” and “kids” are characters for laughs. I found 'em all somewhere on the internet and just thought they were better than the western ones.
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My job still use per diem. It’s not dead. In fact it’s almost certainly the smartest and cheapest way.
The only complicating factor is that per diem is calculated based on where you are going (it’s higher in downtown NYC than the outskirts of Toledo) but the website figures that out for you when you put in your travel destination.
WHERE did you find those ? !??!?!!!
I’ll trade you one set of Star Trek Emoticons in exchange. If you play hard-ball, I’ll throw in Wikipedia’s list of Eastern and Western emoticons and Yahoo Messenger’s list.
I think you are, however, pasting both the emoticons as well as the language equivalents.
Not that that’s a bad thing.
I thought that the wavy bits looked like kids that had already been knocked down by the owl. Two to go…
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DONUTS.
Except…
It might not help. It’s well known that there’s an established market in forged donut receipts.
I thought i got them from Wikipedia, but can’t find them there. There’s lots of sites with similar ones if you search for “Kaomoji,” but none of them look exactly like the ones I copied into my file ┐(´∀｀)┌
the music on the donut page was awesome Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ
Just a killjoy reminder here that the receipt is not proof that you bought the donut, it’s proof that the cashier gave you the correct change and yes, people will argue about a donut.
Investing in a thermal printer could be useful for expense accounts…
So you’re saying you keep all your receipts just in case you’re accused of murder?
Technically the only thing the receipt is proof of is that some machine printed a receipt.
People can indeed argue about anything.
