Archer: Okay, operations account. Just how deep in the red am I— OUT OF MY MIND!? Oh no! How?! How did I spend that much money?!
[Flashback to Archer and Woodhouse in his penthouse with Archer modeling and admiring a turtleneck and Woodhouse holding a stack of identical ones]
Archer: Yeah, I know it's sexy, Woodhouse, that's why I bought ten. Now arrange those by color.
Woodhouse: These are... all black.
Archer: Oh, are they? Or are five dark black and five in a slightly darker black?
[Cut back to present day]
In some workplaces, certain employees are given a credit card account for work-related expenses. These are usually for travel, lodging, meal stipends, etc. The expectation is that the card is to be used only for those work-related expenses, and in rare cases, an emergency. Furthermore, in order to ensure the organization's accounting books are level, receipts are expected to be kept.
Generally speaking, people usually are responsible for their cards, but this trope is obviously not about that.
No, this trope is about those instances in media where a character is so irresponsible with their company credit card or expense account that their purchases alone set off alarms within the company and usually result in discipline, one way or another.
Keep in mind, this isn't just restricted to corporate entities, as IRL government entities and nonprofits can also issue organizational credit cards and expense accounts and have them abused.
A subtrope of Credit Card Plot. Crosses into Conspicuous Consumption, Stealing from the Till, and White-Collar Crime. If the credit card abuser is related in some way to an executive at the company/organization they might be a Silver Spoon Troublemaker. If it is an executive at the company, then they might be a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
Naturally, this is Truth in Television and a lot more common than you would think, so let's not list any real life examples.
Examples:
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Film — Live-Action
- The Wolf of Wall Street: "Mad Max" Belfort storms into his son Jordan's office waving an American Express bill totaling $430,000, demanding an explanation regarding certain purchases including a $26,000 dinner and a charge for what he easily determined to be a high-class prostitution ring. Jordan and Donnie's weak excuses do nothing to placate his fury.
Mad Max: What kind of hooker takes credit cards?Donnie: A rich one!
Literature
- Mostly Harmless: Ford Prefect's new boss informs him that he is being made the Guide's restaurant critic, and gives him a Dine-o-Charge credit card to cover expenses. However, Ford, smarting at his new job, steals his boss' personal ID and uses it to break into the company's main computer system, programming it to automatically authorise anything he claims on the card as soon as he submits a review. This goes on to include a tip for a bar singer that he comments would probably buy you "Switzerland", a spaceship, London Zoo (not tickets — he actually buys the zoo), and the hotel he happens to be staying in (as a bribe for the concierge).
- In Scoop, William Boot is given an expense account for his trip to Ishmaelia. He mostly avoids abusing it, except that he keeps sending his reports in full-worded English rather than using abbreviations, and when the paper suggests that he use more abbreviations to save money, he thanks them for their concern but notes that it's not costing him anything.
- Waiting to Exhale: In the novel but not the film, Robin has a well-paid job, but suffers from Skewed Priorities, as the woman from the collection agency points out: Robin drives a nice car, but has trouble keeping up with paying off her student loan. She is also a shopaholic and spends plenty of money on her appearance. Things get to the point where she has to get a consolidation loan and they make her cut up most of her credit cards right there in the office. She ends up using her company card to pay for things like lunch and lingerie. Amazingly, nobody at work seems to notice.
Live-Action TV
- Borgen kicks off when the current Prime Minister's wife is unable to pay for shopping abroad. The Prime Minister rushes to bail her out before she gets herself arrested, but the only method of payment he has on him is a government-issued credit card. After using it, he tries to get his PR man to cover up the payment, but the PR man abruptly dies before he can dispose of the evidence, and the record of the transaction makes its way into the hands of the Prime Minister's political enemies. The resulting scandal paves the way for Birgitte Nyborg Christensen becoming Prime Minister after the next election.
- In an early season episode of Deadliest Catch Phil Harris's sons Josh and Jake rack up a large amount of money on the boat's credit card on rain gear while the ship is in dry dock for costly repairs. Phil is nearly unintelligible in his anger and mimes getting sick for the camera.
- Inventing Anna: In the Moroccan riad, journalist Rachel Williams is unknowingly misusing her newspaper credit card. Anna Delvey having claimed to have forgotten her card home during a visit, the manager of the riad needed a guarantee and Anna pressured Rachel into using her card as guarantee, promising it wouldn't be used since Anna would use the one she claimed to have. Since Anna didn't have any way to pay for this visit, Rachel's card was debited, leading Rachel to be fired from her newspaper.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Dennis possesses the Paddy's Pub "company credit card" and, in several episodes, uses it to pay for lavish meals under the guise of using them to discuss bar business with Frank and Mac. (Charlie and Dee are never invited.)
- Ted Lasso: The first hint that Keeley's friend Shandy may not be a good fit as an employee at her public relations firm is that she suggests to Keeley that they use the company's credit card to buy themselves mimosas.
- 30 Rock: Jack takes Tracy to a charity golf event hosted by GE CEO Don Geiss, hoping that Tracy will allow Jack to get close to Geiss. However, Tracy offends Geiss by dropping a "Truth Bomb" and Jack isn't invited to go golfing with Geiss. Jack complains to Tracy that they're stuck hanging out with a man who apparently was caught using his company credit card at a gay strip club. Of course, the man's wife happened to be walking by as he said this.
- True Jackson, VP: "Keeping Tabs" features a semi-unintentional example. True is invited out Amanda and several other Mad Style employees to a fancy restaurant for a "business dinner", where she learns she can charge things to her company credit card. Not realising it's only supposed to be for official purchases, True assumes this to be just another perk of working at the company, and makes a series of extravagant purchases as well as taking her friends out for dinner to the same restaurant. This extreme expenditure is quickly flagged and leads to Mad Style's Chief of Finances Rose Pinchbinder being after her, with Oscar only managing to explain to True the card's actual purpose too late, and that if she can't make the money back, she will be fired and likely face criminal charges for embezzlement. True returns all the stuff she bought but unable to get back what she spent at the restaurant, she's forced to come clean. Thankfully Pinchbinder takes pity on her, as she knows True is legitimately a good person and would never knowingly steal, agreeing to simply deduct the cost from her salary.
Video Games
- This provides Jonathan Zarus' motive in murdering Bernie Silverman in the Criminal Case: Supernatural Investigations case Death at a Funeral. Jonathan went on a spending spree with Larry's company credit card after Larry died in a car accident, buying things up to a sports car. Bernie, being Larry's business partner, was of course outraged by this, and demanded the money back or he'd go to the cops. Jonathan is revealed to not be the killer.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: A NPC is seen in various places proudly declaring that he is putting various things on his expense account.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: In "Office Spaceman", Roger dons his Parker Peters persona to join the CIA's alien taskforce as a means of continuing to spread the pictures of himself that they're investigating. Bullock tells him that he has access to a near-infinite account to help with the investigation, so Roger starts taking vacations in tropical tourist spots like Jamaica and Aruba.
- Archer: Sterling Archer has a habit of making extravagant purchases on his agency expense account, to the point where Malory admonishes him repeatedly for treating ISIS/The Agency as a personal ATM. This comes to a head in "Mole Hunt" when she tells him to settle his accounts under threat of being cut off. His attempts to hide his hacking into the system as a mole hunt accidentally reveal that one of his colleagues is indeed a mole, which he blames for the purchases.
- Beavis And Butthead: In "Abduction", Smart Beavis and Smart Butthead are put on trial for crimes against Earth 327Z, the reality where Adult Beavis and Adult Butthead reside. The head of the council points out that instead of their mission, which was to explore the various universes, they ran up an expense account on space nachos and interstellar pornography.
- One episode of Code Monkeys has Dave lend a company credit card to Black Steve so the latter can go buy cocaine (though Dave indicates he didn't know drug dealers even accepted them). The same episode also has Dave ordering 1200 Swatches (implicitly also on that card) for undefined reasons.
- Futurama: In "The Impossible Stream", Hermes warns that Fry had better not be using the Planet Express corporate credit card to purchase the products from the Fulu targeted ads for All My Circuits, however he casually admits that he uses it for his one-man business dinners. Professor Farnsworth tells him to quit his low-stakes embezzling to pay attention to the situation at hand.
- Harley Quinn (2019): In "Bensonhurst", Bane confronts Penguin's nephew Joshua about his recent purchases on the Legion of Doom corporate credit card, particularly a down payment on a bounty on Harley Quinn as revenge for her ruining his bar mitzvah. Bane admonishes him, saying that hits are paid for in cash. Furthermore, he points out that the card is for emergencies only, but indicates that Joshua's purchases have been candy, vape pens, and "something suspiciously labeled 'Dolphin Encounter". To teach Joshua a lesson, Bane cancels and destroys the card, first by trying (and failing) to cut it, then resorting to bending it.
Bane: Because I am this credit card's reckoning!
- Rocket Monkeys: The episode "May the Best Monkey Win" has Wally and Gus driving G.A.S.I. into bankruptcy by going on an expensive shopping spree with the organization's credit card after blowing their weekly allowance, which becomes finalized when they accidentally incinerate all the purchased goods in a nearby sun trying to return them via cannon. When G.A.S.I.'s now-almost nonexistent budget only allows for one of the monkeys to remain an astronaut, Dr. Chimpsky sentences the other to be sent away for "repurposing", leading to Wally and Gus individually trying to one-up each other in buttering up YAY-OK (whom Chimpsky put in charge of deciding who goes and who stays) to avoid the latter fate. Fortunately, an inadvertent discovery of a huge supply of the rarest mineral in the galaxy manages to not only restore G.A.S.I.'s budget but also makes them rich enough to buy the same kinds of luxuries the brothers did in the beginning.
- Solar Opposites: In "The Ping Pong Table", Terry and Korvo manage to convince Mr. Sarner, their boss, to buy a ping-pong table to boost employee morale (actually, to make their own jobs less sucky). This of course comes right before an important Board of Directors meeting where Sarner has to explain his budget as they face a branch shutdown. Although Sarner says that he has the perfect reason to justify a ping-pong table as an expense, he ends up dying by accidentally impaling himself on a jagged pipe in the boiler room while playing a round with Korvo. Without Sarner to justify the cost, Terry and Korvo know that the ping-pong table will be taken away, and therefore try and bring Sarner back to life. It fails as the reanimated corpse of Sarner rambles incoherently and kills himself again. After Terry is named Sarner's successor, he has the table returned.
