This seems a small issue, would need more info, would there not be a mileage stipulation if he works so far from home?
Mileage is not normally covered between home and work. At least not for the plebes.
My last couple years working for the State, they gave us a couple of cars to use for our field work. It is a very large county that we covered and everyone was getting such huge mileage checks they figured it was cheaper to buy cars. The caseworkers traveling the longest distance that day were to use them, but they HAD to bring them back to the office parking lot no matter how late and no matter how out of the way it was to drive to the office from home. For example, a caseworker who had gone south and who also lives south of the office would have to drive an extra thirty miles north to drop off the company car and retrieve her own at the end of a trip, rather than park in her driveway over night and bring the company car back the next morning at 8 a.m.
Someone broke that rule once because of the above and she had hell to pay, set off a flurry of memos from management warning dire consequences, etc. if the rule was not followed. It was stupid. No one could actually get away with using the car for private travel since you had to keep close records on where you went, starting from where, and what the beginning and ending mileage was. We all knew how far it was from one place to another, so any significant extra miles would have stuck out. Those sheets were reviewed every week.
I think in Long's case, it is more the "example" of the boss breaking the rule than any damage from the breaking rule itself.
