Random Stuffs

[pp9]

Redditors are so funny someone told me I probably "eat dog food and tap water", have never experienced happiness in my life, and deserve to die because I asked them how they could possibly be spending $100 a day on food for just themself on a road trip in my area (when they complained about the $100 being too expensive), apparently you can't possibly expect people to eat "grocery store food" on a vacation, they need high end sit down restaurants for every meal 🤣🤣

that's ~$70 USD/day...which is ~$20-25 a meal and is significantly lower than the published per diem rates for your area. This person likely was surprised they hit that amount while not eating "high end" meals if I had to guess.

And yeah I wouldn't expect people on vacation to be cooking or eating packaged food....I wouldn't/don't other than snacks. Shoot, $70 may cut it close for a full day of meals at Applebee's. That is far from fine dining lol. Not excusing the reddit meltdown though

 

[JaynaAli]

that's ~$70 USD/day...which is ~$20-25 a meal and is significantly lower than the published per diem rates for your area. This person likely was surprised they hit that amount while not eating "high end" meals if I had to guess.

I recently went to a conference and there was very little in the way of quick meals or grocery in the walkable area around the convention center. My job allows us $100 USD per day on meals using our company credit card when traveling, with a general guideline of $25 each for breakfast/lunch and $50 for dinner. Snacks/drinks are allowed too provided they fit in the overall $100/d allotment. Usually that’s more than plenty and I’ve never felt constrained in prior years, but it was hard to find lunch options that were under $25 at this conference because all the restaurants within a walkable distance were nice sit down fancy restaurants. There wasn’t even a CVS or other convenience type store close by. I ended up skipping lunch one day and just getting “dinner” at 3. But this is a bit of an outlier because usually at conferences I’ve been to there’s more quick/cheap options nearby and in other instances I might have a more accessible car.

 

[pp9]

I recently went to a conference and there was very little in the way of quick meals or grocery in the walkable area around the convention center. My job allows us $100 USD per day on meals using our company credit card when traveling, with a general guideline of $25 each for breakfast/lunch and $50 for dinner. Snacks/drinks are allowed too provided they fit in the overall $100/d allotment. Usually that’s more than plenty and I’ve never felt constrained in prior years, but it was hard to find lunch options that were under $25 at this conference because all the restaurants within a walkable distance were nice sit down fancy restaurants. There wasn’t even a CVS or other convenience type store close by. I ended up skipping lunch one day and just getting “dinner” at 3. But this is a bit of an outlier because usually at conferences I’ve been to there’s more quick/cheap options nearby and in other instances I might have a more accessible car.

Our per diem is $75/day and yeah conferences are often in downtown-ish areas or the middle of no where so food is inherently more expensive or not walkable. If the options outside of the hotel are slim like you mentioned, you're kinda screwed because hotel food is always overpriced. So yeah after tax/tip (and we won't get reimbursed for a penny over 20%), it's not hard to cut it close.

The last zoo vet conference I attended was in Kansas City. Essentially no quick spots for breakfast nearby, so the hotel cafe or sit down restaurant were the only options. IIRC a bagel/cream cheese and tiny fruit cup at the cafe was like $15 or something?