It's reasonable for a company to not want to burn money.
It is not reasonable for a company to pay a fully loaded engineer >$40k/mo and then ask them "why did you need $500?" on some odd days where they are doing difficult work, large refactors, experiments, etc.
It is not reasonable for a company to pay a fully loaded engineer >$40k/mo and then ask them "why did you need $500?" on some odd days where they are doing difficult work, large refactors, experiments, etc.