@hihosteverino
Sounds illegal. Unless is the employee fault. a company that "requires" an expense from an employee, must pay back that expense in full. PERIOD! I guess no one had the courage to sue.
Clearly Alice talked to the wrong person - she needs to practice on her "Tongues of Fire" technique so when she goes into see the CEO she will be able to implement the new "scorched earth" policy created by the staff.....
This actually happened to me. I put in my notice that I was leaving as soon as we completed a big project (so basically I gave them 2 months notice). The next day my manager sat down with me to figure out how to get me to stay. His first words were "I'm not going to offer you more money because then you would just be staying for the wrong reasons." He didn't understand that I had already been working for his company for all the wrong reasons. I almost said "screw it" and walked off the site at that moment.