violist

Where does this tendency stop?

If you want employees who don't laugh or sneer at you, you treat them
in a manner that is tolerable given prevailing standards. What about:

"Financially, it is a waste of money to offer a per diem at all when you
can give out coupons for Big Macs."

"Financially, it is a waste of money to spend for 4 beds when you can
make them sleep on benches at the bus station."

BearX220

I was thinking the same thing... financially, it would make sense to force the team to eat Old Spaghetti Factory, figure out what the biggest entree is, order one for every two people and make them share it.

There's more to management than finance.

RichMSN

My old boss was a cheapskate, but in a "make inappropriate suggestions stressing how cheap he was but never reject any expense account" kind of way. In other words, he was "cute cheap" not "really cheap, disguised as a management technique" like the manager we're quoting and talking about here.

For example: Once in Las Vegas he wondered aloud if we could "share a buffet." He once offered me a hot dog at the sports book for dinner. He refused to get a trash can at trade shows cause they'd charge him $11 a day.

My thought reading AAaLot was: People would eat at home anyway, so why pay for their meals? If they want to brown bag, they could bring food along.

It's a slippery slope and I'd have my resume out really quickly.

I'm so happy I can have a beer or two with dinner or order room service and not have to worry whether I'm going to get reimbursed. There are ways to be respectful of the company's money without being cheap every minute of every day.

MollyNYC

Ok, it's OT but your story reminded me of a prior boss.....

We invited a client to a casual working lunch at our office in our conference room. My boss's secy thought we should wait til client shows up and hand out menu's to everyone. But El Cheapo Boss wanted to save a few bucks and so pre-ordered tuna salad platters - 3 of them for 5 of us - and had the sec'y arrange them on the nice china we had so it would look like she ordered 5 orders.(lettuce fills a plate nicely)


When the client arrived, El Cheapo smiles and graciously says "I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of pre-ordering lunch" to which client responds "oh no problem, I eat anything as long as it's not tuna". So a menu was handed to him and he ordered a whole meal for himself, including dessert. Imagine!

Oh and for Xmas gifts for clients secy's and assistants, only the finest rejects were recycled from the closet shelf kept expressly for that purpose!

TPAbound

H*** No! I've never been asked & would NEVER shared a room! That ridiculous.

Travel safe

MCTUBBS

In my travel for clients, our sales contract prohibits room sharing unless it is a very unusual situation. This is about 95% of my travel.

However my company tried the room sharing thing for a while for our in house training. There are about 60 remote employees, and we go to the office each year for a week or so. We were allowed to pick our roommates, or pay extra to have a single room. I paid extra.

The first time this arrangement was implemented, the office got a surprise when a few roommate pairs were male / female instead of male / male or female / female. These were homosexual male / heterosexual female pairs who were friends outside of work and / or had those roommate arrangements already in place.

Sharing was in place over about 4 years, but now we get single rooms.

I can't imagine having a roommate forced on me, but know it happens. I think if it happened on a regular basis I'd have to find other employment.

MissJoeyDFW

I have had to share a room once 7 years ago. I hated it, I was in sales training with 150 other sales reps. All the marketing people got to come all the way down to the admins. I got put with a 22 year old admin who spent the majority of her time sleeping and making phone calls. To make matters worse it was the Harvey Hotel in Dallas before remodeling. When I checked out I got 1/2 of the room bill along with $175 in long distance phone calls and another $75 in room service on my bill. I had not made a call or ordered anything. I ws checking out first so I got the hotel to put all of the charges on her half of the bill. I guess she had not traveled much because she later said that she didn't know the hotel would charge for phone calls. She made several to San Francisco where she lived and a couple to Korea where her family lived. I cannot imagine anyone thinking phone calls to Korea and San Francisco from a hotel in Dallas were free. Fortunately my company was sold the following year and I have never had to do that again. If I knew in advance that was the company policy I wouldn't accept the job. I value my privacy.

CaraCalea

I work in mobile marketing.

I dont mind sharing a room when I know the other girls and I know what I'm getting into before I accept the job (Mardi Gras, Dallas Fashion Week, etc)
However, I got suckered into sharing a room for 10 weeks. I accepted a position on a tour. I naively assumed I would have my own room like I had on other tours I had worked previously. Well, when I arrived in St. Louis to start the event, low and behold I meet my roommate. A part of me wanted to quit immediatly, because I felt misled, but I stuck it out because I had already cleared the next 10 weeks to work on that event. My roomie and I actually hit it off and we became very good friends, but by the end I couldnt wait to get away from her. We had no time to ourselves whatsoever! Work together all day and then sleep about 5 feet away at night. It was nothing against her but damn, we are adults!
I learned my lesson from that and will definatly inquire about the room situation before each contract I sign.
-Cara

Catman

When I used to work in the News business the outlet would put us up during ongoing breaking news stories.

One was 9-11 and no one could get home so the place where I worked put us up at this dump of a hotel. I ended up having to share rooms on three nights with three different people. First night guy stayed upa ll night watching TV and talking with his girlfriend on teh phone for like two hours.

Second night: co-worker went out and got roaring drunk... Company wanted me to stay since I had to be back at 2am. He passed out in the hallway and the front desk person called me to wake me up and ask to haul his sorry butt in.

Third night: I wanted to go home. It was a co worker who said "I have problems sleeping but watching TV helps. I called my boss and said "My cats are starving... I'm taking a car service home. I want to go home."

I had that "sharing rooms" at my last media job. One time the roomie never showed up at teh Sheraton NY Hotel and towers and his wife called the room asking where he was. (it's also where I signed up for my very first frequent guest program..)

I had one decent experience and it has nothing to do with a business trip. On a canceled flight leaving San Francisco I was traveling with some business man who we struck up a conversation over lots of things. Flight gets canceled and they had some rooms available. He got one with double beds and said "if you want to share it's free."

Remembering my experinece at the Pittsburgh airport earlier (think I posted on that one) I was too tired to argue and took him up on the offer. He was married and seemed normal so I figure no drunk man banging at the door. We had room service, talked and went to sleep. It went fine except he talked in his sleep.

After those experiences save for the last one I said I would NEVER share a room with someone unless I was dating that person.

Then came Flyertalk... and over the past few years I've shared rooms with a number of members. Other than one I did not have problems. I actually had good times with some Flyertalkers. I learned to deal with different people and understand their little quirks (a few like watching TV... I jsut roll over and go to sleep, fast.) I don't even mind those who snore because from what some say I purr in my sleep.

There are a few Flyeratlkers I would share a room with without hesitation. In some ways I got to sense what it would have been like to have lived on campus on college with a roomie.

Plus I like having someone to talk to.

Of course regarding Flyertalkers I would never share and sleep and tell

Single Malt

I shared a room but not at the same time. I my client released me early and I took advantage of it and was in bed by 9. Next morning I thought I'd get on the road early. At 5:00 I was standing at the front desk to check-out early and my coworker strolls in. His client had kept him late, then he hit the casino. I had been upgraded to a suite and was allowed late check out, so I gave him my room key and let him sleep it off in the second bed.

I got six hours with the family, he got a free hotel room.

Catman

On my current "regular" job we got work this year's retreat might be a weekend affair and we would have to stay on site.

I hate retreats. I already told them in this case I want to stay alone.

I'm also a business person. Should I have to travel for the business the only roommates I"ll have are four footed and purr in their sleep.

any007

I believe this is standard policy at walmart.
even for the ceo.

tjl

Although I am probably more willing to share a room than most people here, it is not a very good policy for a company to require room sharing in normal circumstances. Some people may be perfectly fine co-workers, but incompatible roommates. An example would be a heavy smoker and a non-smoker who objects to secondhand smoke. If those two were going on a business trip, would you require them to share a room (either the smoker would have to be uncomfortable not being able to smoke in the room, or the non-smoker would have to breathe the secondhand smoke or the smoke smell in the carpet of a smoker's room)?

Now, unusual circumstances may require room sharing (e.g. all of the hotel rooms within a reasonable distance are filled), or employees may voluntarily share (in which case it would be reasonable to allow them a higher priced room or suite), but that can be handled on a case by case basis.

FQ5757

Several years ago a female colleague and I were scheduled to attend a software user conference and our mutual director pulled me aside and told me he would appreciate it if we would share a room, while doing the wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing. "Hey, man," he said, "you might get lucky!"

BearX220

Wow. See you in court.