Husband’s female colleague’s issue being taken very seriously.

This. The gravy train has pulled into the station and you've been asked to get off.

Once the work is done, individuals are free to do what they like. Why should everyone have to eat together?

Why do you think the evening should be spent with colleagues?
I certainly know who I'd prefer to spend my evening with if I had to be away from home and it ain't Brian from R&D.

I totally agree. I travelled for work for 25 years. People saying that working away is not supposed to be holiday and should work late and also see colleagues are completely wrong. When you are away, you tend to work long hours. At the end of the day it helps to get away and relax. It's also a massive inconvenience to the locals (when you visit) because they feel they need to "entertain" you.
Being away is a strain and anything to alleviate that should be encouraged. If my company ever prevented me having my wife tag along, I would not work away.

Pool with hot tub. Luxury hotel, really nice breakfast included, dinner out. It’s not always train, if drives it’s zero cost. My only outlay would have been my half of dinner.
We live rurally so yes a change of scenery, shops, restaurant makes a nice change. Each to their own.

I think she probably found the whole situation very strange.

Strange or not, if they all work together, surely she knew ahead of time that the wives were going to be there, and that her options would be playing 3rd wheel or going solo?

Unless they don't actually work together day-to-day, I find it very difficult to believe that nobody mentioned bringing their wives at any point before the trip, and that this was something that had been going on for years.

Which makes the complaint all the more bizarre. If she knew the wives were going to be there and had an issue with it, why didn't she raise it before the trip?

My money says that at some point one of these 50+ year old men has made a daft comment to their much younger female colleague along the lines of "The wife is coming to make sure you've not got us up doing flaming sambucas and dancing on tables until 3am"...and she's taken it seriously.

What a spiteful person.

If I were your husband, I would go out of my way not to have anything to do with her on the next trip, especially due to her bizarre accusation - that’s definitely something to tread carefully about.

No lunch. No dinner. No socialising. I’d stay in my room and order room service just to avoid her. Let her complain that Bob has an early night on the work trip and doesn’t want dinner together.

I suppose the question is, what sort of work trips are these? If it is a conference and everyone is supposed to be mingling in the evening then perhaps it isn’t great to bring a spouse. But if it is doing a few days’ work in another city then it may be fair enough to bring a spouse. If the man didn’t bring his wife, but instead met an old friend for dinner, what would the reaction be then?

For all she or any of us know, she'd have had nobody to socialise with anyway. Employees who are there without their spouses might just as well prefer to spend the evening working out, catching up with their friend who lives down the road, Netflix bingeing in their pants, going to a three hour religious service or any number of things people are perfectly free to do with their downtime. And that's even more likely now!

In my last job I used to stay away from time to time and I toyed with taking my husband with me but never got round to it. It wouldn’t have incurred any additional expense but I suppose I maybe felt a bit weird in case it got found out. If a colleague was there, I’d usually go for dinner with them but then I’d go back to my room. I’ve got no interest in spending all evening with colleagues and it’s outside of the work day so I wouldn’t have to. As for a PP’s comment about more getting done in the downtime, maybe it depends on the role but in mine it would be pretty unprofessional to be gabbing about work all night in a public area in a restaurant/hotel.

That said the colleague sounds a bit petty. If I were your husband I wouldn’t be having dinner with her on future nights away, as I could be equally petty back.

Christ. Whenever I go to these things I socialise with anyone BUT colleagues outside of work hours! Unless I'm being paid / time off in lieu my own time is my own time. I have friends all over the place these days and always try to catch up with someone when I'm on an overnight. Is that sort of thing barred too??

What would the company say if you agreed to fund your own accommodation?

This is my view. Poor woman had nobody to socialise with because of all the tag along wives. It's a work trip, not a minimoon. If she did complain then she's one of few women these days with an actual backbone.

This is very odd.
She sounds quite strange!

it certainly looks like that!

Yes, it's very odd for someone who's apparently a professional to assume that their setup applies in all professional roles. After all, professional covers an incredibly diverse range of jobs and organisations!

On work do’s where the company pays the room, I’ve seen all the employees bring along anyone - spouse, lover, cousin, friend, mother, sister etc.Since the room was already paid for, the other person basically gets the hotel room for free.

obviously, the other person has to pay for their meals which the hotel is happy to invoice separately.

also, on work do’s there can be Team meals for team building or discussing work, and obviously the other person doesn’t turn up for these.

However, it’s not always you have these team meals, and even not every night.

I never saw the other person paying for the hotel room, that’s what the company does.

So you would pay train tickets just so you can work from a hotel room and use a rooftop pool. In the UK. In March.

How condescending can you get. I completely agree with the post you belittled and I work in a professional capacity and we do go with each other on work trips. It's nothing to do with a professional persona. You don't see your spouse during the working day and if there is formal evening event you don't go. It's not Victorian and has nothing to do with having to have your spouse with you. Some of us like being with our spouse and some of us do know a bit about our colleagues lives out side work because, surprisingly, they are fellow humans.

Wondering if that’s projection… it’s a huge stretch!

It was odd she jumped to that conclusion, but equally odd that spouses tag along on work trips. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before. I think she probably found the whole situation very strange.

I don't. Why should all evening be spent with colleagues? You need a break and some downtime from them.

Definitely not! The atmosphere is bound to be frosty now.

It's fair enough for the company to decide they don't want non-employees staying in the rooms they're paying for. Bit of a shame maybe but it is up to them. They certainly don't get to decide what employees do in their downtime on work trips though. None of them owe their colleagues entertainment.

While I take most PPs' arguments that this may not have been her exact complaint, I have known dozens of women with this much main character syndrome! Many of 'em also saw their god-given purpose in life - and work - as shagging any available men.

To be fair to them, it never hurt their careers. They were reasonably good at their jobs and got extra praise when they did well. They were friendly and fun. No idea how any of them came to believe their value lay between their legs, and they would've lied if asked. Several had very definite personality disorders.

I can't imagine any of the women I knew playing their faces about wives accompanying their husbands - but can imagine a similar woman, who'd always been in a male field, feeling her special place had been usurped.

Who knows, but it's nowhere near as impossible as most assume.

Totally agree with your comment.

it's the fact that you are all a group but all so self centre that you would spilt up and leave one person alone. If you weren't so self-centred and rude, and had thought for a minute that X hadn't got a spouse with them, so you needed to make sure that everyone did something together with all of the colleagues including X and all the spouses

Wanting to do your own thing after work isn't rude or self-centered. Why do they all need to do something together? They're adults, not kids on a school trip. They're not obliged to spend their time with each other after work just because they're not going home.

Also the other couple literally invited her to dinner and she said no. And besides, the complaint wasn't that they'd excluded her, it was that the wives had come because they thought she'd act inappropriately with their husbands.