So background. DH works in a fairly male dominated industry.
When he first started in this company he would be away fairly often. One or two nights away every 4/6 weeks. One week in April and the odd conference.
I almost always went with him if I could for no other reason than the free hotel. If there were other colleagues they would have have their spouses with them as well. We became friends with many of them and still socialise. Irrelevant to my post but we always had separate bills and we never exploited expenses and we never saw other colleagues do this either but obviously the room was the same price regardless of occupancy.
Covid came along and other ways of doing things came about so audits etc were done remotely and these trips are now few and far between.
Last week I did join him for the first time in probably 6 months. He was leaving the centre with a male colleague in his fifties and a female colleague (mid thirties but I don’t know if anyone will find ages relevant) who had joined the company around three to six months ago (DH and colleague differ on the dates).
As they left to check into hotel the female colleague asked if they were eating, but they said that they had their wives with them and the male colleague said that she was welcome to join them but she declined. We had booked a pub meal on our own.
They were all together on Friday but over the weekend she has made a complaint suggesting that I and the other colleague’s wife had deliberately tagged along as they believed she would be unprofessional and inappropriate.
An email has now gone out saying that spouses are no longer able to tag along.
Colleague was spoken to face to face and the bosses did seem apologetic. DH was on a site and saw the email and was phoned by one of the directors again with apologies.
Surely she should have been told about the culture of the company. I am really gobsmacked. Two other wives have texted me this morning and they feel the same. We had a really nice lifestyle there which is bound to have created a nice work environment.