On work trip abroad. Colleague gone crazy

[Eastie77]

Just that really. I'm abroad for work, 2 days in a major European city with a client meeting tomorrow morning. I've travelled with a female colleague who, like me, has 2 young DC. When we found out about this trip she messaged me to say she was desperately looking forward to it as she needs a break from the DC and is run ragged juggling everything. I said I totally sympathised and she replied that we should use this trip as an opportunity to get rat arsed on the company's money. I just laughed.

Arrived at the airport this morning for our early flight to find she had already had downed 2 pints but was at least sober. She kicked up a fuss on the plane as there was no alcohol on sale - not massively but enough to embarrass me. Landed and she bought more alcohol and has generally been increasingly drunk, hyper and shrill since saying this is 'her time'. We arrived at the hotel at 3pm and were meant to go over our presentation for tomorrow but I've had zero input from her. I need her to contribute a bunch of slides and practice a demo of the technical solution we are meant to be presenting to the client but she is not playing ball and has just been propping up the bar. I'm stressed. It looks as if I will have to do her slides and I don't have enough knowledge so emailing colleagues back home. I don't want to speak to my manager about this. She is normally quite conscientious

Oh do fuck off - did you not read the bit where the OP said that both their and their boss's bonuses depend on this? Fucking "insensitive" - bollocks!

bythebaytoday Just wondering if you have direct experience of having to make formal presentations to clients?

an insensitive b word.
That's you told OP. A b word, as I live and breathe.

^
I see someone has found the thread. Hello pissed colleague.

Eastie
Well done it sounds as though you did very well.

bythebaytoday - stop attention seeking - you obviously haven't a clue. Bye bye go back to sleep.

@bythebaytoday

Wow! That's a strange interpretation of this tale.

bythebay are you the colleague...?

Well done!

Well bythebaytoday if she gets sacked she won't be run ragged in future will she....
she was there for work, not a piss-up.

You are the colleague bythebaytoday c’mon fess up

byethebaytoday - my first ever proper insult on MN, thank you Yes I'm so insensitive and wicked that I tried to salvage this meeting and the resulting bonus that my 'poor colleague' will also get even though she did eff all to deserve it.

Dyrne - yes, it is the case that our team just does not have lots of time to pull these presentations together well in advance. We often get briefed at the last minute on what is required. If a couple of us travel for a meeting it's common practice to put it all together the day before. Oftentimes we will not have had the chance to even talk to each other about the meeting in the weeks leading up to it.

My manager knows we work like this. He might occasionally bollock us for doing stuff last minute but it's half hearted as he knows why it happens. He is also the most disorganised person I have ever met!

I find the fact that the presentation wasn’t prepared & checked by management before you went out very odd/unprofessional.
Feel that OP & “colleague from office” (if they really exist) have been jobsworths & I feel sorry for the lady letti g her hair down. I’d also not have left a drink female alone. You can go around feeling better than her but what if she’d been mugged or attacked...
Op might be a bit smug but not sure she’s behaved particularly decently.
Not saying the girl getting drunk has either but sounds like she has issues.
More important to be kind than right?

She did one part of the demo and was clearly struggling with the effects of last night. Embarrassingly enough the client had to correct and assist her on a couple of occasions when she got stuck navigating through the platform.
I would not be surprised if the client mentions this at a later date - possibly at a higher level than your manager. It won't stay under wraps for long, regardless.

No it's not more important to be kind than right when 3 people (at least!) have their income resting on the outcome!! FFS, what is wrong with you people?!

Man, the idiots are coming out in force now.

As so often, I see that people on learning that the OP does things differently from their own workplace have felt able to tell her she's doing it all wrong. Why do people do this? Not all workplaces are the same.

Has the manager said anything more OP?

Telling, perhaps, that Yb thinks the drunk colleague is a 'girl' when she is in fact a grown woman attempting to hold down a responsible job and caring responsibilities. As, of course, is the OP, who behaved in a grown up way that recognised she had wider responsibilities than babysitting her drunk colleague.

How did it go op?

Ah gotcha Yb23487643. So next time this situation come up; OP should do all the presentation herself (even the parts she doesn’t actually know the technical detail for). She’ll also be doing this perched on a stool in a crowded, noisy bar, as she has to babysit the colleague. She should then stay up till 1am with said colleague.

Then, when she loses the client contract from a piss poor presentation and gets bollocked; at the very minimum (and not given further opportunities to get future bonuses).

At which point, presumably, OP can ring up her landlord and offer to pay her rent in “kindness points”?

Laughing at management checking a presentation, it’s just not the way it works at a lot of companies. You’d look incompetent if you wanted your work ‘checked’.

I find the fact that the presentation wasn’t prepared & checked by management before you went out very odd/unprofessional.

Really?! "Management" hasn't checked one of my presentations since I was a graduate!

OP, she was massively selfish, and clearly doesn't understand what a work trip is actually supposed to be about. Well done on pulling it out of the bag and hope it's good news.

@bythebay - apart from your spectacular missing of the point, and your entirely unwarranted insult to the OP, the thing that I found utterly ridiculous about your post was you putting work in inverted commas - as if to imply that work isn’t real, doesn’t matter.

You do understand that work is what earns the money that allows people (including the OP’s drunken, irresponsible and - yesterday, at least - work-shy colleague) to afford life’s little luxuries, like eating and living indoors.

The sensible, responsible, grown up approach for the OP’s colleague would have been to work with her yesterday, to make sure the presentation was as good as it could be, have a nice meal out last night - with a couple of drinks - do the presentation today as well as it could be done, and then celebrate afterwards.

The OP’s colleague did not do the grown up thing. Instead she drank like a 18-year-old on an Ibiza rave holiday, left the OP to do her work and piss-head colleague’s work - and made extra work for the colleague back in the UK who had to send the extra slides, failed to ensure her part of the presentation was complete and as good as it should be, turned up hung over to an important meeting and cocked up some of her part of the presentation.

And the OP is a bitch?

I cannot believe that a grown up would read this thread and call the OP names. I can only assume you are taking a break from GCSE study leave.

No no, SDTG - the OP is a "B-word" - that's just your interpretation of it!

Could have been a butterfly, for all we know. Or a bum.

downcasteyes Thu 09-May-19 07:50:19

Compassion, like respect, is something that should be offered automatically, not something you have to "earn". I realise, however, that in the deeply selfish, individualist and grabby culture of this forum, both of those ideas are radical concepts.

In the real world, your job is what you have to earn on a daily basis.

Getting so pissed that a colleague is left facing the prospect of doing your job as well as her own is a choice that deserves only contempt. When your job and your income rely on the effectiveness of a team effort, it is not at all unreasonable to consider covering your arse if you are the only team member capable of standing up, let alone working on an important presentation on which the income of the company and its employees depends.