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

Wow what an update.

I feel sad for your colleague, sounded like she clearly wasn't coping with her home life, absolutely didn't excuse her behaviour of course.

Crikey. What an update.

Thanks for the update, always pleasing to kear the end of a story and find that a CF has got their comupance. Good luck for the contract renewal

Thanks for updating. Wow what an outcome. Fingers crossed for contract renewal. Sounds like you went on holiday at the right time

Dig deep. You can get to the bottom of this cloak and dagger stuff. Aren't you eaten alive with curiosity as to what those messages contained?

Thanks for the update Eastie, it sounds like her behaviour on this trip was the final straw... I hope you're OK. It sounds like she simply wasn't up to the job...

Perhaps this will be the wake-up call she needs to behave better in future employment.

Bloody hell OP. What an update. Sounds like you were bang on the money not that I doubted you for a minute .

@katewhinesalot yes, I'm dying to know what was in the messages. Everyone in the team is!!

There's lots of speculation: abusive or graphic messages a possibility although this is really unlikely. Since the messenger system is internal only she can't have been sending confidential information externally so we are all wondering what she did and if/why searching through the messages was linked to the drunken trip abroad.

Our manager has made it clear it won't disclose anything which is fair enough.

I have a mole friend in the IT team who told me they were instructed by HR to download messages going back a while. I've asked him to discreetly dig for more info. Very unprofessional I know but I unashamedly admit I can't rest until I know what she wrote (this is also a reflection of how dull my day to day life is).

Please please don't ask him to do that - he's risking his job and entire future as well as yours. IT people HAVE to be entirely trustworthy on the data front.

Don't risk your career for a bit of idle gossip, OP.

But now a few months have gone by @Eastie77, if there is anything you can now safely say we would like to hear it..

Hope you got the contract renewed.