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

Good luck for tomorrow OP

And I agree with QuantumBaby - I certainly wouldn't be telling my manager now. It won't go tits-up because you know what you are doing. You will handle it.

good luck, OP. It is shitty that you are in this position, but you sound like you can handle it.

When you get back be sure that this story is told, to the right people. You can't financially back away from this one!

Look if it goes a bit tits up at the presentation (hopefully not) YOU will be the most visible and YOU will get the blame not her. Talk to your manager and cover your arse. Good luck

Good luck eastie!
You sound kind (possibly too kind!)
I am also a softie and would be conflicted over this.
Get some sleep and good luck.

I can understand why you aren't running to your boss - it looks bad on you that you're both still prepping the presentation the night before.

But you are where you are. Forget her, hope she oversleeps and drops herself in it tomorrow, and focuss on pulling it out of the bag yourself.

Good luck tomorrow!

Honestly, I’d film the football drunken behaviour. < this. Because if it does go tits up tomorrow, this idiot will throw you under a bus in a heartbeat.

Good luck, Anything bad that happens to her out of this is her doing, not yours. I hope you manage to get by tomorrow. Do not cover for her. She did a shit job of prep and your colleague seems to have rescued that. Thank goodness she was so pissed you had to request help.

Yes, having children and working is hard, but people who pull this shit do working mothers no favours!!

Good luck Op.

Good luck with your presentation! Glad you're halfway to getting sorted! Try and get a good sleep and wake up fresh

Yes I am too soft for my own good, I know this Colleague and I have similar personal situations (young DC, working FT). She said that she literally never gets a moment to herself so this trip was her night off and a little bit of freedom. She knows I am pissed off and claimed she will send me some reworked slides overnight but I'm done listening to her.

I am back at the hotel now, I had to leave her at the restaurant. Preparing to log onto to the laptop now and run through the product demo. I can do the demo but she is a day to day operational user and much better than me at doing this however I will have to run with it and hope for the best.

I have literally never seen this side to her before (she never comes out for team drinks or attends any work parties) and she could well wake up tomorrow as right as rain tomorrow but I doubt it.

My manager will not be able to help with this situation to be honest and I admit i am reluctant to involve him as he will want to know why I've left finalising the presentation to the 11th hour. The reason is I've done this a dozen times before with reliable colleagues who have worked with me to pull together presentations at the last minute - it's the way our team works. Unfortunately I have learned the hard way this colleague does not work in the same way.

I think informing the boss isn't necessarily about being "senior enough" to sort it out, or expecting the boss to actually do anything, it's about being upfront and honest about what's happened, and the op ensuring she doesn't end up an accessory to unacceptable behaviour on a business trip.
If it were me, regardless of rank, I would email just to let the boss know - what's going on, I have a plan and can handle it but thought they should know.

Sounds like a horrid situation op, hope it all goes well tomorrow!

I agree with TalkinPaece: think like a bloke who wants his bonus.
Warn your boss TONIGHT. Do your best tomorrow. Fuck her.

Just read your latest update op, could you maybe phrase it to the boss as "I'm trying to get a final and complete run through done and she's rat-arsed down the road"??

Not much point saying it should have been done already though is there? It is what it is. OP is left trying to sort it out whilst her colleague is on a one woman bar crawl. Hopefully she makes it back in one piece. She’s actually being very stupid, she’s in a different country, blind drunk and on her own. Does she have no sense of personal safety?

I'd get tomorrow out of the way and then have a quiet word with your boss when you're back in the office, assuming you have a good relationship?

It's not telling tales, it's protecting the company's reputation, she isn't fit to be put in front of clients. And surely your boss with have to sign off your expenses so will see the amount of alcohol bought? You don't want them to think you were part of the drinking!

Oh and I've finalised plenty of presentations in the hotel the night before. Sometimes you simply don't have time beforehand, that's the way some businesses work. Even more so if it's a regular part of the job.

As your manager I would see it as both if you are at fault
You should have had this locked down before you left the office and simply been polishing it tonight.

You are not calling the manager to help you out.

Calling the manager is to cover your own arse and to manage the manager's expectations of the presentation. You can also impress the manager by presenting yourself as a person who is steady and a problem solver, and someone who understands what company loyalty means.

Proper communication is a vital work skill. You need to get over your discomfort and be the person with this skill today.

You don't owe this woman any sympathy or 24 hours of a wild spree on company funds.

She planned this and planned to use you.

She doesn't care at all about you or your career or where your children would end up if you were to lose your job or miss a promotion over her failure to pull her weight.

I would send your colleague a text or email to say you are working on filling in the gaps in the presentation, that you are really disappointed that this wasn't done earlier in the day with you, and that unless she is in a proper condition to represent the company in the morning she shouldn't come near the meeting.
At least then if the shit hits the fan you have some "proof" of her behaviour.

We simply did not have the time to finish the presentation before arriving here. I had actually completed a draft version so it just needed to be put into a coherent order with her slides added in. I've run this kind of meeting many times before and routine is: fly out early the day before, spend afternoon and early evening with team mate in hotel putting slides together, out for dinner and then an early night. After meeting the following day then going out for drinks etc. Had no idea this particular colleague would be so unprofessional.

My manager hates having drama brought to his door (his words) but I have already prepped an email to him explaining I had to present on my own ready to send a midday tomorrow. If the client does not renew the license this affects managers retention bonus too so agree I need to cover my back. Have WhatsApped my colleague telling her this is a shitshow and I am completely fucked off with her.

I'd be furious, as I'm sure you are.

If you don't want to contact manager now (unfortunately you should have been in contact with him an hour after you got to the hotel and expected to be working - one thing to have a single drink (not great but different from getting rat arsed) or just having a clean up and catch up after getting into the hotel - as soon as it was obvous that she really didn't care about you or the presentation. even if it was just an email to say that your slides are done, apart from the ones that she is supplying, please can you have them asap = and then repeating on the hour, every hour, and cc your boss into it, no need to say that she's drunk, she could have gone off sight seeing or whatever) then you would have at least shown that you were trying to sort things out and he could have seen that she had disappeared and tried to call her to chew her out.

Anyhow, I digress, good luck for tomorrow and make sure that you send emails to her tonight to say how pissed off you are, how the slides are not what she was supposed to deliver - they're just generic ones that you could have downloaded, rather than the proper custom ones that she should have written and so on - make sure that you email her everything you want to say. Remember to put in that you haven't even had a chance to have a glass of wine with your meal or a night cap (if true!) because you were waiting on her and then on discovering that she had failed to do what she should have, you are the one that has had to spend their time sorting it all out rather than having a final run through, relaxing and having an early night, and so on. Make sure you send it to her and get a read receipt on it.

Then, if she tries to claim you were out drinking too or say something to bring you down, you can forward the contemporaneous account of what happened to your boss, saying that you were trying to manage the situation and not trouble him -but showing what your experience of the night was. You won't have dobbed her in initially - but you will have the email there to do so should you need to - hopefully if she sees it she will realise she has screwed up and won't try anything bad.

good luck tomorrow!

My manager hates having drama brought to his door (his words) but I have already prepped an email to him explaining I had to present on my own ready to send a midday tomorrow.

I have problem X. Solution implemented is Y. However, I should have needed to have done that and thoroughly fucked off with her unprofessionalism.

That's not drama. It's a problem he needs to deal with.

I hope tomorrow goes well and actually hope your colleague calls in sick tomorrow so that you can focus.

God I feel stressed reading the thread, what an idiot your colleague is, and what a stressful situation. You can do it though OP. Surely your boss doesn't really need to know the full details of how little the presentation was prepared before, it's bad enough that she got so pissed she couldn't present the next day. She is going to feel really rough and stink, no way should she be put in the same room as a client. If she does appear at breakfast like a new woman how will you play it?