To have accepted the offer of a lift from a (very) senior colleague

[bluecardrive]

Next week there is a big conference for my job, it's the first in-person one I will have been to. Around 10 of us are going and it's in a town around 2h from me.

I live in the same town as a very senior colleague of mine (she is my manager's manager's manager). I am very low down on the hierarchy, pretty much at the bottom... She offered to drive us both there and I accepted as it will be really helpful, I was a little worried about how to get to the conference via public transport as I don't drive and it's a bit of pain to get to. It also eased my nerves to know I won't be turning up alone and getting lost(!)

However, I'm now starting to worry I've made some kind of faux pas and I should not have accepted the offer and it was done as some kind of abstract kind gesture rather than an actual invitation. I have never met this colleague in person, only remotely and very briefly via Zoom. I'm worried about struggling to make conversation during the drive, how to broach the awkward topic of offering money for fuel, etc.

I am wondering whether I should email and say thank you for the offer but I have now managed to sort out transportation so I no longer need a lift? Or whether to just brazen it out?

She’ll have been junior once & younger, she’s just a person & she’ll only have offered if she was ok with doing it. As pp’s have said the journey cost will be covered by expenses. Just be professional during the drive & remember to thank her, personally I’d do that at the beginning and again when you arrive. Take her lead on conversation & relax!

She's another person offering you a lift. That's it

Trust me, she hasn’t got to where she has by being anyone’s fool.

She offered you a lift because she wants to give you a lift.

Accept the lift, don't worry about the cost as she'll claim expenses. It saves you time and the company money

All the posters offering to pay for petrol honestly have you never claimed work expenses before?

We aren’t talking about the CF cadging a lift home every night. This is an actual travel expense

I love claiming petrol expenses!

45p a mile, I get 2.5 times what I paid for petrol!

Even if she is (she will be) claiming milage it's polite to offer but what will undoubtably happen is she will say "nah, it's on expenses" and literally think nothing of it. So either which way it doesn't really matter.

Don't, whatever you do, give her a gift, send a thankyou note or plan conversations out FFS. Take a bag of sweets and just make idle chat as you would to any other human being.

Ignore anyone who says to offer money or bring gifts. It is not done in business. Thank her, but that is it.

As for conversation just relax, it’s a good time for you both to get to know each other. Ask her questions if you want, talk about the local goings on in your area, talk about the conference and what to expect, on the way home you’ll be able to talk about what happened at the conference and how it relates to your organization.

Not everyone high up is a jerk

Take the lift and perhaps use it as a networking moment and get some ideas from her.
Or just have a chat about normal stuff.

If she offered you the lift then it's ok. If you hinted heavily and someone else volunteered her then maybe look elsewhere

I remember getting a lift with our CEO once, I couldn’t think of anything to say so I asked did you see Big Brother last night (it was when Big brother was on TV then) he just said “No”. … awks 😆😆😆

Make the most of it (and do not offer money, FFS). Be ready for questions about what things are like for you at the coalface, if you have any ideas to improve teamwork, productivity or make it a better organisation, tell her. It’s what I do .

And to make you feel better OP, years ago, I once went to a work conference in a Nottingham hotel (I lived in Warks), and when I got there I found it was the wrong one. This hotel had two branches in the city and our national conference was the other side. I did not know Nottingham at all. The reception gave me and a couple of older senior men who’d made the same mistake, a rubbish map to get to our venue with only 10 mins before it started, so I turned quickly to go. One of the men then said to me ‘I’ll come with you, I’m the keynote speaker’. The other chap scarpered. I only then recognised him as my manager’s manager’s manager’s manager’s manager from a photo on a newsletter .

We got into my car, I nervously said I don’t know Nottingham, would he care to navigate? He said ‘No, I’ll leave that to you’ I was . Didn’t speak to me again. Then at the venue he said stop, jumped from my car and ran in. I had to park up and creep into the back of the plenary a bit late. Cheeky fucker saw me at the buffet lunch and didn’t even acknowledge me. Arsehole. So you won’t have that arseholery to contend with

Hope did the conference and the lift share go OP?