For not wanting to stay with a couple?

[LadyMaine]

I've been working on a creative project with with X for two years. We live at opposite ends of the country.

We planned two nights in a luxury 2 bedroomed apart-hotel a few miles from my house to plan the next stage of the project. We'll be spitting the cost 50/50. The idea was to give us 48 hours of clear headspace to work on the project.

Only after I booked the hotel she told me that her husband would be coming with her. (I'm single). I don't know him and don't really want to spend what I thought was going to be a 'girls' worktrip with him. I've suggested that we change to a one bedroom apartment and I just join her for work during the daytimes.

She's really keen than I come and promises that he will be out sightseeing during the daytimes. He will also buy dinner on the first night to make it up to me. She has also apologized for not asking me beforehand. The trip is her birthday present to him.

Am I being unreasonable for not wanting to stay with a couple?

Have you broken the news to her yet?

I'd be changing the room to the one bedroom, less ornate room, because you will have no need for the second bedroom. If you can, talk to your hotel friend to see if they can give a room with a view but that's about all I'd do at this stage.

I have read your responses and she would be putting her travel costs through expenses, so why not the accommodation? She is trying to give her husband a nice trip away paid for by her business expenses...oh and you too but you've wised up to her antics.

Have you told her yet?

It's obvious, it's it? It would have been a nice treat for the OP in a lovely environment and a chance to focus on work rather than hosting a colleague in her own home and all the extra work that entails. Also, the OP stays with friends when she goes to meet colleague, so why should she host?

I’d tell her you’re pulling out, they can still have the apartment and the cost will be the regular £750, rather than your discount rate.

Crazy and unless the work has to be done right now, I'd be inclined to cancel and rearrange the work trip. 'Work headspace' and 'husband's birthday celebrations' don't really match.

She's a CF. She's also cheap. Instead of paying for one meal they should have offered to pay 2/3 of the cost. I'd decline and offer it to them with plenty of notice. They can them cancel if £250 doesn't suit their budget and find a cheaper place. I'd keep it professional going forward, I think you've overestimated the friendship part of your relationship. Let us know how she responds.

Apart from anything else, I'm not sure a work trip with someone he barely knows is much of a birthday present for the husband!

Have you any idea of the costs of trains fares from one end of the country to another? Add in the accommodation and meals etc and she is probably looking at a cost close to 700/800gbp which is fine if you are wealthy but what if you are not?

It is a work project, it is not a 'nice treat' for op. That is a very strange way of looking at it. Op did not incur accommodation costs when she was staying in London, she doesn't say who she stayed with so we don't know.

What I am trying to understand is the nature of the friendship. Is the friend a personal friend that just so happens you are working on a project together, or is she a work friend and unlikely to feature so much once the project is finished? I think this matters.

Either way, I would ask them to pay for the hotel directly and don't get involved in the payments op, and if they have to downgrade the smaller less spectacular apartment that is a matter for them. She really should not have added her husband to your arrangement!

This is very true and I hadn't thought of that.

They want you there for A) your discount and B) your half of the room cost. Why would you want to sit down for a meal as a third wheel with a married couple anyway?

They can them cancel if £250 doesn't suit their budget and find a cheaper place.

i bet £750 suits their budget even less.

What's all this interrogation of the OP about? she doesn't have to account to you for who travelled where and when and who paid.

Well the op hasn't stayed with the friend either so... not sure why she should invite her to be honest.

Whichever way you look at it they agreed a business trip. Op booked. The cf changed the dynamics. Straight up cf.

We met just for the evening, for dinner with a larger group of people the last time they came up. It was amost two years ago and I honestly can't remember her husband.

I think her bringing her partner to your city last time was a bit of a drip feed to be honest.

If you didn't raise the issue last time, and even with his presence managed to get the work completed, then I can see why she might think it okay to happen again.

Was he in the way the previous time or did he spend it out and self occupied all day?

Sorry cross posted - that does change things.

We met just for the evening, for dinner with a larger group of people the last time they came up. It was amost two years ago and I honestly can't remember her husband.

I suppose that might mean at least that he will make himself scarce during the day when you are working. Good that you have the lobby option to work as I'm sure he'd still want to access the room

He will also buy dinner on the first night to make it up to me.

So, having imposed her H on you & your working trip, she is also going to make you sit through dinner doing all the small talk & "getting to know you" social arseache?

She's astonishingly high-handed & entitled.
Has any of this attitude ever seeped into her project work with you, or has she been reasonable up until now?

If she's calling this trip her birthday present to him - she's short-changing him as well! If she were a man, & her H her W, can you imagine the AIBU on here?!
She's a CF par excellence.

Massive drip feed that her dh came last time. So it’s not a big stretch that he would come this time.

I don't blame you for not entertaining this any more. It's completely changed the dynamic of the weekend.

We met just for the evening, for dinner with a larger group of people the last time they came up. It was amost two years ago and I honestly can't remember her husband.
Coming for dinner with a large group is totally different to hijacking the weekend though.

At the end of the day the plan was a work situation with a bit of friendly socialising, not a birthday weekend trip for someone's husband.

It's not at all. Last time, the OP was staying with them. This time, the OP booked the apartment for her and her colleague, to split the costs 50/50.

There's no reason the husband needs to be there.

I don’t see how it changes things. OP said the idea was to give us 48 hours of clear headspace to work on the project - ie just her and the work partner, on this particular phase of the project. The fact that the husband may have come along to a dinner at a previous visit made by OP, when several other people were there, doesn’t seem to me to excuse the partner deciding to hijack this weekend which was specifically planned to be just the 2 women working, included accommodation, and has now become the husband's birthday treat as well - and she deliberately didn’t fess up to it until she’d bought the train tickets.

How can that be right?

Your solution is perfect and more than reasonable. She should have asked you, anybody would have known that was the correct thing to do. I wouldn't be comfortable sharing with a couple I didn't know that well either (not casting aspersions on the man, it's just a bit close for comfort). She has also reneged on the 48 hours' solid work headspace that you mentioned was the objective of the trip.

Good on you for having firm boundaries here. She knows she is in the wrong or wouldn't have planned to buy you dinner 'to make it up to you'.

It sounds like a different scenario though - last time doesnt seem to be proposed as a 48 hour intensive work session, and as there was a larger group I am making a guess it was right at the start of the project, so possibly meeting with the clients/other people during the work day only.

Im wondering if the OPs work partner has a husband problem though, as in he doesnt like her going away without her.

However this is not OPs problem. Up until the last minute the plan was discussed and apparently decided. It would be OP and the other woman only, with the focus being on a brianstorming period of work in order to finish off this project.

This lady didnt let OP know that she had decided to change the goalposts until a point where it looked like OP would have any choice but to go along with it.

Whether thats because the lady thought that she would cheekily combine it with a weekend gift weekend for her husband, on the back of OPs discount, or whether she had hoped her husband would let her go alone and he didnt, or whether she knew OP wouldnt agree to it, we wont know until OP speaks to her and clarifies.

But I dont think its on OP to shoulder any blame here. I believe she is in her right to back out of the agreement if the goalposts have been dramatically changed. I do think that some of the time should be focussed on getting the work done, because as OP said, the deadline is coming up, and not knowing if its a husband problem or not means that this will happen again (unless that scheduled work is going to be done in London)

But its not a nice situation to be put in, and I respect OP for maintaining her boundaries and declining the shared accommodation, whilst still honouring the discounted rate for the hotel for the other couple

My thoughts exactly.