To not want to share a tent with nine men I don’t know

[Touranosaurus]

I have a two-day company event coming up, organised by the parent company in a large international group. The event will be attended by top senior executives from different businesses and countries. According to the agenda, there will be presentations on day 1 followed by departure for an unspecified team-building event, away from the main venue with return travel the following day. I’ve discovered that the secret team-building event is a camping trip which will involve sleeping in tents of ten people, based on pre-assigned teams. The last time there was a company event, I was the only female in my team because it’s not a very diverse company at the top levels. So, this means I can reasonably expect to end up sleeping in a tent with nine men who I don’t know well or at all, who I can expect to encounter in a professional capacity in the future and who may or may not be quite drunk. There will be no privacy and no personal space. The whole thing makes me feel really uncomfortable and I feel sorry for all the people for whom it remains a secret and who will have no choice but to spend the night sleeping in a tent with strangers. But at least I have a chance to make my excuses.

YABU: Camping in a tent with people you don’t know will be character-building and you will have a great time! It would be a shame to miss the whole event because of one night.

YANBU: Sounds bloody awful and it’s unreasonable of the company to expect you to be comfortable with it. Make your excuses and only go to the presentation part.

Likewize - goodnight

9 men, 1 woman, overnight in a tent, at a "company" event? Seriously?

I don’t think all men are predators.

Sharing a tent with unknown men however would greatly impact my mh because of the predatory men I have had experience of.

And one time even though I screamed, shouted and fought back, others did nothing because they didn’t want to get involved. These were people who I knew and thought I could trust, that would always have my back.

Not wanting to get involved isn’t an isolated incidence, it happens far too often when it comes to any type of violence.

I would categorically refuse to camp in anything other than a luxury single tent with a proper bed and en suite washing facilities. I wouldn't share with one other woman, let alone nine men.

I once worked somewhere where there was a team-building camping thing occasionally. Fortunately, I was senior enough to be able to tell them that it just wasn't going to happen and if they wanted me to attend they were going to have to book a nearby B and B or hotel.

No way. And to the poster made out you're not a team player if you don't want to share a tent with 9 men snoring and farting is ridiculous. I'd be so uncomfortable. I don't think all men are predators but this is such an inappropriate move for a business. Sharing a tent with another woman would be awful too. I'm sure the men would be uncomfortable about the prospect of sharing a tent with a lone woman too!

I am over 50 and did my fair share of pushing the feminist cause. Most of us were not fighting for the right to share a tent with 9 unknown men who are likely to have been drinking. As a solicitor I can say that this has disaster written all over it. It's like the office Christmas party x 10 - and many careers have been destroyed in the course of an evening at those events. I can't imagine any legal adviser signing off on this plan.

How to tell an event has been designed by men, for men.

1. Risk of assault/sexual assault/generally being uncomfortable knowing you are vulnerable and weaker than the strangers surrounding you in an intimate setting.

1. Toilet facilities, especially for those whose biological processes extend to more than just pissing or shitting on command of the owner.

1. Religious reasons for being unable to share spaces with the opposite sex (yes may impact men, but as they are by far in the majority at a senior level, there would be easy work arounds).

Further lack of consideration towards people with disabilities, of either sex, people's personal relationships at home (jealous partners etc.), MH issues, introverts, people with short term injuries, basically anyone who isn't "Model A: healthy male hunter-gatherer tyoe". What were the company thinking?!

I do wonder what happens to all the people who run these types of events when they get older and start to find that sleeping in a bivouac in North Wales in November is no longer as easy as they found it in their 30s.

Is there a home for broken down motivational events organisers?

Do they have an epiphany and suddenly realise why Julia from accounts described the whole thing as a pointless waste of time when they too now need to get up for a wee multiple times per night?

Are you stupid? Have men suddenly stopped raping and sexually assaulting women then, or are you telling us just to pretend they have because that’s equality?! What are you even talking about? Why are you trying to act like women’s concerns around men’s behaviour is pathetic and silly?

What a vile post.

It’s based on sex for a start, learn the difference before you start lecturing others.
Are you aware rapes and sexual assaults happen on army barracks? How do you think that happens?
Can you explain why you have the deeply misogynistic view that the problem is women’s view and caution of men, and not that men still rape and abuse us? Do you want us all to pretend men don’t do these things so that men can feel better for some reason? Is that your priority?

This is the maddest thing I've ever heard.

I hope this turns out to be something said by someone as a joke, that someone else has taken seriously.

I wouldn't even want to share a hotel room with my female colleagues, never mind a tent, with the men. And everyone on my team is lovely.

Nah they become the bosses so they don’t have to do the work

When they finally retire they look at their assets and laugh at the stupid people who paid for their early retirement lifestyle choices 😂 They have fond memories of June and others who didn’t really see the point. And amazed despite the obvious criticism they managed to pull off the scam year after year.

It’s the ultimate grift. Convince a bunch of adults that they need to work on team building. Despite the fact these same adults would have spent years in education working as a team.

Personally I found these events fabulous for manipulators like me. Saved a lot of time finding out who were the yes people. And wondered who the incompetent were related to.

@Roundandnour have you noticed how the events always start with senior motivator saying 'I'll tell you a bit about myself'.

They will then tell you that after 'a stint in the military' (read cadets/reserves/boys brigade) they realised that 'people need to be challenged' to Think Outside The Box, to Get Out Of Their Comfort Zone, to Push The Envelope.

What will then follow is a series of activities designed to only work if you have done them 50 times before and you are good at map reading/raft building/abseiling down cliffs and have a good head for heights.

Funnily enough these were not the key skills asked for when Julia and Bob were recruited as senior finance managers.

Julia and Bob already know each other so spend the breaks chatting about office politics and how the new system implementation is going.

I would be extremely surprised if they put men and women in the same tents. That would be an absolute HR nightmare. Unless this is a particularly weird, dysfunctional company I think you can expect separate quarters for men and women.

Maybe bring it up to them and ask if all the women could be allocated to sleeping in a tent together. If it's men organising it they probably haven't even considered the issue and may be pleased someone ehas brought it to their attention.

YANBU at all! Just no!!

As the only female in a senior team in a VERY male dominated sector (not men bashing in the slightest, just the current dynamic as my job isn’t ‘exciting’ in the slightest (also explains why I’m 15 years + younger than the rest of my team) I can easily see how this has been deemed a ‘great idea’.

Personally I wouldn’t want to miss out but I’d take my own pop up 2 man tent (before DD we camped a lot)…. But equally you’re not unreasonable of you want to leave before camping … I’m just so sleep deprived that the idea of a tent on my own sounds like the Ritz 😂

The thing is, camping is not something to spring on anyone as a surprise activity.

Have they taken account of individual circumstances, medical requirements etc? If they have, how the hell have they got hold of such confidential information?

Has everyone been warned to bring suitable clothing? Bring overnight personal or medical requirements? Have they got suitable facilities for the people who need a clean environment eg to administer injections?

Or is coping with this part of the experience? As a team are they supposed to fashion blood sugar testing kits, sanitary protection, spare stoma bags etc out of the local flora and fauna?

Get a group of people together and I can guarantee there will be a plethora of conditions which people happily manage in an office environment but which can quickly turn bad when some idiot decides it will be good for bonding to go and sleep in a field.

I wouldn’t want to be sharing a sleeping space with people I don’t know well or at all, regardless of how many or gender! But 9 barely known men, who may be drunk, hard no!

I love camping but no way would I camp:

1. On a work event
2. With strangers
3. 9 men

I would be so uncomfortable. Maybe you could get COVID around the time!

YA most definitely NBU

Hahahahaaaaaa

No. Way.

BBC News - 35,000 cases of sexual misconduct or violence in NHS in five years
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65671018

It would be a no from me.
No way would I share a tent with those men.
Woman aren't even safe in hospitals. We sadly always have to have our wits about us.

I was at my husband's Christmas party when a colleague of my husbands approached me. Told me what he would like to do to me.

The next year he was touching up a woman while his wife was at the bar. This was witnessed by the bosses wife.
He no longer works for the company.

Sadly this behaviour is rife still

I would be bringing this up with HR. There's plenty of other ways to teambuild.
Having one women in a tent full of men is ridiculous..
I don't think people should be forced to attend these things they make me so uncomfortable and full of anxiety.
As a women who's been attacked I'd have left the instant they said I was in a tent with all men. In fact the moment a tent was mentioned it's just my idea of hell camping with work colleagues in general lol 🤣

What nutjob organises this and thinks it's ok??

They get sold it as a 'motivational' event.

The event organisers quote made up statistics about how team bonding has increased by 500% and use selective quotes from feedback sheets to say what an amazing experience it is.

For the event organisers who spend their working lives building outdoor activities a night of camping is a little out of their comfort zone but not a lot.

For some of the participants this will be a country mile outside their comfort zone. They will be cold, uncomfortable, ill equipped, worrying if they will be able to find the toilet in the night, worrying if they will be safe.