Husband’s female colleague’s issue being taken very seriously.

[Sweetmarzipan]

So background. DH works in a fairly male dominated industry.

When he first started in this company he would be away fairly often. One or two nights away every 4/6 weeks. One week in April and the odd conference.

I almost always went with him if I could for no other reason than the free hotel. If there were other colleagues they would have have their spouses with them as well. We became friends with many of them and still socialise. Irrelevant to my post but we always had separate bills and we never exploited expenses and we never saw other colleagues do this either but obviously the room was the same price regardless of occupancy.

Covid came along and other ways of doing things came about so audits etc were done remotely and these trips are now few and far between.

Last week I did join him for the first time in probably 6 months. He was leaving the centre with a male colleague in his fifties and a female colleague (mid thirties but I don’t know if anyone will find ages relevant) who had joined the company around three to six months ago (DH and colleague differ on the dates).

As they left to check into hotel the female colleague asked if they were eating, but they said that they had their wives with them and the male colleague said that she was welcome to join them but she declined. We had booked a pub meal on our own.

They were all together on Friday but over the weekend she has made a complaint suggesting that I and the other colleague’s wife had deliberately tagged along as they believed she would be unprofessional and inappropriate.

An email has now gone out saying that spouses are no longer able to tag along.

Colleague was spoken to face to face and the bosses did seem apologetic. DH was on a site and saw the email and was phoned by one of the directors again with apologies.

Surely she should have been told about the culture of the company. I am really gobsmacked. Two other wives have texted me this morning and they feel the same. We had a really nice lifestyle there which is bound to have created a nice work environment.

This is very odd.
She sounds quite strange!

This is my view. Poor woman had nobody to socialise with because of all the tag along wives. It's a work trip, not a minimoon. If she did complain then she's one of few women these days with an actual backbone.

Christ. Whenever I go to these things I socialise with anyone BUT colleagues outside of work hours! Unless I'm being paid / time off in lieu my own time is my own time. I have friends all over the place these days and always try to catch up with someone when I'm on an overnight. Is that sort of thing barred too??

What would the company say if you agreed to fund your own accommodation?

In my last job I used to stay away from time to time and I toyed with taking my husband with me but never got round to it. It wouldn’t have incurred any additional expense but I suppose I maybe felt a bit weird in case it got found out. If a colleague was there, I’d usually go for dinner with them but then I’d go back to my room. I’ve got no interest in spending all evening with colleagues and it’s outside of the work day so I wouldn’t have to. As for a PP’s comment about more getting done in the downtime, maybe it depends on the role but in mine it would be pretty unprofessional to be gabbing about work all night in a public area in a restaurant/hotel.

That said the colleague sounds a bit petty. If I were your husband I wouldn’t be having dinner with her on future nights away, as I could be equally petty back.

For all she or any of us know, she'd have had nobody to socialise with anyway. Employees who are there without their spouses might just as well prefer to spend the evening working out, catching up with their friend who lives down the road, Netflix bingeing in their pants, going to a three hour religious service or any number of things people are perfectly free to do with their downtime. And that's even more likely now!

I suppose the question is, what sort of work trips are these? If it is a conference and everyone is supposed to be mingling in the evening then perhaps it isn’t great to bring a spouse. But if it is doing a few days’ work in another city then it may be fair enough to bring a spouse. If the man didn’t bring his wife, but instead met an old friend for dinner, what would the reaction be then?

What a spiteful person.

If I were your husband, I would go out of my way not to have anything to do with her on the next trip, especially due to her bizarre accusation - that’s definitely something to tread carefully about.

No lunch. No dinner. No socialising. I’d stay in my room and order room service just to avoid her. Let her complain that Bob has an early night on the work trip and doesn’t want dinner together.

I think she probably found the whole situation very strange.

Strange or not, if they all work together, surely she knew ahead of time that the wives were going to be there, and that her options would be playing 3rd wheel or going solo?

Unless they don't actually work together day-to-day, I find it very difficult to believe that nobody mentioned bringing their wives at any point before the trip, and that this was something that had been going on for years.

Which makes the complaint all the more bizarre. If she knew the wives were going to be there and had an issue with it, why didn't she raise it before the trip?

My money says that at some point one of these 50+ year old men has made a daft comment to their much younger female colleague along the lines of "The wife is coming to make sure you've not got us up doing flaming sambucas and dancing on tables until 3am"...and she's taken it seriously.

Pool with hot tub. Luxury hotel, really nice breakfast included, dinner out. It’s not always train, if drives it’s zero cost. My only outlay would have been my half of dinner.
We live rurally so yes a change of scenery, shops, restaurant makes a nice change. Each to their own.

I totally agree. I travelled for work for 25 years. People saying that working away is not supposed to be holiday and should work late and also see colleagues are completely wrong. When you are away, you tend to work long hours. At the end of the day it helps to get away and relax. It's also a massive inconvenience to the locals (when you visit) because they feel they need to "entertain" you.
Being away is a strain and anything to alleviate that should be encouraged. If my company ever prevented me having my wife tag along, I would not work away.

Why do you think the evening should be spent with colleagues?
I certainly know who I'd prefer to spend my evening with if I had to be away from home and it ain't Brian from R&D.

Once the work is done, individuals are free to do what they like. Why should everyone have to eat together?

This. The gravy train has pulled into the station and you've been asked to get off.

Why would she feel uncomfortable if everyone was friendly unless she just wanted to be the centre of attention with the men. Also she has just joined the company and should not be dictating and changing the normal just to suit her.

It sounded like a really old-fashioned and sexist work culture, like something out of the 70s or 80s. I’m in my late 60s and can’t imagine working in this environment for the past 30 years.
I guess the new employee’s email helped highlight the weirdness of this culture, and enabled senior management to finally end the practices.
One question though, is the new person working in finance, HR, or more senior? If so that will explain why it was stopped immediately without any input from the staff themselves.

Gosh yes because the husband couldn’t possibly be lying, it can only be a whiny woman. It couldn’t possibly be that the company has changed policy because its realised how many of the WAGS are going along for a freebie and putting their audit at risk wrt HMRC compliance.

I’m amazed that in this male dominated industry the WAGS apparently don’t have jobs or other responsibilities but are free to take a couple of days off every 3-4 weeks to join the trip plus of course a couple of week long absences at other times of year.

Mostly I’m astonished that the work trips are in places interesting enough for the WAGS to be desperate to tag along. IME most work trips are in fairly uninspiring places and involve long hours. If OH had been there with me it would have been to say “hi” before I fell into bed. Perhaps the hypothetical company has got wind of some slacking off against the client expectations as their staff are in semi holiday mode.

How taking the WAGS along helps the company spirit I have no idea. As a one off people will turn a blind eye but as a regular it is guaranteed to piss off the mostly younger staff who are left alone after the big boys leave the office to rush off to dinner with WAGS. This would be even more so at a conference where the whole purpose is to network with your industry peers.

This- so ops dh and all the other colleagues are so “self centred” not to centre this one woman?

A sexist work culture how? I think banning wives is way more sexist! What, they should just stay home, perhaps in the kitchen while the men go off? I don't bloody think so.

Because its weird.

I have travelled a huge amount for work and this is not remotely normal. The single person in this situation is faced with doing a social dinner with people she doesn’t know at the end of a long client day (they are always long days on client site) or being billy no mates in the hotel restaurant when normally she might expect dinner with her colleagues debriefing on the client work. Or simply socialising /building relationships with her colleagues.

I would never leave a new or junior colleague like this even though I am entirely happy eating alone.

That is all before we get to the tax implications of the WAGS cruising along for freebies paid for by the company or even worse, paid for directly by the client. At the least there should be a process for approving their joining the events and tracking it for compliance.

Those who feel colleagues should always eat socially together in evening even though it’s their unpaid time where do you draw line?
Lots of people have health issues and need to rest or decompress. What about colleagues who want to FaceTime their children or go to evening prayers or have online classes. Is that a good enough reason not to go to dinner with a colleague.
Whole dietary minefield too. If everyone gets £25 meal allowance. A needs vegan, B wants McDonalds as only eats beige, C needs halal, D would rather spend allowance in M & S on snacks, E has an eating disorder and can’t eat in front of people, F is a gym boy and only eats chicken and broccoli, G is on a diet and will only eat at a chain with cals on menu. Etc etc.
I don’t see it as a gravy train it’s not cost employer a penny. Wife been nowhere near work so no distraction says she didn’t even see the 2 colleagues.
If OP’s husband had said I’m just heading back to room might get room service the female colleague is in exact same position of needing to make her own dinner plans.

I would have assumed they had their own jobs and I would be mindful of the audit implications of staff family members tagging along for freebies. The whole set up is odd.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think OP said if they were junior or senior? But yes I agree I would never leave a junior staff member to eat alone if we were travelling together, even though I am quite happy with a M&S picnic spread over my bed while I watch Food Network...

This new or junior colleague was invited to dinner though and turned down the invitation.

Your husband needs to avoid this troublemaker at all costs. Open door policy, never be alone with her anywhere, no closed one to one meetings, ever.

Obviously, you can go with him anytime he goes for a meal, if he wants you to do that. It would be worth paying for your own room and being there whenever she is going to be away with the company, and for the other wife to do this too, for the sake of your husband and his male colleague. Witnesses and a barrier between her and everyone she works alongside.

The fact that she went straight to "they thought I would be unprofessional and inappropriate" tells you everything anyone needs to know about her. Unless someone flatly said something along these lines to her, she has form for behaving badly and causing problems at work.

And she made that complaint based on two men in their 50s having dinner with their wives and being invited to join them. Even if she was annoyed by this (which is abnormal in itself) the fact that she felt comfortable whining about it and causing her colleagues hassle, putting them offside for absolutely no good reason at all says an awful lot about her too.

It would be a good thing for her colleagues to always have witnesses if forced to spend time with her outside of work, and not to enter into any one to one conversations without witnesses.

As a one off people will turn a blind eye but as a regular it is guaranteed to piss off the mostly younger staff who are left alone after the big boys leave the office to rush off to dinner with WAGS.

Oh, @C8H10N4O2, the poor younger staff must be so disappointed if they can't eat dinner with the older blokes! What on earth will they do without their elders to tell them what to do in the evening? 😭

It's not as if they could go on a pub crawl together, hole up and watch porn Netflix, read a book, play a game, hang out in the hotel bar chatting shit, go for run or do whatever it is they do of a weekday evening, is it?

Is it?? Why not?