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.

@AtomicWedgie as a military wife I think you’re being ridiculous “up to 2 weeks” 😱 tagging along on your spouse’s work trips because you’re lonely…absolutely mental to me.

Yes, this is what I have done in the past. My DH goes everywhere from Bath, to Paris, to Japan. I would tag along and keep out of his way. Of course I'd pay my own way apart from sleeping in the room. I have seen a lot of the world as a result.

If some woman at work put a stop to this I would actually go ballistic and tell my DH it is a deal breaker for me. I am not sitting at home staring at the wall for weeks on end.

A travelling spouse actually has a negative affect on a marriage and any decent company would be happy that you senior employee is settled. Loads of my DH's colleagues have got divorced as their marriages fizzled out due to them being away so much. I have heard it directly from them.

Wow when is the last time you had a job? You seriously can’t think this is acceptable?

I’m just delighted to hear that apparently we can just “tell the company” that we want another role.

I think someone should have told her beforehand that everyone else was bringing a plus one and it wasn’t a normal business trip but a weird couples holiday as well. Then she would have known not to expect a get together with her colleagues in the evening. If I was a wife in this situation I would be wondering why nobody told this woman how these work trips go. It’s all very peculiar.

The perspective of yeating dinner with 4 guys from work is a nightmare for me. And i guess for most women. Seeing them at work is enough.
So her behaviour is super disturbing.
I would be so happy they have sifes to eat dinner with so i am free to do what i want.
And she is weird to complain they spend time with wifes. After beeing in company few months??? They are senior to her and she wants to make rules what they do in private time.

I find it amusing that people believe it was the woman, the female employee that "put a stop to this".
A lot of men (and women) who travel for work, enjoy the temporary space from home life, they don't actually want the spouse tagging along but cave to keep the peace.
I very much doubt the OP has the full story or even the truth on this.

Am relieved to read more posts like yours. DH has just been promoted recently. Lots of up coming travel in Europe and Asia and we were planning that I would tag along as our youngest goes to uni in September. We know he will have to go out one evening each trip with his team on longer trips, so that night I’ll have room service or a spa treatment. We’ll just do a separate bill for me so that he can claim relevant expenses. I can’t see why my being there would be distracting or negatively impact his work - the opposite in fact as he is quite often really stressed about being away a lot, I am his best friend (I know, odd for a married couple of 33 years to actually like each other) so if he has a shit day he’d rather have a meal and a few drinks with me to clear his head. In terms of his well-being and productivity, my coming along is beneficial. He’s been really looking forward to showing me Singapore and there are so many EU cities I’ve not visited yet. I can’t wait.

Plus I kind of feel the company owes me for all the nights and weekends he works when home from the office - if it’s not to distracting to deal with work issues after dinner with his wife and kids at home, meeting his wife for dinner on a business trip and sharing a bed with her can’t also be an issue, can it?

Honestly can’t imagine tagging along with DH on his work trips, ditto him on mine… It would be plain weird. I guess the colleague has never worked anywhere where this would be permitted let alone normalised so she was surprised (as I would be). She ended up eating alone because she knew the dynamic would be awkward for her as a younger single female with older male colleagues and their spouses!

I think she was right to complain personally. Work and home should be separate. It’s a work trip, not a romantic one.

I've got 2 jobs thanks and work FT. When my DC go to Uni, I'l go PT and tag along on any trips I like the look of.

If you travel a lot, you can go to your company and say it is excessive, and it is affecting your family life. I've said this to my DH in the past, and he has cut it back. His colleagues have said it, and they have cut it back. My DH had to do extra trips last year as one of his colleagues said he could no longer travel due to having young DC and his wife had given him an ultimatum.

Out of all my friends, my DH travels the most. As I approach 60, I want my DH around more. That is either him here with me, or me there with him, or a compromise.

If you are happy for yours to the away, great. It's not why I got married. You do you, and I'll do me.

If work and home should be separate - then companies should have no rights to your time and attention after/outside contracted working hours… and that then also applies when away for business? The evenings are employees’ private time, unless it is a conference with evening events.

Agreed. I’m away Sunday - Wednesday and I can’t wait. I know the days will be hectic but it’s the calm evenings in the hotel I enjoy… Bringing my DH along wouldn’t even make sense tbh, he’d just be doing his own thing all day and we’d only get the evening together anyway.

Ditto. Some of us actually love our DHs and enjoy their company. And they us.

Not the point. Many people don’t have the luxury of telling their employer they dont want to do X.

OP doesn't specify her DH's role, but a lot of 9-5 jobs involve work trips. In my small circle there are IT specialists, engineers, and doctors who have all travelled regularly. The first two are very much 9-5 jobs and the doctors have varying hours but don't have to attend work dinners as part of their contracts.

You seem to be assuming these dinners are some sort of client-facing time or important networking events, but nowhere does OP even imply that.

The company wouldn't have been happy for spouses to tag along for years if they were expecting their employees to be on office time all day including evenings.

“Super disturbing”

fucking hell 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Maybe you should get a hobby if the only thing you can think to do when your DH works is stare at a wall for weeks on end…

I’m a bit on the fence here. I would feel a bit odd if I was the only person on a work trip when everyone else had their partners with them. It does feel a bit exclusionary.
Perhaps the company has now decided to adopt a clearer policy.
However, what I find very hard to believe is that this colleague has complained about being made to feel that she might be ‘inappropriate’.
It seems like a bit of a stretch especially from someone who is new. Are you absolutely sure that this hasn’t got lost in translation or exaggerated or dare I say it, misunderstood by your husband and colleague.
It feels like a bit of a pile on to this woman if it has and that’s really not fair on her if she hasn’t implied that at all but rather just feels uncomfortable being on a work trip and feeling on her own.

Yes. So you're expected to do your job but that's it. Nowhere in the OP does it say that dinners are work-related (networking events or client-facing) so then they are not part of their contracts and are not paid, nor in any way considered part of their role.

Not sure why you're assuming all jobs involving work trips function the same way yours does. There's a huge variety.

I am a teacher and go on overnight school trips quite often. I'm not paid overtime, it's considered part of my job. There it really is 24-7: I am expected to always be available, even in the middle of the night. Therefore I couldn't possibly go out for dinner with my DH or whoever when I'm supposed to be safeguarding the students.

But my dh's work trips are him at an international office from 9-5 and yes, I could absolutely tag along if I wanted to.

Ok, let’s look at it a different way.

So far this year my DH has travelled to;

Oxford
Rio de Janeiro
Los Angeles
Japan

Why on earth would I want to sit at home alone, go to work, and do my hobbies (yes I have them) when I can tick off 2 of my bucket list destinations at little cost to myself in a 5-star hotel?

The only madness here is if I didn’t go when I had no ties.

Or look at it another way — someone’s spouse’s employer isn’t interested in the bucket list of the wife of someone who works for them?

but it doesn't sound like a successful 30 woman something at work type of thing to say! To me it sounds more like something that the company boss who's handling this quite badly might say.

It doesn’t really sound like something anyone would say.

Why did the husband and other colleague receive direct phone calls about it? Did she mention them by name? Why just them when presumably other employees have their partners stay as well?

They don’t have to be. There’s zero impact on the employer when all that’s involved from their point of view is another person in the hotel room. If they were expected to pay for travel and food for that extra person it would be different but they’re not.

She says he works on audits. I have been on the type of trips she describes, they are usually quite short as the OP describes. They are also quite intense. You go on site, you meet new people, you are there to get a specific task done.
A dinner with colleagues could for some be a chance to catch up with them as you haven’t been with them alone all day. And it doesn’t have to involve discussing state secrets loudly in a restaurant.
Ive never come across the type of socialising with spouses the OP describes, I wouldn’t have the energy for it after those kind of days.

And yet this company has decided it’s now policy for spouses not to tag along.