I am working in a project with about 20 people, all but two of whom are contractors. The other 2 are employees. I am one of the contractors.
Anyway, our project is under the control of the sales dept, even though we are NOT sales people. They have devised a huge team motivation event, which will run for 2 days and 2 nights, and involves camping in the middle of a forest, around 120 km from where I live.
Now this is the problem. I am a single mother of 4 children. I have 100% parental responsibility for my children, which means that if anything goes wrong, I will get the blame. My children are looked after while I am at work by a very capable 19 year old, but I don't want to leave them for 2 nights. Our house is a tip with no spare room, and I can't face having a stranger sleeping in my bed, even if I was ready to pay a babysitter.
The children are all having problems in the school - dd1 has chronic headaches, and was in hospital last week because of them. She is getting osteopathy for scrunched up vertabrae, but still feels v ill.
ds1 has just changed classes at school, because his teacher was bullying him (finally the school reacted after weeks of me nagging). He is a nervour wreck, and I have recently had him lying on the floor at midnight crying and trying to break his fingers so that he doesnt have to go to school the next day. One of the nasty things his ex teacher did was to ban him from a school camping trip that she had arranged for his old class (she just said, right from the start, that he was not going). This camping trip is happening NEXT WEEK, ie the same time that my work wants me to be fannying around in a tent. Obviously ds is very upset about the whole thing, and it would not be tactful of me to go camping this week.
ds2 is a potential liability at any time, he is very immature for his age.
We all had a horrid virus this week, and felt dreadful.
To put things further into context, I have never been on holiday with my children, and have never put up a tent with them. The thought of putting up a tent with my colleagues, just makes me very angry indeed.
At the moment, I am just about holding myself together between 9 and 5 to do my job. The last thing I want to do, is "relax" with my work colleagues in the evening. Especially as I dont like our new manager, and cannot possibly relax while he is around, in case words slip out that would later be regretted.
I am very tired, and have a headache, and today I was arbitrarily told in the dept meeting that attendance at this thing next week is mandatory, and that I must turn up - I had previously explained that I couldn't make it due to heavy family commitments.
I feel that they are treating us like children. They have no right to invade my private life like this. Is this normal in other people's experience?
Is is just a clash of sales vs the normal engineering style that I am used to?
Why do they want to dragoon us along to an event when we clearly don't want to go?