Sometimes on tv they show when employees are at corporate events like conventions or out of town meetings, their is some “fooling around” that happens when employees are away from their spouses and their is some alcohol involved.
I’ve only seen a little of this since I dont work in a corporate job but for you all who do, have you seen this or do most people control themselves?
I make a point of not seeing anything unless the parties actually involved tell me something or it’s so blatant a brick wall would take note, because I’ve seen or been the central character in too many rumors started simply because someone who likes being the center of attention needed a rumor to monger. But even I have encountered several instances of people who started dating while at work, there was that separated guy who definitely hooked up with the client’s Sales Manager (who made a point of checking with the women in our team what did “separated” mean exactly for us in social terms, as she was interested in a fling but not in any kind of long-term thing; we were from Spain and working in France*); there’s been cases of someone trying to hook up with someone else who became very adept at having lots of meetings as far from the first one as possible (some got the message relatively quick, others needed to be taken for a walk and a long explanation of basic manners before apologizing).
“Some” will always exist. But “some” doesn’t stand opposite to “most people control themselves”.
I personally have not, but maybe I don’t get invited to those kinds of parties. I do tend to see a fair amount of drinking and one assumes that that could lead to other things. People definitely will ‘let their hair down’ at such things. They aren’t some sort of hedonistic bacchanalia though. It’s a lot of moderately well-to-do people that get done with a conference at 5 and are looking for something to do until bed time, so they’ll sometimes site-see if it’s a place with sites that are open later and frequently a bunch of them will be hanging around a hotel bar. I have my own ritual… I order a Domino’s pizza, call the wife and kids and spend the evening watching whichever sports are in season in my room so… I’m a bit of a wild man. If it’s a long conference, I will steal an afternoon and grab a museum or some of the sites. If I happen to know someone in town, I’ll visit them. I think the ‘wildest’ I ever got was in Denver. My cousin was a flight attendant there and I was single and in my 20s, so she and a bunch of her friends took me out clubbing. I had exactly 1 rum and coke and paid for their drinks all night. I think that a couple of them liked me, but I was in no mood for a long distance relationship and in even less mood to take advantage of drunk women, so I ended up back at one of their places looking through books of photography that she had prepared for an exhibit before heading back to my hotel. It was a pleasant evening, but hardly one destined for the ages.
I did go to Tijuana one evening when I had a conference in San Diego. While there, I shopped for souvenirs, saw some street performers and ate some street tacos. It was practically an orgy.
I work for a large corporation, and we often have business trips. I’ve never seen anything on my travels. If it goes on, it’s very discrete.
One trip, a coworker might have been putting the moves on me. I pretended I never noticed and ignored it. If she was, she gave up, and if she wasn’t, no harm done.
There was one office Christmas party where 2 co-workers had too much drink and began making out and later left together. They ended up marrying 6 months later. Both were single at the time so it was not scandalous and more “oh really? Those 2?”
As far as company travel, I have done a fair amount of it and have never encountered anything beyond some excessive drinking in hotel bars. Never initiated, got invited or noticed others hooking up. Don’t recall any co-workers with any stories either.
But then again, we are engineers. Maybe the sales people party harder.
I never went to a convention for work, but when I was in the Navy, when we deployed, an awful lot of wedding rings disappeared…
During my first week of work at my first job, the company had a river cruise one evening after work (our office was located on the Chicago River, in downtown Chicago). After the cruise, when I went back up to the office to pick up my briefcase before heading to the train, I noticed a closed office door, with some muffled noises coming from behind it – two of my co-workers were, in fact, getting it on in his office. (They wound up dating for a while.)
But, the “better” story happened years later, after I moved into advertising, I worked on an account on which several of the clients were well-known party animals. We would regularly do focus groups (testing new advertising) for this account, and one of said clients was responsible for setting up these focus groups. On one occasion, she selected New Orleans for these groups…during Mardi Gras. We (the ad agency team) flew there from Chicago; the clients came in from Virginia. The groups were scheduled to run from around 5pm until 9pm – the client who set up the groups was late in arriving, and when she finally got to the focus group facility, she came into the viewing room carrying a twelve-pack of beer (she’d had the cab driver stop at a liquor store on the way in from the airport).
After the focus groups finished up (during which that twelve-pack was finished by the team), the clients, as well as my colleagues, announced that they were going to go out to a bar or two. I could see the impending train wreck (and I didn’t much care for the clients), so I begged off, and went back to the hotel. We were booked on a flight home the next morning, and we’d agreed to meet up in the hotel lobby at 6 a.m., to head to the airport together. When I got down to the lobby, I found my colleagues, and the clients, all looking very bleary, and smelling of booze – after the bars had closed at like 3 a.m., they had come back to the hotel, went to one of the clients’ rooms, and proceeded to drain the minibar. None of them had slept at all. :smack:
I’ve seen a LOT of drinking (and, I’m guessing, a fair amount of other drugs, although that was usually by invitation only) but very little “hanky panky.” I’m aware of a few rumors, and I suspect there were a few more than that, but given the number of out-of-town meetings, conferences, seminars, trade shows I’ve been at, almost nothing.
I’ve been to my share of union conventions over the years-- state-level and national-- and I can tell you that when the business of the day is done, delegates like to carouse. Definite carousing and a good share of canoodling going on. When you put corrections officers and nurses and EMTs and office workers (and other groups of people who go on out-of-town work trips very infrequently) and booze and hotel rooms all together in a strange city, you have your fair share of messing around happening.
ETA: I never witnessed actual fornication, obviously, but I saw people who definitely weren’t married to each other (although they could’ve been single, in their defense) in various stages of hooking up in bars and hotel lobbies.
I can tell you that at the professional planning conferences I’ve attended, I’ve never seen any of the untoward behavior listed in the OP. But I am completely clueless at detecting it, so I’m not the best source…
I’ve been to lots of conferences and haven’t heard any of this happening - but they were engineering and computer science conferences, so not surprising.
In 1982 I went to the National Computer Conference in the Houston Astrodome. This was a giant conference, and when the meeting broke up there was a line of women who sure looked like prostitutes waiting outside. They looked quite confused as the attendees zipped by them without even looking.
Maybe they did better when the salesmen came out later.
Um, no, they were screwing around. In fact, we were specifically told that what happens on deployment stays on deployment. I’m pretty naive, but even I saw what was going on.
When I was working at a law firm back in the 90s, the partner who was going to be appearing in court traveled to the location, while another associate and I stayed behind running down a few arguments and faxing him some stuff at his hotel the evening before, from time to time. The partner told us that the hotel was hosting a convention of zookeepers, and that the party in the atrium got wilder every time he went down to pick up a fax. By the end of the evening, there were women on the first floor balcony throwing food down to men on the atrium floor, who were trying to catch it in their mouths. No word on whether they ever moved on from feeding to husbandry.
Business travel sees way more sex than Puritans would be comfortable with and way less than what Hollywood portrays. Business travel is scheduled to the minute, so a quickie is difficult (not impossible).
That’s why I don’t wear mine. Nearly lost that finger twice working with metal.
It happened a bit more in international consultancy when I was there since they had longer trips and more time, although I never participated. There was a couple of colleague who were often sent together and many of us joked that they were banging, and they laughed at us, until the day we got an invite to their engagement party:smack::eek:
They been married 10 years now and just had kid no 3, so maybe there were sleeping with each other?
I was at a week long training conference. On the last night of the conference a bunch of us decided to go out for some drinks. We ended up at a bar that was holding a wet t-shirt contest. One of my co-workers decided to enter the contest.
Most business travel is not scheduled to the minute. If you’re traveling out of town on business, there’s going to be a point when the business day is done and you go back to the hotel. That’s when you have several free hours for non-business activities.
Here is a fairly typical business trip.
*Arrive evening local time. Maybe have a meetup with those you are dealing with.
*Work all day next day, including lunch. Business dinner.
Ok, so maybe not to the minute, how about the hour? In my experience the part of the trip where you have the most chance of “down time” is the evening of your arrival.