I didn’t mind sharing a room when I was younger; I shared a room with at least one of my brothers until I left home. I stayed in hostels too. I expect that I would have been willing to share a room on business travel as well.
Now, thirty years on, no way. My perspective has changed. My privacy is valuable to me. I’ve never worked for a company that expected sharing; we’d have to work something out because I wouldn’t.
In my department (English), we get a flat-rate grant every semester for conference travel, but it isn’t usually enough to cover the full expense of the trip. So hell yeah, we’re going to share rooms and do everything else we can to cut expenses.
I can definitely see the point that if your employer is going to put you through the inconvenience of business travel, the least they can do is put you up in relative comfort, but on the other hand … the money has to come from somewhere, and “somewhere” probably means employees’ salaries or bonuses, right? Personally, I’d rather have the cash.
That’s perfectly reasonable. I just wanted to point out that having the title of ‘grad student’ doesn’t inherently make it a different situation. And since we really don’t get a say in the matter, most of us just accept that we will share a room and move on from there. Or don’t travel at all and suffer the career consequences accordingly.
Um, Kakophonous was talking about sharing a hotel room. What he/she is saying is that traveling for conferences, as a grad student who is expected and paid to attend them, is essentially the same sort of situation as traveling for business.
I don’t understand either.
I’m just wondering…
Does this aversion to room sharing extend to things like retreats w/ your church?
You have a lot to learn about business. 
The money you save won’t go to your paycheck, but to the CEOs.
Here are good ways of saving travel money: looking for cheap airfare, planning ahead, and being flexible. Not renting a car if public transportation to the airport works. Getting a good hotel, not a luxury hotel. Eat decently (no fast food) but not luxuriously. Don’t send lots of people, but teleconference.
I know travel budgets, and private rooms are in the noise for most companies. You need to be effective if you’re traveling, and sharing a room would kill mine. I’ve never been asked to. In grad school, the conferences I went to I went to by myself, so it wasn’t an issue, and in one case I stayed with a friend. But, as for today, I’m not sharing a room with anyone I’m not related to or having sex with.
There is also the possibility (such as in my case) of private things being revealed that can affect you proffessionaly in a negative way. Even if you’re not sharing with your boss, coworker gossip can do just as much damage.
And, no, this aversion does not extend to other room-sharing circumstances (like retreats). Why? It’s my choice to go on them, and generally you get a choice of roommate. Even if I don’t, it’s a social situation, and my roommate’s opinion of me has not one iota of bearing on my livelyhood. I don’t need to maintain a professional facade. If I was really aprehensive, there’s no reason I MUST go. The person who signs my paycheck is not ordering me to go.
Same reason I’ll share a hotel room with friends, or a hostel room with strangers. Professional situations are completely different from personal/social ones.
Sure, not everyone has things that require privacy, and most employers would be accomodating if I spoke up in detail. But that kinda kills the whole professional privacy thing right off the bat.
I don’t travel on business very often. And usually it’s just me going to training.
My company doesn’t ask us to share. But it has happend if hotel space gets tight and the rooms get more expensive. Though I would probably buy my own room if asked to share. It would totaly depend on who else was going.
I really like my own space. I’m ok with adjoining rooms with some of the folks, last time I traveled, that’s what we had, and it worked out great.
You are usually with these people all day, then some function at night. The last thing I want to do is wake up in the same room with them and start all over again. I don’t see my Wife that much.
As a grad student, I am an empolyee of the university. I teach and do research and get paid for it. I see it no differently than a real job, other than I make about a third as much as if I were in industry. I still think most of you are just way to particular.
Because a hotel room is essentially a bedroom with a TV and fridge in it?
Perhaps you are thinking of hotel rooms with seprate bedrooms.
The other difference between people’s experiences and expectations probably come down to how often you’re expected to travel.
If I spend 2 - 3 nights a week in a hotel room, there’s no way I’m going to share it with anyone. It is my own personal space, my time away from work.
If I went away twice a year as a bit of a perk, I’d probably be happy to share with someone.
Hmm, interesting subject. I do recruiting for a company that provides oilfield services on drilling sites. The company (i.e not me personally) makes new hires double up during training sessions, OTOH, when on the wellsite, accomodations are not usually under our direct control, particularly offshore, and it’s pretty much standard procedure to have multibed accomodations, usuallyat least two to a room or cabin.
I’ve been arguing that part of the reason we are having trouble recruiting and retaining personnel is because of the practice of having people double up when in town for training, and judging from the strongly negative response here, there seems to be something to that notion. I think I’ll print some of the responses and show them to my bosses. Thing is, I have a clear idea what our local accomodation costs are, and it’s pretty expensive on a per-person basis.
As a mid-level manager, one of my few perks is that I don’t have to double up when on the road, but that all for the best as far as my colleagues are concerned, as I have a snore that breaks windows.
And I think you must be a lot, or feel a lot, more average than most people, or something. Look, I am weird. I know I am weird. Honest to god, most of what I know about how normal people behave in public I learned from six years of reading IMHO. I’m insanely nervous about my public persona. I think I do ok with it, because I have had lots of chances to watch “normal” people. But I have no idea what “good manners” is when you share a room.
Plus, it means I have to go buy socially acceptable sleepwear.
uh-oh
The difference to me is that participating in activities like church retreats is something I do on my own time. If I was debating whether or not to go on a church retreat, one of the things I would consider is the rooming arrangements. Am I rooming with a friend of my choice or someone whom I barely know?
Part of my business life is that my relationships with my colleagues are strictly professional, even with colleagues that I like very much. As much as I might like and respect them, I don’t feel comfortable professionally having them see me in my underwear, or having to barter about things like sleep preferences and bathroom usage. I am on my employer’s clock during my working hours, and I realize that part of being in my profession is that sometimes that clock extends to evening hours during things like conferences (working dinners, late evening meetings, etc) but I honestly feel that the time I am doing things like showering and sleeping is personal and should not be impacted by my employer.
That’s also specific to my career. If I had another job, like say being in the military, I would understand that sharing close quarters is in fact part of the job. That’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t enter a profession like the military.
I’ll admit that I’m a little in the perplexed camp. Sure, I totally understand why someone would want their own room, and yeah, pretty much everyone would probably prefer their own room, and obviously if your potential roommate is a kleptomaniac racist rapist obviously you’re not going to be looking forward to it, but I am a bit surprised at how many people would unconditionally refuse to room with another person. God knows I’m not a social genius and dealing with other people can be awkward and scary for me, but I view sharing a room as an inconvenience on par with, say, the shower being too cold. Then again, I’m one of those people who usually grins and bears inconveniences rather than putting my foot down to change them-- is that it? I wonder what personality trait this shibboleth correlates with-- perfectionists vs. ‘accepters’? Introverts vs. extroverts? I love this stuff.
I had to do this once. A Share holder decided to sponser an off site meeting in Las Vegas. Since he was footing the bill, he decided we had to double up.
Due to a last minute chante, I got bunked with a “Felix”. I’ m definatly an “Oscar”. Seriously, I’m a total slob, and M is a total neat freak.
I decided to have fun with it. I ironed folded the clothes he had set out while he was in the shower. Picked up after him etc. Totally wierded him out, sick bastard I am.
I was fine for a couple of days. But I get where people have problems with this. As for me, I’m a slob, but in such a situation, I really, really want to respect the common space and that is terribly stressful for me.
I’ve shared rooms with friends and even total strangers (the old youth hostel days). But related to my job, no. I did it once and after that I bitched about it to the point that I ended up not having to share.
The thing is that at my job I am totally pretending to be another person. This is easy enough to sustain for 8 hours, or even longer if there’s some OT hours required. But it’s asking too much to be this other person 24/7 for four or five days, I need to recharge and spend some time being myself.
There are some people at work I wouldn’t mind sharing with. But some motormouth from the advertising department? No thanks.
I’ll chime in from the introverts point of view. Personally, I refer to myself as an extroverted introvert meaning that I can function as an extrovert when needed, but am an introvert at my core.
From this article
Like many others in this thread I try and keep a pretty strict line between my personal and professional lives and having to share a hotel room crosses that line. I’ll be going to a two week training seminar this October for my first ‘real job’ and am quite concerned that I’ll be forced to bunk up with my future coworkers. If I’ve been ‘on’ all day the last thing I want is have to keep it up til the lights go out
Like many people here have mentioned, for me the issue is that when I’m asked the share a hotel room, the company is infringing on my personal time. It’s part of a disturbing trend that I see as having less to do with saving money than with blurring the line between your time and theirs, and reinforcing the idea that we’re supposed to be available 24/7.
There’s nothing the CEO would like better than for you to forget that there was once a time when you left work for the day, and you were done. Now it’s share your hotel room, take your Blackberry everywhere, keep your cell phone turned on and your laptop handy, because we own your ass. Well, I call bullshit. I’m salaried, I’m exempt, and I refuse to provide unpaid labor.