I’ll share a room if the President/CEO does. I think that’s a fair compromise.
Would I be correct in assuming that your job does not require you to travel?
I’m not some sort of odd person with strange needs, but I’m not overly social, either. I need time to wind down every day, and I can’t do that with another person in the room. People are chatty; the last thing I want to do while winding down is make small talk. I also don’t want the damn TV on; it’s banal and annoying.
Most people when confronted with being in a hotel room with another person who just wants it to be quiet and non-social for several hours every night go apeshit. Really. They think I’m mad at them, angry about something, or just plain weird.
The last time I shared a room with a coworker I was about 22. I emerged from the shower one morning to find my coworker sitting on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette and watching TV. That is my idea of hell.
I am fortunate in that the one time I had to double up with a colleague I woke up in the morning to find him sleeping in the bathtub (due to my alleged snoring). He joined me in lobbying for separate rooms after that, and we got it.
It’s a bedroom, not your personal bedroom. If I’m staying in a hotel – for any reason – I do not expect to be able to behave exactly as I do when I’m at home, and I don’t understand how/why anyone would. Sure, you can try to get as close as possible, but you’re not at home.
I’ve never heard of such a thing. (Seriously, and I consider myself to be somewhat well-traveled.)
That’s a good point. But I also think that if your job requires you to travel frequently, your company is less likely to require you to share a room.
No, but I’m a student. While I’ve never lived in the dorms, I’ve been to tons of retreats and conferences. I’ve been in many situations where I carpooled and shared rooms with complete strangers. And, some of those strangers were wack! I have had my things stolen and dealt with outrageous drunken behavior. It sucks, but I don’t think it would deter me from ever sharing rooms again. I’ve learned to hide my money and tune out peoples antics.
Really? It’s not at all uncommon to see suites or deluxe rooms that consist of a sitting area and a separate bedroom. Depending on the hotel, sometimes all the rooms are like this. You’ve never seen one?
All Embassy Suites hotels, as an example - plus I believe the couch in the living area folds out, and can be used as a bed. I think the Marriot cheap suite chain is also like this, but haven’t been in one for a while.
If you’ve never heard of a 2 bedroom suite I suspect you are not as well travelled as you thought you are.
Here’s where I stayed last january, The Alex Hotel , this is the living room of my 2 bedroom suite.
Of course I’ve seen (and stayed in) those, but that’s not what I consider “separate bedrooms”: that’s one bedroom, plus a living room/sitting area that can be slept in. Terminology hitch. 
Yes, I must be mistaken about the amount of traveling I’ve done (both business and pleasure, in various counties, since I was a child) – it couldn’t possibly be that I don’t ever stay in expensive places, or that when someone mentioned “hotel rooms with separate bedrooms” in a thread about business travel I didn’t think he meant “luxury hotel suites.”
Does “well-traveled” carry a connotation of “in style” that I wasn’t aware of?
No, I just thought it odd that a person who’d travelled for business and internationally had never heard of a 2 or more bedroom suite, I stand corrected.
When I was in grad school, I was always shared rooms. A couple of times I roomed with my advisor (talk about awkward). Other times, a bunch of us grad students (all girls) piled into a room.
In the lab where I work now as a post-doc, my boss makes us share if he’s footing the bill. Last summer when six of of us went to a conference in Montreal, we tripled-up in two rooms. And it was fun. I was the only girl, so the two guys in my room let me have a bed all to myself. One of the guys woke us up because he was talking in his sleep, which made us laugh. It was like a slumber party and made the conference much more fun, providing fodder for inside jokes that last for years. Post-docs and graduate students get the same treatment, too. Only the boss gets a room to himself.
I could see hating shared rooms if you hated your coworkers. But if you like them (and you don’t have any issues that are embarrassing, like bedwetting), I don’t see what’s the big deal.
I hear you. I’m an introvert and start getting stressed-out if I’m socializing too much.
But I can adjust if a meeting/conference/whatever is just four days long. Much longer than that, I probably would go loopy.
Also, sometimes the good thing about traveling is being able to break out of your old routine. I prefer quiet nights in front of the TV, with my laptop in my lap, and my cats snuggling at my feet. But it sometimes feels good having dinner with coworkers or exchanging pillow talk with the boss. Just for a change.
I think what’s confusing the issue is that there are many kinds of ‘business trips’. There is the occasional yearly conference (which for many is an excuse to get out of the office and get a free lunch), but I think that’s very different from what some of us are thinking of when we consider a business trip.
When I hear the term, I think of a working trip, where I am travelling out of the office to provide a product or service to a client. I’m not just expected to show up and hang around and grab a goodie bag on my way out. I’m there to work, I need to be alert, and maintain a high level of professionalism. There’s nothing professional about my coworkers seeing me in my pajamas.
My last job had me travelling all over the state during election season, managing a series of candidate interview tours. This meant working with candidates, our members, and events to host forums in several cities, for several days each. I was up at 5 AM and didn’t get to hit the sack until 10 PM or later most nights. There is no way I would have consented to sharing a room, those few precious minutes I had to myself were all that kept me going.
We also had company ‘retreats’ where we spent all day in planning meetings, and got to socialize in a resort setting after hours. Again, by the time I got any time to myself I didn’t want to see another soul. I value my free time, and if I’m expected to give that up to my employer in large chunks, the very least they can do is respect my privacy and let me unwind in peace.
Ah, but “travel” is not business travel.
My typical business trip is either to a client site for consulting/installation, or to a conference. Either way, I’m working my ass off all day - typically 12 or 14 hour days. When I’m done, I’m tired. Yes, I’d love to go sightseeing or have dinner at a cool restaurant or whatever, but in general I’m so fookin’ tired all I want to do is go veg out in my room.
And I never, ever, ever want to “exchange pillow talk with the boss.” You obviously don’t have the kinds of bosses I do. Even the ones I like, I don’t want anything to do with pillow talk with 'em.
Except maybe one… but I ended up marrying him, so he doesn’t count.
I work for IT consulting firm. No room sharing expected, even at sales events where we send lots of folks.
I’ve worked construction for over twenty-four years. Been with the same company for eighteen of those. On out of town jobs we shared rooms. Sometimes for as long as a year.
Yes, sometimes it sucked.
Most companies you wouldn’t be asked to come back to work again either.
Dinner with coworkers is perfectly normal. I don’t need to have a quiet converation by candlelight in the wee hours of the morning with them like I’m an 8 year old at summer camp.
No matter how much I may like my poss as a person, he/she is still and always will be the jerkoff from which all work and aggrivation is derived.
As a consultant, I have to spend a lot of time traveling. After being on a plane/train/rental car for hours to travel out to some strange office park in the middle of nowhere (and by the way, the office parks of Amsterdam are just as dull and boring as the ones in Jersey) dealing with clients all day, trying to blast out Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides to meet some arbitrary deadline, 2 hours at dinner, I just want to go back to a nice quiet hotel room BY MYSELF, watch a little HBO and do the three hours of additional work I’ll probably have to do.
No, honest to God seperate bedrooms are what people are trying to tell you aren’t very rare. I lived in one last winter while our house was being repaired and it had two very real bedrooms and a living room and kitchen. They have three and 4 bedroom ones as well and these are chains that are over the place.
Doing a conference right is as stressful as a business trip. (And I’ve done all kinds, including technical marketing support.) To get the most out of a conference, you need to process far more data than you ever will on a normal business trip, and you should network in an unstructured environment. I love it, but I’m exhausted at the end of the day. Actually speaking or being on a panel is less stressful than just attending, to me.