I’ve only had to share a room once in my career. A very small startup that had serious cash-flow problems.
Nothing particularly luxurious about them, they’re just set up as a small apartment. The one’s I’ve stayed in have been no more expensive than any other hotel room (between $90 and $150 Aus.)
It may not be your personal bedroom, but it’s the only bedroom that you have the option of sleeping in. You should not expect to have the bed linen and pillows that you have at home, but it is reasonable to expect that there won’t be another person sleeping in it.
Here’s what I expect from a hotel room. I should be able to set up my laptop (that I need for work) without infringing on someone else’s space. I should be able to go and have a crap without feeling self conscious about someone hearing or smelling it. I should be able to phone my wife at any time of the night without having to keep quiet in case I wake my room mate up. I should be able to talk dirty to her without feeling embarrased. I should be able to set my alarm to go at 2:00am so I can watch the MotoGP TV coverage.
It is my time, and I should (and do) get my own personal space to spend it in.
I suppose another difference in expectations comes down to the fact that travelling is my job. I don’t always go away, but I have no right of refusal when I do go away. Sleeping arrangements form part of my working conditions and are stipulated in my contract.
Another interesting thread . I doubt manangement has much sympathy for those who were willing to share hotel rooms.
Stop! I thought that I was going to have to stand in line to tell this ancedote.
HH worked in restaurant. Went out of town to help open another one. Assigned room with pleasant cowboy. OOOPS! Second contingent from my original store arrives. Pleasant cowboy gets assigned to another room (never knew why). In comes friend of Dorothy. Flamingly. OK, I’d worked with him, and he was an exceedingly pleasant individual. I soon found out that he liked to sleep naked. None of my business, I never looked at the cowboy clothed, so why look at the queen unclothed. Two nights into the situation, I’m awakened at about 2 a.m. My roomie was standing up naked, snorting like a bull and doing some bizarre moves. I thought that he was practicing karate, so I said something to him. He just got into bed and said nothing. About 4 a.m., I’m awakened by having naked man in bed with me. I said that he is in wrong bed. He slept, or acted asleep. I finally shook him extremely firmly, and told him to go to his bed. I got up and went somewhere. I went to work the next day and asked the boss if X had a sleeping problem (to give him an out) and told boss situation, then let him know that I would need another room. I got the room, but the boss told me that the guy 'had a sleep disorder, who just happened to be gay and liked to sleep naked." As if I was somebody that was just looking for an excuse to kill a gay person, and wanted to boss to back me up in my rampage!
Never, never again. Even with a pleasant cowboy.
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There’d be no way in hades I’d share a room with a co-worker given how liberal my company is with its money. I just processed an expense report for a dinner meeting which cost in excess of $100 per person for low ranking internal people only. (It was held at my manager’s country club.) So if my company is willing to fork over that kind of money for one dinner, then they’d better be willing to fork over the money for a separate hotel room.
Generally speaking, though, I don’t have a problem with sharing a sleeping space. I inherited an amazing gift from my father and that is the ability to sleep anywhere. I can sleep in a bus, I can sleep on a train, I can sleep in a suite, I can sleep on a crane.
I do draw the line at sharing a double bed. Queen bed is doable. King bed is best. In fact, I just spent a week sharing a king bed with another female chaperone. We shared a bathroom, too. No problems.
Nope. Been sexually harrassed and raped by a coworker. I’m NEVER in private with a mere coworker. Not my same gender, not a different gender. NEVER. Never late at night, never pulling a server rebuild until two am. I’ll do it alone. I’ll do it with a TRUSTED coworker.
But I wouldn’t share a room with a coworker I didn’t self select for anything. And if I were asked to I’d say “sorry, I was sexually abused when left alone with a coworker, I wouldn’t want that to happen again.”
I’ve done a ton of travelling and I have had to share rooms only once or twice. I snore, and have sleep apnea. That makes me the object of hastily put together murder plans. This makes me feel badly. 
I have paid, on quite a few instances, the difference and had my own room. I value privacy and really do hate knowing I have trashed a co-worker night after night with snoring. I had to do it in Monte Carlo. My roommate snored. And kept me up. God almighty, if that is what I am like, I pity anyone inflicted with it.
On the other end of the scale, it was me, Tom and Loucas in a tent for days on one for one shoot in the remote wilds of Utah in 1984. THAT was fun and stinky and oogey and we made great shots and got alone in the ranch every 3 days or so to shower and rest up. Great fun. Just that once.
I am about to do a music tour, and sleep on a bus with 9 other adults in bunks. I have never done this. I am going to purchase a battery-operated white noise machine, crank it to 11 and PRAY it masks my snoring.
Cartooniverse
You can’t be that traveled and never heard of these.
Something is not adding up here.
She said “another female chaperone”. Since I’ve never heard anyone referring to a coworker on a business trip in such a way, I would assume that this was not a business trip and that therefore this chaperone wasn’t a coworker. That’s totally different. I would share (and happily have shared) rooms on a non-business trip, but it’s different with coworkers.
[chanelling Ronald Reagan’s voice and persona]
See. Here, it’s very simple. I will hold this golden delicious apple in this hand, and this nuclear warhead in the other hand. You see, the good god-fearing people will reach for the nuclear warhead so as best to protect their interests and keep America Free, whereas the evil soulless Visigoths will reach for the apple which as we all know is the source of shame and embarassment and the reason that women pee sitting down. I hope this helps you understand the difference between rooming with a friend whose kid is pals with your kid and rooming with an utter stranger with whom you share no personal connection at all and is in all likelihood a distsant cousin of Raisa Gorbachov’s from Minsk.
Would you care for a bite of either the apple or nuclear warhead?
[ / chanelling Ronald Reagan’s voice and persona]
But she didn’t write “an utter stranger”, did she? She wrote “a co-worker”, someone she probably knows better than another female chaperone, who is more likely to be the “utter stranger” to her.
Absolutely no sharing a hotel room with a co-worker. I don’t share my room at home–haven’t for 13 years–and there’s no way I’d share it with a co-worker. I like my “quiet time” (which includes “alone time”) after work to decompress, and if I don’t get it, then I am absolutely hateful. I have no desire to see my co-workers in their nightclothing (or worse), to see them brush their teeth, apply their make-up, see their morning face, or hear them doing their daily bathroom duties, or to have that all reversed.
Computer consultant here. Answer: No.
I am a very sociable person, but I am not going to do the college-roomies thing.
Well. This IS IMHO and your statement is highly debatable. People can spend twenty years in an office of any size with “co-workers” and never know as much about that them as they would learn in a single evening of socializing. I don’t know what you do or where you work and it is entirely possible that what you say very much applies, but the people I work with and those that my friends and family work with would probably agree with my assertion.
YMMV.
Absolutely! The only time I’ve had to share a room was when I was on an observing run in India last year. The Institute had double booked the Guest House, and since myself and my co-worker were two single young women, working together, the Institute thought that it’d be OK to put us in a room together. It was not. I was livid. I need my space to chill out, decompress and generally recover fromn an entire day of doing stuff. To do this, I either have to be alone, or with someone I’m very very close to. Being in such close proximity to a co-worker all the time does not make me a happy bunny.
Said co-worker is actually visiting from India at the moment, and is staying at my place. Even though its a case of seperate bedrooms, I still get no chance to chill and decompress, and it is very obviously getting to me. The next 4 weeks may get ‘interesting’.