Anybody travel for work with coworkers?

In sales, travel with other salespeople or managers on the road seems to be common. I've seen a lot of craziness with people.  

At high dollar convention hotels they made us share a room.  Hanging in the trade show booth for 8 hours after getting breakfast then dinner and drinking afterwards you tended to get sick of your roommate.

Once in Vegas my coworker says his drinking buddy is driving over from LA and sleeping in his bed with him.  Guy was barfing early morning and passed out next to the toilet - I let him sleep it off until I really had to urinate.  Freaking frat boy mentality. 

People let loose on the road......

I did a short stint as a roadie with The Producers. Long enough to learn I really hated living on a bus with other people. 

Yup, my work partner and I go to our convention and training together. Most have hospitality rooms with free booze and all night card games. My current partner is a gym guy but my old partner got so trashed at his last convention he peed in his closet on the 1st night fell, and knocked himself out.  The next night he went to bed wearing a garbage bag diaper outside his clothes. He literally poked his legs through the bottom of the garbage bag and pulled it up and tied off the draw string. 

"Hell is other people." - Jean-Paul Sartre

Saw a guy at a Tuesday night Braves game last week falling down drunk. I haven't puked from alcohol over consumption since I was 19. It absolutely does not compute to me when somebody over 30 still finds that amusing.

Not gonna happen. 
 

I travel a lot for work, but if my company ever asked me to share a room (they wouldn't), I'd be having a conversation with my boss that would end with either a change of plan, or my resignation. I work my ass off when I travel. I need rest. Im not gonna be a babysitter for a grown-ass juvenile delinquent. 
 

Any company that is too cheap to pay for another room should not be sending people on the road. 
 

I also won't stay at the Motel 6.

Was forced to share hotel rooms with co-workers for SEMA a few years. My favorite was one sales manager who showed up to the room roughly 60 minutes before he was due to be working the booth. He had been out...somewhere...all night. He somehow made it to his shift and worked all day, no idea how. Another sales guy cheated on his long time girlfriend with someone he picked up in Vegas and was crying in the booth the next day out of guilt. Watched another guy slip off his wedding ring on the plane before hitting the ground in Vegas.

In 30 years I've been on a total of three business trips and as far as I'm concerned that was three too many.

Never had to share a room, in fact on two of those trips I only interacted with coworkers at the actual site we were visiting, I had my own rental car and was staying a different hotel.

The other one, two of the people on the trip WERE sharing a room even though the company was paying for two -- the director and one of his direct reports.  That ended badly a few months later.

During my entire career with high tech companies, in what would be considered "technical sales" (I'm an engineer who chose the commercial side of the business), I did many trips with colleagues, both domestic and international. I never, ever, shared a hotel  room. I don't deny that after business hours we partied to a reasonable extent wherever we were. That's the thing to do. But at least we went back to our own rooms when we wanted and had our own privacy. I could not imagine sharing a room with a colleague, or with a colleague's friend who acted inappropriately. Nope. Not acceptable.

I travel for work a few times a year. I've shared rooms in the past, it's not that big a deal although I prefer my own. 

The difference, apparently, is that I work with functioning adults. 

I spent 8+ months a year on the road for 12 years with co-workers of the blue collar variety. That is easy to type and easy to think about, but it sucks. 

50% easy of those days involved 12+hr days, 6-7 days a week. My best/worst was 22hrs on the job and I showed up on time the next day after eating, a shower, and whatever sleep I found. I did the same thing the next day. I have been near 8000 miles from home.

I missed most of my anniversaries, my wife's birthdays, my birthdays, most holidays, and a lot of stuff I could have been doing to my home/cars. I was living a different life.

I did it for me, and most of you.

I have been on the road with that guy and have been that guy.

I will leave tomorrow.

I did a fair number of deployments with my coworkers during my career. Fire Department guys don't tend to be knuckleheads. No one is cheating on their wife, or any of that foolishness. 

I've traveled every week for a few years, these days I try to limit it to one week a month but we never share rooms. I wouldn't do it if it required sharing rooms.

I was a traveling manager for the last 7 years. On the road every week; never shared a room and I'm the first to jet when any social pleasantries are over. Not interested in drama; mine or yours. Got a new job that's mon-Fri 7:30-5 and it's amazing!

In reply to chandler :

Congrats on the new gig 

I travel a few times per year. I never share a room and stay in decent hotels. I'm typically the first to head back to the hotel after dinner. I've seen and heard a few silly things but other than hungover coworkers there hasn't been any drama. 15+ years ago I would go out occasionally when traveling but I just don't have the motivation any longer. I do try to schedule in some fun if I can, and have done some neat things on work trips. Off of the top of  my head: From Vegas - Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire, rented a Jeep to go off road in the desert. From Orlando - Don Garlits museum, Kennedy Space Center, Daytona Supercross, day trip to Tampa to visit friends, etc. 

My worst work trip experience was being in Vegas just a block away when the concert shooting took place. Second worse was having a bout of vertigo and being stuck in a hotel for a few days. 

I've traveled for work to attend field jobs,  certification testing of product, meetings with 3rd party designer/contract manufacturers, and industry conferences. 

As an engineer at the conferences it's been more support of the products and hanging out during the day with marketing. The engineers would tend to go back to their hotels or do some site seeing and explore the city before calling it a night. 

The marketing folks would go out each night, and the last night they would really let loose and be out most of the night. It was funny to be in the booth the last day packing things up listening to the stories from the night before, while I was rested and they were battling pretty bad hangovers. Overheard incidents of missing underwear, lost room keys, etc.

Regardless of company, always had my own room and mostly Courtyard or equivalent when available. 

I don't see how companies justify making employees share a room in todays world. There just too much risk for harassment, etc. 

In reply to No Time :

Interesting...

I think you could actually make the case that it's gender discrimination. If the employee was a woman, they'd get her a different room (to avoid sexual harassment issues).  Therefore, it's a gender bias to make male employees share a room. 
 

It's not something I'd put up with.

Yep. Traveled for meetings, conventions, you name it. I don't have any good stories other than getting hammered at the airport during a delay with my manager. Slept it off on the plane, got our Ubers home, when I got to the office the next morning he offered me an Excedrin. 
 

I don't care what hotel I stay in as long as it is clean. Usually the cleanest means the newest or most recently renovated. 
 

Never had to share a room. That would be a non-starter for me. The exception to this is when I travel to ref a hockey tournament. That basically doesn't happen anymore, but I'd share a room with some of my fellow refs. Most of them are friends though. 

Only once in my career did a company make me share rooms.  I didn't last long there and it was one trip. Never again.  One dude brought a vcr(it was a long time ago) and insisted on watching "one night in Paris".(you know what I mean) over and over again.  

I use to travel weekly all over the world for a long period of time.

You can tell the people that never travel for work and those that travel all of the time.

I usually went with people that travel all of the time so the drama was low, We rarely were out late, and life just went like we were you know working professionals. We did it so often that it was our office so to speak. 

I always hated traveling with the "rookies" They were the ones that went to Vegas and partied all of the time, racked up crazy bills, and showed up hung over. They were a headache and I would call them out on it. 

Fueled by Caffeine said:

Only once in my career did a company make me share rooms.  I didn't last long there and it was one trip. Never again.  

Same for me.  Fortunately, during my working career other than that one brief exception I had employers who were very reasonable about travel requirements.

I used to travel all over the Southeast with a guy. I was responsible for inventory, he was responsible for testing the booms on line bucket trucks. We would roll out Sunday afternoon and roll back in Thursday afternoon. 

We liked the same kinds of food, watched the same kind of shows, and didn't have any interest in getting wasted. We stayed in the same room and it really wasn't an issue. We would get dinner, watch a little TV or read, and hit the rack early so we could be on the road again by 5 am. 

mtn said:

I don't care what hotel I stay in as long as it is clean. Usually the cleanest means the newest or most recently renovated.  

That's something I've picked up on too.  Within a hotel chain, the newest one in the area is usually the better choice, regardless of tier.

At my previous job I traveled a bit. Occasionally we'd be required to double up on rooms. It was really and truly dreadful.

Now I own my own company. We do have to travel for work sometimes. However, I build it into the job that A) everyone gets paid a good per diem and B) nobody has to share a room. At the end of a hard day you just want to go back, clean up, and decompress. The last thing you want is some other guy talking/farting/snoring/whatever while you're trying to read a book or call your wife.