318
votes
Accepted
Is it reasonable for my employer to make me use unpaid time off to drive back after a work conference?
Travel away from home is legally work time, unless it was done outside of regular working hours, and you were a passenger (that is, you were not driving yourself).
If you have spent another 6 hours ...
- 9,235
197
votes
Accepted
Last-minute canceled work-trip means I'll lose thousands of dollars on planned vacation
You have, I believe, more options than this.
Go as originally planned, and ask the company to give you an advance on your PTO, or work some weekends, so you can take a full vacation with your family. ...
- 86.3k
164
votes
Accepted
Manager asks if a coworker can stay at my house
Does this request seem wrong? It makes me uncomfortable but I'm not
sure it's really crossing a line. What do you think?
I think the request is foolish. As a long time manager, I would never impose ...
- 384k
150
votes
What should be my reaction to my supervisors' small child showing up during a video conference?
I am a fellow parent and manager. I had to un-stick Lego, wipe little bottoms (off-cam) and stop fights during professional presentations. Or tell my 5 years old to put on some trousers before he ...
- 1,482
129
votes
Is it reasonable for my employer to make me use unpaid time off to drive back after a work conference?
Is this a reasonable request or something I should push back on?
It's completely unreasonable to me. I would push back. And if that doesn't work, I might have a chat with HR to understand relevant ...
- 384k
111
votes
Accepted
What should be my reaction to my supervisors' small child showing up during a video conference?
Your best bet would be to act as if the child isn't even in the room.
If it's not having an impact on either their or your performance it's irrelevant. The professional thing to do would be to ...
- 975
105
votes
Refusing to go on a company-paid event
How do I politely decline the going to event C, without getting asked (for the second time) why I’m not going,
Politely decline and let the company know that you cannot attend because it interferes ...
- 79.6k
91
votes
Responding to trivial and constant affirmation in a telephonic conference
Since you are a supervisor of one of the teams, you can tell everyone on the call that you can't hear a team member's status update when someone else on the line is talking or there is noise on the ...
- 17.4k
89
votes
Accepted
Going to a conference with a manager who has a history of skipping out on talks
Any ideas as to how this situation should best be handled?
If you are genuinely interested in the material at the conference and want to listen to all the talks then by all means take full advantage ...
- 79.6k
79
votes
Invited to give talk, but want to refuse
There is a lot to unpack here and I'm going to try to break it into parts. At the moment you are objecting to
preparing and delivering a 5 minute talk on some software you don't sound very proud of ...
- 151k
73
votes
Going to a conference with a manager who has a history of skipping out on talks
I have gone to plenty of developer conferences and not attended sessions. They aren't all interesting, believe me! I don't think it is that unusual to miss some for various reasons. To skip ALL the ...
- 7,495
67
votes
Last-minute canceled work-trip means I'll lose thousands of dollars on planned vacation
Unfortunately, your employer isn't liable for the costs of your family's trip or the extra nights. The firm is only responsible for the costs of travel (and the cost of cancelling reservations) that ...
- 12.3k
67
votes
Accepted
Ethics of keeping a gift card you won at a raffle at a conference your company sent you to?
I think this is much less of an ethics question and much more of a company policy question. You should start there to find the answer for your situation.
T-Shirts and other branded giveaways have ...
- 18.1k
63
votes
Ethics of keeping a gift card you won at a raffle at a conference your company sent you to?
My question is: did I act unethically and, if not, how should I deal
with the coworker that thinks I did?
I don't think you acted unethically.
That said, I would have asked my boss (or perhaps HR) ...
- 384k
58
votes
Last-minute canceled work-trip means I'll lose thousands of dollars on planned vacation
Take this experience as a lesson learned. In the future don't plan family vacations at work events. In this case the CEO canceled the event, but this is no different than if you had been laid off ...
- 79.6k
57
votes
Manager asks if a coworker can stay at my house
It would be one thing if the conference was mandatory and your manager said your coworker must stay at your house, however it sounds like it's optional and he's trying to compromise with you. He wants ...
- 1,023
45
votes
Accepted
Responding to trivial and constant affirmation in a telephonic conference
How do I politely solve this?
This person is just trying to show they are engaged with the call. They don't realize they are causing an issue.
I suggest you try something like this: "Ok, from now ...
- 84.8k
42
votes
Is it reasonable for my employer to make me use unpaid time off to drive back after a work conference?
No. Time spent traveling for work should be paid time. Your manager's suggestion should be concerning not only to you but also for your organization.
You should, at minimum, alert another trusted ...
- 12.3k
37
votes
Accepted
Invited to give talk, but want to refuse
If it were me, I would push back on it and wouldn't do it. But that's me - the problem you're presenting here is one that we can't answer directly because the answer depends on your own personal ...
- 8,837
36
votes
Is it reasonable for my employer to make me use unpaid time off to drive back after a work conference?
Tell them that you didn't get any value out of the day either.
Besides, they did get value out of it because you were at the conference. If you hadn't done the travel, you wouldn't have been at the ...
34
votes
Refusing to go on a company-paid event
I agree with @sf02's answer that you should simply and politely decline to attend based on your previous education commitments.
However, I'd like to take the chance to point out that - apart from the ...
- 809
33
votes
I've been invited to a free 2-day conference. What's the catch?
A quick search turns up this (their words, not mine):
IDC: The premier global market intelligence firm.
International Data Corporation - https://www.idc.com
IDC examines consumer markets by devices, ...
- 1,030
30
votes
Manager asks if a coworker can stay at my house
Your manager's request is unusual in my experience and puts you in an awkward position. It would certainly make me uncomfortable. Additionally, it seems that maybe the boss is setting you up as his ...
- 21.4k
25
votes
Going to a conference with a manager who has a history of skipping out on talks
Do you know as a fact that they goofed off?
Many attendees at these conferences, especially at the management level, use conferences not for the talks, but for networking. What might seem as "...
- 11.7k
23
votes
Accepted
Should I check with conference organizer before booking cheaper rate?
I am hotel liaison for a small science fiction convention. Often, our hotel arrangements involve a commitment for a certain number of rooms under the convention code. That is more likely to be the ...
- 30.7k
22
votes
What should be my reaction to my supervisors' small child showing up during a video conference?
As a parent working with no child-care and a lot of meetings, I've needed to navigate this a lot, and I'm not really satisfied with any of the current answers.
The problem is that the current answers ...
- 1,055
21
votes
Manager asks if a coworker can stay at my house
It's difficult for me to believe that HR would endorse this type of request of an employee. All kinds of potential HR nightmares could result. Is there any way you can get some HR input? What if the "...
- 311
21
votes
Responding to trivial and constant affirmation in a telephonic conference
I would not agree that making an indirect comment about "Holding comments til the end" or "Please keep the line quiet" are good ways to handle this situation. Both of these indirect comments would ...
- 936
21
votes
Is it reasonable for my employer to make me use unpaid time off to drive back after a work conference?
You are paid in exchange for your free time.
The value that you bring to the company is not relevant to whether you should be paid (it is only relevant to whether the company want to keep working ...
- 2,989
19
votes
Ethics of keeping a gift card you won at a raffle at a conference your company sent you to?
You should really refer to your company policies, and if in doubt, ask.
There is nothing inherently wrong with winning a prize from a random drawing at a conference. It was random after all (at least ...
- 12k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible