In hotel room with female co-workers-am I over reacting

[d0nnivain]

11 hours ago, sillychick said:

I think my issue is not his judgment or that I think anything inappropriate was going on, it's just that I know he HATES any sort of confrontation or sticky situation, so let's say one of the women leaves the room to go back to her own room, now he is alone with one of them.   I know it will make him uncomfortable and then what?  He makes an excuse to leave and it looks obvious?   Or he stays and he feels uncomfortable?   Will he then worry that he will be walking out of a hotel room with one of them and a manager will see him and raise eyebrows?    I know him well enough to know that this would actually make him very uncomfortable if the situation played out like that.      So I think my issue all along has been, why put yourself in that position at all when it could be so easily avoided?  It could look bad and why take that risk for no reason when you could have waited in the lobby?   I just think he didn't think it through is all.   

Your guy is a grown man with a brain & a job.  Every single Q you posed above is a valid one for him to answer for himself but all are highly inappropriate for you to be thinking about.  You are not his mom, his HR director or his publicist.   Stay the <bleep> out of how he conducts his work related activities.  

I meet with male colleagues & clients alone all the time for conferences, discussions, meals etc.  Granted it's never been in a hotel room but the room doesn't make that much of a difference.   Most hotels have some sort of chair so he wouldn't be sitting on the bed.  There have been some men along the way who tried to cross boundaries.  Them I don't meet with alone if I can avoid it but I think it's perfectly fine in this day & age to say things like "this is making me uncomfortable"; "let's open the door" or even "you know what, I'll meet you downstairs."   If one of the women left & he was uncomfortable being alone in a hotel room with the other he has a voice he can use to speak up & legs to walk out.  Give him some credit.  Even a conflict avoidant person can enforce their own boundaries at work.  

I'm glad you talked & came to a resolution that works for you but be careful that you don't emasculate your guy.  

Edited August 19, 2020 by d0nnivain

[elaine567]

I know it is all about protecting him from any fall out, but is it really?
Grown men aren't naive about hanging around the hotel rooms of twenty something women.
They know how it looks...
They often like how it looks...
 

[sillychick]

2 hours ago, d0nnivain said:

Your guy is a grown man with a brain & a job.  Every single Q you posed above is a valid one for him to answer for himself but all are highly inappropriate for you to be thinking about.  You are not his mom, his HR director or his publicist.   Stay the <bleep> out of how he conducts his work related activities.  

 

Well maybe this is the crux of it is that we communicate a ton about our jobs and our days on a daily basis.    He knows my business and I know his.  Just as a matter of conversation.     Every night he asks me  'how was your day?  Did you see such and such a client?  Did they like your proposal, I know you worked hard on it?' and vice versa.   He has actually given me some great ideas and ideas for writing commercials (I'm in advertising) when he knows what I'm struggling with.     Then in the morning we often talk again 'What does your day look like, how many stops do you think you'll have to make today, what should we plan for dinner?'.   On BOTH sides.    We have very different jobs but we both talk a lot about our jobs and our days, just as a course of our day.  He'll give me advice and vice versa.    Last night he played a VM from an angry customer and we discussed how he will handle that situation today.   So the fact that we both talk a bunch about our days and our clients and our challenges, for then to say that I shouldn't be in his business is just not how our relationship is.     I don't feel like voicing my concerns about the hotel room thing is any more inappropriate or emasculating than for me to give him a bit of advice on how he can handle this one irate person he dealt with yesterday.    

[d0nnivain]

It's one thing if he asks for advice.  It's something else if you offer an unsolicited opinion. 

Sometimes when my husband vents, I ask him if he's venting or if he wants me to weigh in.  That boundary prevents arguments.  

 

[IslandSanctuary]

On 8/17/2020 at 2:59 PM, snowboy91 said:

 

Also - to look at it from another angle, if a male can't be in a female room because it "looks bad" by the assumption they were being intimate, then males can't be in another male's room, or females can't be in a females' room since they may be gay/lesbian and being intimate and it looks similarly "bad". You can quickly get into a lot of assumptions and semantics... or just let it go since the "what about..."s get too complicated.

I find this statement to be false. I wouldn't mind if my wife was in a hot tub drinking a wine alone with a female friend - but a male friend? I wouldn't mind if my wife sent many messages a day to a female friend but a male friend?
Opposite sex friendships/colleagues are definitely different from same sex ones. 

In this particular scenario it does seem pretty harmless, but your statement is wrong. 

[BMI03]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:17 AM, sillychick said:

Well maybe this is the crux of it is that we communicate a ton about our jobs and our days on a daily basis.    He knows my business and I know his.  Just as a matter of conversation.     Every night he asks me  'how was your day?  Did you see such and such a client?  Did they like your proposal, I know you worked hard on it?' and vice versa.   He has actually given me some great ideas and ideas for writing commercials (I'm in advertising) when he knows what I'm struggling with.     Then in the morning we often talk again 'What does your day look like, how many stops do you think you'll have to make today, what should we plan for dinner?'.   On BOTH sides.    We have very different jobs but we both talk a lot about our jobs and our days, just as a course of our day.  He'll give me advice and vice versa.    Last night he played a VM from an angry customer and we discussed how he will handle that situation today.   So the fact that we both talk a bunch about our days and our clients and our challenges, for then to say that I shouldn't be in his business is just not how our relationship is.     I don't feel like voicing my concerns about the hotel room thing is any more inappropriate or emasculating than for me to give him a bit of advice on how he can handle this one irate person he dealt with yesterday.    

I think you are misrepresenting what d0nnivain was saying to ease it into a different category of interaction. Everything you state above is fine, and I don't think people here have much disagreement with that. That heavy interaction in each others work you describe here...very ok.

The difference with this situation is that something he has done, which he has judged situationally in the moment to be ok, you are so bothered by that you find yourself on a anonymous forum trying to make sense of his behavior.

The things you indicate your worry about...improper accusations, co-worker assumptions, corporate image...if entered into the type of back and forth conversation you describe above, would be quickly dismissed once you brought it up with acknowledgment that those are things are considered in knowing the situation and corporate culture. Case closed. My wife and I give each other day to day work advice as well, but we also both understand that we can't individually know more about the context of each others job as the one living it. Opinions are points shared for the other to reflect upon with their greater insight, but can only be debated lightly with someone who obviously spends 8+ hours per day living the job vs. your morning/even discussion's worth of visibility the other has.

The fact it has brought you here to continue to debate your side, to me, indicates this is more about your self-esteem over the issue, and personal desire to not have him in such a situation. There's nothing wrong with that so long as you are honest about that with him, or at minimum honest with yourself about it. At least then you can have a real conversation about it. It may be a bit controlling or over-protective in my eyes, but it's well within your right to feel that way and to express how you feel about that to him. Then, he can make the call whether he can accept that boundary or not. If he does, then next time, whether the corporate culture, the situational context, etc. are such that he feels it's acceptable to do again, which is fair to him to judge, he will now have a new criteria by which he needs to measure the situation against as well, which is your personal displeasure with him doing so. Again, to me that would be a step too far into the controlling space, but he may be very accepting of that to make you happy. At least then it's real.

Good luck.

[snowboy91]

22 hours ago, IslandSanctuary said:

I find this statement to be false. I wouldn't mind if my wife was in a hot tub drinking a wine alone with a female friend - but a male friend? I wouldn't mind if my wife sent many messages a day to a female friend but a male friend?
Opposite sex friendships/colleagues are definitely different from same sex ones. 

In this particular scenario it does seem pretty harmless, but your statement is wrong. 

I understand the sentiment, but I was approaching it from the point of view of if I was staying at a hotel, and I saw two adults walk out of a hotel room. If they were both female, then it's likely they are just friends, but there is a chance they are lesbian and were up to something. If a male and a female walked out of said room, then it's likely they were up to something, but there is also a good chance either the guy or girl, or both, are gay and it's all innocent. Therefore, it simply serves no purpose to make assumptions about what anyone is up to since there's every chance you're wrong about that assumption, so in those sorts of situations I don't bother thinking about it.

The core of the issue isn't "opposite sex" interaction per se, but "attraction". If you make the argument that opposite sex interactions are different from same sex interactions based on (I assume) sexual/romantic attraction, then it should follow that a same-sex interaction where attraction exists would have the same issue.

Now, of course, if you're referring specifically to your wife who you know is heterosexual, it is a bit different and I understand your discomfort. Even so there is a chance that she is capable of maintaining normal friendships with male friends (especially if she has done so in the past).

[Timshel]

I think it's unprofessional and odd for a person of business to engage in banter with two opposite sex persons behind the door of a hotel room no matter what time of day it is.  This is what hotel lobbies (with the comfy chairs) conference rooms and coffee shops are made for. 

As a professional woman, I would never put myself in this position and I don't know why it should be different for a man.