perks for remote employees only, my mom says I shouldn’t leave a bad Glassdoor review, and more

by Alison Green on March 28, 2025

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. Perks for remote employees only

Our company works mostly remotely. Employees who live locally come in one day a week. A few departments’ employees are allowed to live elsewhere in the country (this rule does not apply to all departments). Several times a year, all staff are required to come into the office for the full week. Employees who live outside the area get paid hotel rooms near the office, and expense all of their meals. Local employees, however, are required to pay for their lunch every day, as well as the additional costs of commuting for the additional days (parking is quite expensive where we work). Is there a way to make our company see how unfair this is? Or am I being unreasonable?

Yeah, you’re being unreasonable! Employees traveling for work have their meals covered since eating on business trips tends to be more expensive (since you don’t have access to your own stocked kitchen). Meals and hotel rooms aren’t perks when you’re traveling for work (“perks” was the word in your email subject line to me); they’re business expenses.

Some extra days in your local office but still going home each night is a very different thing than being gone for a week on a business trip.

I don’t think you’re likely to get traction if you suggest that the company pay for local people’s extra commuting costs or lunches that week. (In theory it could be good for morale if your company provided lunch to everyone at least once or twice during those weeks, but it’s not outrageous that they’re not; this is just a difference in being local vs. non-local.)

Related:
our non-traveling employees are upset about the travel “perks” that others get

2. Being the only woman at a retreat in an AirBnB

My manager, a VP, invited me to attend an upcoming director summit with five directors. While my role is more administrative, he felt my presence would be valuable. The summit is planned for the summer at a rented AirBnb with entertainment amenities like a swimming pool, game room, etc. I would need to take a five-hour road trip with one of the male directors, and the group would conduct meetings around a large kitchen table or in the living room with a projected screen.

I was initially uncomfortable with the setup and expressed my concerns to my boss. He acknowledged them but emphasized that he still wanted me to attend. After discussing it with family and colleagues, opinions were split on whether this arrangement — one woman among six men at a rental property for a work event — was entirely appropriate or potentially questionable. What do you think?

I don’t think it’s inappropriate, but it’s also not unreasonable if you decide that you personally feel uncomfortable with it and want to ask for separate lodgings. (I’m assuming there’s an overnight stay, given the five-hour drive.)

Related:
I’d be the only woman at a team-building event at my boss’s remote lake house

3. My mom says I shouldn’t leave a bad Glassdoor review for my old company

I recently was terminated from a very toxic work situation, and have run out my options to legally pursue them. (The contingency lawyers basically told me I had a case but they did not feel it would be profitable enough to be worth pursuing on my behalf, and I cannot afford to retain legal representation on my own.)

In place of hitting them in their wallet, where I know they would pay attention, I was at least hoping to post an honest review of the job. If I had done my due diligence in the first place, I never would have applied. I want to add my voice to the chorus of others who have proclaimed this company to be bad to work for.

My issue comes because my well-meaning mother is trying to discourage me from posting anything because she is convinced that they will figure out that I posted it and come after me legally. She pointed out that I do not have the money to sue them, and I certainly do not have the money to defend myself if they try to sue me. She is also concerned that it will get linked back to me and prevent future employers from considering me. While she is right that I cannot afford to be sued, I am more dubious about her other fears. If a reputable employer is interested in what I have to offer, why should a bad relationship with a former place of employment be relevant? I have connections in the form of other employees who will and actively are giving me positive references for new opportunities.

How valid are my mother’s concerns? Admittedly, she has been out of the workforce for a long time, but I frequently listen to her because she operates from a place of common sense. I have many people telling me to just do it, and many people pointing out that they have not disputed the other negative reviews so why would mine be the tipping point? I’m just truly scared of making myself undesirable to a future employer. So, how far off-base is my mother on this one?

It’s incredibly unlikely that the fact that you left a negative review will somehow get linked to you in the minds of prospective employers. How would they know? The idea that it would prevent future employers from considering you is a non-issue.

Where it could be an issue if your old employer figures it was you and it causes them to give you a more negative reference than they’d give you otherwise — but it doesn’t sound like you were expecting a good reference from them anyway, so I’m not sure that needs to be a real worry. (For the record, though, you may run into employers who want a reference from this company even if you’re offering up different ones, so you shouldn’t rely on “well, I just won’t give them as a reference” — but it sounds like this reference wouldn’t be great regardless of whether you leave them a bad review or not.)

Moreover, you sent me the review you’re considering posting and it’s not the sort of thing that would obviously have to be from one specific person: you talk in general terms about the company culture and management, not about specific experiences unique to you. I don’t see how they’d tie it to you, unless you repeatedly raised the same issues in very loud and specific terms while you were there and no one else ever complained about those things (which, from your review, definitely sounds like it was not the case). There’s also nothing legally actionable here; it’s legal to share your opinions [and here’s Glassdoor’s own page on avoiding defamation, which explains what’s considered an opinion (i.e., not defamatory) versus “verifiable facts” (potentially defamatory if knowingly false)]. I mean, people can sue anyone for anything, but it’s incredibly unlikely that a company would feel moved to take any legal action on this.

Your mom is being overly cautious. That said, Glassdoor has a bad track record on privacy so it’s always smart to use a burner email if you post there.

4. Is it normal for managers not to know how much their employees earn?

A few years ago I was a line manager and hiring manager for new employees joining my team, so I knew what the salary range for the positions being filled was, had negotiating power over said range, had the final say on who we’d extend an offer to, and would communicate to HR how much we’d be offering to the candidate. I also used the knowledge of my direct reports’ compensation to fight for salary increases to improve employee retention and to make sure everyone was being paid fairly for their role, their contributions, and their job experience.

I always thought this was fairly standard, but I’ve discovered that my last two line managers had no idea how much I or anyone else on my team were being paid, nor did they care to ask because the final offer to employees were decided by the CEO, as they’re the ones who have the final say on things like budgets for the company and how much they spend on new talent.

My last line manager tried arguing that my salary was private information and wasn’t relevant for him to do his job, but I argued back that, without this knowledge, he had no idea if we were being paid fairly, and as the person who oversees our day-to-day work, he’s the best person to know our worth and make sure that our compensation matches our contributions to the company. I eventually left that job because not only did I find out I was being underpaid for the industry, my colleague and peer received a significant raise that wasn’t extended to me.

Is this normal? Are line managers usually not told how much their direct reports are being paid? Is this not important information they should have so they can advocate for their team with senior leadership? That’s what I thought at first, but now I’m wondering if I was the outlier and line managers are usually not privy to this information due to data privacy reasons.

No, managers generally know how much people on their teams are being paid, for all the reasons you say. You also need to be able to spot inequities (Persephone is making more than Cordelia, but Cordelia does a better job) and retention risks (we’re currently underpaying Cordelia for the market and risk losing her over it) and actually talk to your employees about their salaries, which is a normal thing people bring up with their managers. There are places where managers don’t have this information, but unless they’re very low-level managers, it’s usually the sign of a culture with weak management (including that managers there aren’t well-trained or supported, which can trickle down to the people working under them in all sorts of ways).

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{ 282 comments }

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  1. Daria grace*

    #1: perhaps it’s worth thinking more about the advantages of getting to stay at home. Even as someone who has mostly enjoyed the business trips I’ve done and would be willing to do more, there’s major downsides to them. If you were able to stay at home you’re not having to carefully pack all the things you might need for the week and going without or buying stuff if you forget. At home you have a bedroom set up that’s exactly how you like it (I hated the pillows the place I stayed on my last work trip so much I ducked out to a department store and brought one more to my liking). Staying at home for a conference you can likely keep up elements of your regular routine like going to the gym and don’t have to find someone to care for your pets. It would have to be a pretty great hotel to convince me to stay there rather than at home for a local conference

    1. Artemesia*

      And if you are parents, the burden on the other parent or even a need to pay childcare or make complicated arrangements. Pet care if you live alone. Being on the job 24/7 rather than 8 hours and home. Business travel is not romantic or fun and eating out 3 meals a day is not a great pleasure for many people.

      1. BellStell*

        Exactly this. I am single and have a pet who needs a sitter that I pay when I travel. It is a hassle on many levels. And even tho I do enjoy meeting the people I work with globally and we do get a small per diem that usually I can save to cover the pet sitter costs, I do not like spending 6-14 hrs in a plane, having to eat at restaurants every meal, etc.

        1. Bitte Meddler*

          Yep. It costs me $100/day for a pet sitter to come to my house in the morning and evening whenever I have to travel for work. There’s no way that OP’s daily parking cost is anywhere near that.

          Additionally, one of my cats has diabetes. If my pet sitter gets her insulin wrong, she could go hypoglycemic and die within hours without anyone there to catch her symptoms or test her glucose.

        2. Freya*

          I have a spouse, but our cane corso NEEDS to know his puppysitters – to much change all at once can lead to an anxiety meltdown and it’s not fair on the puppysitter to have to clean up whichever thing he destroyed while stimming with it

      2. Amy*

        Absolutely. I’m a parent who travels for 40-50 days a year. Even with a spouse, the level of coordination and extra childcare is significant. At least $50 a day.

        And that’s if I never have an expensive unexpected need like needing to buy / launder a stained suit jacket at a hotel. Or needing the $10 DayQuil they sell at the airport for 4 pills instead of the big bottle I already own at home.

        Travel is part of my job. But it’s in no was a perk. It’s just my job.

      3. umami*

        This is an excellent point. There are plenty of downsides to work travel, many of which are financial! OP is only seeing the plus sides.

    2. Seal*

      Getting a free hotel room and a per diem definitely isn’t a perk. One major disadvantage of traveling for work is that you’re more or less in work mode the entire time, which is exhausting. Even when you have down time or time to yourself, unwinding and sleeping in a hotel room is not the same thing as being able to go home every night. Eating out can be expensive, and depending on where you’re staying your dining options might be very limited (a hotel with a breakfast buffet and coffee is always a plus).

      That said, having at least few catered meals or lunches on the company’s dime for everyone during an all hands on deck week would be ideal. Or at least free snacks.

      1. HB*

        This! The only thing that *almost* sounds like a perk to me are the meals – but it would depend on whether or not the office has a breakroom and thus whether it’s easy to bring lunch from home. If for some reason the set up is such that *everyone* has to go out for lunch when they’re in the office, then I could see how the local employees would chafe a little bit since they’re doing it an extra four days that week.

        In either case, the nice thing for the company to do would be to bring in lunch on a couple of those days – not so much because the out of town employees are getting perks and this makes it fair, but more because the local employees are doing something they don’t normally have to do and it would be nice to give them something to make up for it. I hate working from home and would come to the office regardless, but during busy seasons the office is stocked with snacks, and they order lunch on Saturdays for those who come in. That perk is more about making up for the extra hours and not the coming into the office, but you still only get that perk if you come in so it’s a bit of both.

        1. Amy*

          I can’t ever imagine ever seeing normal food on a work trip as a perk. Employees should not be required to bring their own food while traveling. I don’t know how that would even work for 5 days with airplane or train travel.

          1. Muscadine*

            I’ve had to do exactly this (because of gluten sensitivity) and it looks like: packing a flight carry-on with nothing but several meals worth of GF snacks, researching a few trustworthy restaurants close to the venue beforehand, and the big one… ordering a delivery of gluten-free groceries and supplies directly to the hotel, with enough fresh ingredients (and disposable utensils and plates) to keep me in salads and sandwiches for a week. Possible, yes. Definitely not recommended.

        2. Jackalope*

          Having a lunch or two planned and paid for the the company is also a way to get everyone the chance to eat together and get to know each other a bit more, which is often part of the point for this sort of event.

          2. Joron Twiner*

            Yes, I thought this was normal and common?? To have some kind of catered or provided lunch/snacks/anything to bring local and visiting workers together. In my experience companies often provide a lunch for people in meetings all day, and then people go out for dinner at their own (or at the highest ranking worker’s) expense.

        3. Nancy*

          Paying for meals for the nonlocal employees is not a perk. People still need to eat when they travel. Local employees can do whatever they normally do.

          1. Olive*

            It’s not clear that local employees can do whatever they normally do at lunch time. If everyone else is going out for a company paid lunch, but local employees need to pay $20-ish for their own meal or be excluded, that’s not great.

            Likewise, it’s pretty weird if non-local employees are getting a catered lunch that isn’t being offered to everyone.

            But non-local employees absolutely should be able to expense their own breakfasts and dinners with no equivalent perks for local employees, unless there are also mandatory team dinners during the week.

            1. CeeDoo*

              That’s what I wasn’t clear on. I completely understand not giving the local people a per diem. But if they are expected to network and meet at restaurants or coffee or whatnot and the non-local people are getting it free, it does put a damper on the local people’s participation.

              1. Cheesehead*

                Agreed. No to other meals, but if the lunches are “working lunches” or even if they’re strictly social but everyone is expected to attend as a group, then the company should cover the cost for everyone, regardless of whether or not the employee is “local”. (And actually, if the company is even slightly encouraging other group meals, those should be covered by the company too.)

                1. sb51*

                  Yeah, and if it’s 100-to-1 locals to out-of-towners or some other ratio where buying for everyone is untenable, getting takeout brought to the company for the out-of-towners so that everyone can eat in the break room together might go over OK.

          2. metadata minion*

            To be fair, in this case the local employees normally work from home, so they’re doing something different for the in-office week as well. But for most people, packing a lunch isn’t any particular hardship, even if they don’t do that normally.

            1. metadata minion*

              Wait, I misread and forgot that they are coming in once a week, so yeah, they just need to do their in-office-day routine all week that week.

        4. learnedthehardway*

          I was thinking that the meals for travelling really aren’t a perk, either. I mean, it’s not like the employee is on vacation or has the time to seek out high end restaurants. More likely, they’re eating at the hotel restaurant (if there is one), which may be perfectly adequate, but is hardly likely to be an experience to write home about. And there’s certainly going to be a spending limit on what the company is prepared to pay.

          Personally, I strongly prefer to be at home vs being in a hotel – even high end hotels (and these won’t be that) aren’t home.

          1. Hannah Lee*

            The only time meals while I was traveling for work felt like a perk was on one project where 2 of us from Boston had to do training for sales reps at our company’s offices in Paris and Milan. … you mean I have to have delicious authentic French and Italian food for 8 days? sign me up!

            And fortunately the person I was traveling with was enjoying it as much as I was, we had a great time wandering the side streets looking for someplace to duck into for a lovely meal, in countries where the culture is that you actually take enough time for a meal instead of scarfing down a sandwich, and you have a glass of wine, and don’t talk about work while you’re eating. Mmmm good times.

            Any other time? yeah, no, bad coffee/dicey breakfast choices and “getting” to choose between Sbarro/Subway/Chili’s/whatever happened to be on offer at the hotel/office area was not great.

          2. CeeDoo*

            I worked for a principal who went a little wild on restaurants when we had a per diem. We ate at Ruth’s Chris, PF Chang’s, Cheesecake Factory, places that I would not go to for lunch on a work day (I’m more of a cheapo). The bad part was having to front the money and wait for reimbursement.

      2. Thegreatprevaricator*

        I have mixed feelings on this. I travel for work sometimes. And sometimes, being able to expense my meals and stay in a hotel room *by myself* *without childcare responsibilities* is actually really nice. I also go to see shows and cultural events for work. Yes, sometimes I’d rather be at home. Yes, I am in work mode when I’m there. But I’m not going to pretend that occasionally seeing amazing stuff, and generally seeing decent stuff that I probably would have seen anyway is a hardship. It is a pain to sort childcare and logistics for sure. But it’s not really hard. It’s my job, I’m professional, I am ‘on’ when I’m travelling. Is it a perk? No? Is it often quite enjoyable? Yes.

        1. umami*

          Right, just because you might enjoy some of the things doesn’t make it a ‘perk’. They are required to pay for your meals and lodging, it’s not something ‘extra’ you are being given. I think if the OP can reframe it that way, they wouldn’t see it as unfair that the travelers are basically disrupting their lives and routine when they have to travel (even if you happen to enjoy it!), and the fact that their basic needs of food and lodging are met aren’t actually perks but the price of travel.

      3. tamarack etc.*

        Yes. While I agree with Alison overall, and the OP is definitely unreasonable in their approach to this, it might be worth taking a slightly different angle. We, too, have yearly all-hands meetings with on-sites and planning sessions. Of course the remote employees get per-diems, just like I get a per-diem when I travel.

        But if the company wants to create commonality and exchange, and maximise the value of remote employees traveling in, they should consider having catered meals or similar – the local employees certainly can’t be expected to eat in restaurants out of pocket when the remote colleagues get a reimbursement. In our case, we usually have some breakfasts, some potlucks (because of the nature of our work, sharing food or other meaningful everyday things for community building is an accepted practice – it wouldn’t work in just any workplace and needs to be limited), some catered lunches, and sometimes a BBQ.

    3. N C Kiddle*

      This is very timely for me because I’m currently pet sitting for a friend about 100 miles from my home. His flat is extremely comfortable, but it’s not my home and the disruption to my routine is a lot harder than I expected. I even splashed out on a day trip home yesterday so I could water my plants and collect some stuff I couldn’t carry when I first came down. So I can confirm that being away from home, even in very comfortable surroundings, is actually a huge hassle and it makes sense to compensate for that.

    4. Aww, coffee, no*

      A few years back my department (spread across the UK and Europe) held a three-day conference at a hotel near my site. I actually *was* offered the opportunity to stay at the hotel with everyone, and promptly declined.
      My decision was I’d much rather commute to the hotel each day, while still sleeping in my own, extremely comfy, bed at night, in a room where I could open the windows, and pick my clothes each day from my whole wardrobe.

      1. BurnOutCandidate*

        I have a similar experience. I was part of a special management training group some years ago, and while some other local employees took advantage of staying at the hotel where employees from offices across the country were staying (and where the training sessions were held), I commuted from home. It was only about ten minutes more as a drive, and I got to spend my down time with family.

      2. KateM*

        My husband is in a group that organizes biennial conferences, and they *complain* about local people not staying at hotel, saying that this leaves the international guests to socialize between themselves while the hosts sleep in their comfy homes.

    5. Overeducated*

      I think this really depends on how local “local” is. My employer is currently ending remote work, and the radius for “local” is big enough that some of us will be looking at 2-3 hour commutes each way (it’s me, if I lived 1.4 miles further away I’d be considered “long distance remote”). That also sets up major barriers to going to the gym, picking up kids, cooking real meals, etc. I’d consider that for some of the “local” employees, coming in 5x a week instead of 1x may be very disruptive to their routines. Hotels are not reasonable, but providing lunch for the entire group and offseting the cost of expensive parking would help a lot with morale, if feasible.

      1. State worker*

        I’m curious what the distance is? My state is using 50 mi, but the exemption only applies to people with existing telework agreements, and then only at the agency’s discretion. It has been a point of contention, confusion, and misinformation since it was announced.

      2. Cheesehead*

        Yes, I can see where the distance would make a big difference. And even if the distance is doable, in terms of drive time, the added parking expense could really count up if someone isn’t used to that or doesn’t have the budget to accommodate that; it could easily be an extra couple hundred for the week! I think it would still be nice to offer something to those who are “local remote” to offset some of those extra costs that they don’t normally incur.

    6. L.H. Puttgrass*

      Also, LW1, I’d suggest thinking about the likely outcome if you do complain. It’s probably not going to be, “Oh, you’re right! We should be paying for our local employees’ parking and food too!” It’s going to be, “Oh, you’re right. Remote employees, remote working is a privilege and we will no longer cover your travel or meal expenses when you come to the office.” You don’t get anything and the remote employees lose.

      Or maybe federal employment has made me extra cynical lately.

      1. Mockingjay*

        Turn it into a suggestion: “Since we have such a large gathering and many attendees are not familiar with the area and local restaurants, it might be easier/efficient to have lunch catered. It would also give everyone an opportunity to socialize or meet in person.”

        Suggest all days, or one or two for the “big” meeting days.

        My company does this – catered lunches and or a team dinner. However, traveling employees have those meals deducted from per diem when submitting expense reports. Same for hotels offering breakfast – you don’t get per diem if you select that option. The company won’t pay you twice for one meal. (Makes sense; we bill on a government contract which precludes that anyway.)

    7. Momma Bear*

      We have an annual event that requires all hands on deck. Some people get hotel rooms and meals, but that also means very long days and early mornings – like 6AM early. The hotel is a “perk” of that job/role but not a job I want so I don’t get those benefits. I can kind of understand where LW is coming from, but I’d think about the things mentioned – being in your own bed, not having to arrange pet or childcare, not having to fly or drive a long distance, etc. I would also be curious to know what roles get the hotel room. If it’s the sales team, then that’s a whole different kind of job in the first place. The fact that it’s specific people makes me think there’s something about the role or seniority at play.

    8. Beth*

      Yes, all of this! The overall inconvenience of being away from home for a week outweighs the inconvenience of needing to pack or buy your own lunch by pretty significant margins.

      If you wanted to push for some kind of perk for local workers around this week, I’d look into organizing things that are ultimately good for everyone. Scheduling a couple of team meals for bonding time is a common thing in this kind of gathering, and might have the side benefit of giving locals a company sponsored meal or two. A company-wide happy hour might have the same effect. And organizing a company-rented parking lot for the week might defuse locals’ parking costs while making it easier for travelers to navigate the challenging local parking.

      But mostly I’d suggest enjoying the ability to go home to your own home, pick clothes from your entire closet, see your family, snuggle your pets, have your favorite snacks and meals on hand, etc. Being home is a huge advantage over having to travel.

    9. I Have RBF*

      Yeah, staying at a hotel for a conference isn’t always better than sleeping at home in your own bed. Plus, while hotel food can be okay for a couple nights, it’s not a great diet for a week.

      When I stay at a hotel for a week, I have to pack my computer gear, my toiletries (I can’t use hotel soap or shampoo), my clothes for the week, my travel cpap, etc. It ends being one backpack and two duffel bags (or one backpack and one large suitcase.) If the event is actually in that hotel, is more than just daytime activities, and it’s more then 30 minutes commute, I will consider it. Sure, I have roomies to handle any pet issues, but that’s not all I have to worry about.

    10. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

      That letter reads to me like it’s was written by someone who has never, ever had to travel for business

  2. SemiAnon*

    For LW2 – I’ve done the AirBnB with colleagues where I’m the only woman in the group. If I had wanted a separate hotel room, I could have asked for it, but I preferred the more comfortable environment and kitchen access. I do inevitably get the master bedroom with en suite, because none of us want late night pyjama clad encounters in the hallways.

    I’d actually be more weirded out by spending time in an AirBnB with a bunch of coworkers who wildly outranked me, regardless of gender – the feeling of needing to be on good behaviour at all time would be much stronger than with similarly ranked colleagues.

    FWIW, my work trips regularly involve doing site work where we stay in dormitories (usually with private bathrooms), eat in a cafeteria, and have multi-hour shared rides to get there, plus weird and tiring hours, so eating breakfast with my colleagues and knowing what they’re like after being awake for 24 hours is already part of the job.

    1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      “I’d actually be more weirded out by spending time in an AirBnB with a bunch of coworkers who wildly outranked me, regardless of gender – the feeling of needing to be on good behaviour at all time would be much stronger than with similarly ranked colleagues.”

      I strongly agree with this. Possibly I’m just jaded, but it smells of “If all our shiny execs are meeting together, who’s going to make the coffee/wash the dishes/take notes/drop off the keys? I know, we should invite One (1) Woman.”

      1. EA*

        This!! Don’t do it, OP, but because you might inadvertently become a cleaner and dish washer…

        1. MusicWithRocksIn*

          Don’t most Air B&B’s need to be cleaned before you leave? Are these execs going to do this?

          1. Ally McBeal*

            Oh, yes, OP should check the AirBnb page for this rental house and raise the question of housekeeping duties before you go. Not to be reductive, but the fact that all five execs are male means I wouldn’t get my hopes up if the duties include more than taking out the trash.

        1. LaminarFlow*

          I have been the only woman on a business trip in an AirBNB, in a group of 7 men. Two of them totally outranked all of us.

          I didn’t have any hesitations about going, but I definitely didn’t want to share a room or bathroom with any of them. One of the men (thankfully) inquired about room assignments, housekeeping/grocery shopping/food prep a couple of weeks before the trip.

          It seemed to be obvious that I would be staying in one of the rooms with an en-suite, which was awesome. Being the only woman in the group, and knowing how it could default to me performing all of the housekeeping & meal prep, I sat back, and let the conversation evolve amongst the men, reacting with a thumbs up emoji to things that called for it.

          All of us agreed to split the shared responsibilities equally, and the man who made the initial inquiry created a spreadsheet for each of us to sign up for shared tasks. Everyone performed their tasks, and everyone definitely wanted to impress with their fruit plate presentation, latte art, grill skills, etc.

          It worked out really well. I am also very careful to sit back, and not volunteer for domestic tasks that anyone can perform.

        2. goddessoftransitory*

          Even if they don’t explicitly ask her to cook and clean, I can see all the “book this, arrange that, call the Ubers” tasks “somehow” ending up on her plate while they frolic in the pool.

      3. Hannah Lee*

        It might not be advance planning, but I can easily imagine the scenario where once you all get there, the 4-5 execs just default to OP doing all the housekeeping/kitchey-y stuff – both due to gender and the relative standing on the org chart.
        “Admin” immediately morphs into the all-encompassing “personal assistant” – now with 24 hour coverage – for 5 execs used to someone else handling all the stuff someone else always deals with for them when they’re at home.

        And that’s before you get into the opportunity for bad actors to take advantage of 24 x 7 access + power differentials to cross a whole ‘nother set of personal and professional boundaries.

        And OP finding there is no good (aka harmless to OP’s career or worst case – safety) way to push back on it because of the power disparity.
        While it’s *possible* there will be none of this, because this group are all grown ups and decent human beings.

        1. Hannah Lee*

          IME, it’s a 50 – 50 shot it could go either way.

          Younger me who wasn’t very good at advocating for myself might have – cough – developed – cough cough – cough cough cough – some illness the night before we were scheduled to leave and have to bow out, maybe just calling in remotely for any meetings where I was needed.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            If the men were all peers or teammates, Younger Me would have done all the work. Now Me would say “Let’s divvy this up so we can all concentrate on work.”

            Unless he wants her there because she’s on track to be promoted to a director position, and he’s mentoring her, the fact that all the others are director-level or above makes me think that OP’s boss invited her to do administrative stuff and “other duties as assigned,” i.e., housekeeping.

      4. Laura*

        This was my thought too! This seems like a “leaders of this organization are planning large-scale company direction” thing so they need an admin assistant to….. take notes? And then oh would you mind making some eggs because no one knows how and oh would you mind clearing off this table while we move spaces to get the projector and oh silly me I don’t know how to work a projector could you fix it? Maybe that wasn’t the *intention* but that’s how it’s going to end up. I think OP should consider if the pros outweigh the cons here.

      5. Gudrid The Well-Traveled*

        I think I’d try to exude the attitude of “of course we’re all going to pitch-in to maintain this shared space because we’re all modern professionals. But I can see how in a previous comment it might work better if it’s initiated by one of the men. And I liked the comment about holding back a bit to give others room to step up. I don’t drink coffee, so that might be my entry to a conversation if needed. Something about how I shouldn’t be trusted to make the coffee or watch the pot.

    2. BethDH*

      I also had a good situation doing this (own bathroom, the only male I encountered not wearing “real clothes” was wearing gym-level attire, no visible underwear). I strongly to prefer it to the version where you stay in a hotel and the most senior person has a suite you do your meetings in. To me that is way more awkward.

      1. Plate of Wings*

        Like many others in this thread, same. I got the best room at the AirBnB, and all to myself. Sounds like this is pretty common!

    3. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

      I’ve been in this position too and all the men have been really mindful of it – always had the same experience with the master bedroom lol. We do not routinely travel and we’re all remote so we don’t know each other well, so it is always pretty awkward to be sharing an AirBnB, but not for gender-specific reasons.

    4. 2 Cents*

      OP, I wouldn’t not go because you’re the only woman. It’s a business meeting. There should be no pearl-clutching from outsiders — and if they do, they’re the weird ones.

      1. Not a Girl Boss*

        Agree. I’m in a male dominated field and am the only woman in the room/trip/car/call/meeting 80% of the time. It would be weird if I made it weird. Most of the time I forget entirely unless an outsider who isn’t used to seeing that kind of split makes A Thing of it. Pearl clutching would not have been good for my career. Not saying I’ve never been verrrryyy carefully friendly-but-distant at a happy hour. But I also don’t actively assume mal intent.

  3. learnedthehardway*

    OP#3 – I would wait for a bit on leaving the Glassdoor review – there’s no hurry, and you might as well focus on your job hunt for the time being. Putting some time and space in between will also do a lot to protect your anonymity.

    1. Annie*

      Agreed. It’s safest to wait until you have already started working somewhere else before posting the review.

    2. Allonge*

      Yup! By all means draft it now, just so the text is out of your system, but it will be just as valid in a few months.

      1. DJ Abbott*

        Be sure to include important details in your draft, so you don’t forget them later. You might feel now like you will never forget them, but focusing all your attention on a new job will leave a little room for other things.

    3. Antilles*

      This was going to be my suggestion too. They’ll be far less likely to connect it to you if you wait a few months because ex-employees tend to fade from people’s minds pretty quickly.

    4. Crispy skin chicken*

      It’s also dependent on how big your organisation is. We’re small and don’t really get bad reviews. The one bad one we did get I knew exactly who it was even though they’d waited years to post.

  4. SamiLou*

    Re: OP 2: I didn’t think I would be comfortable spending X number of days/nights as the only woman at an Air BB either. It would depend on all sorts of factors: how many days/nights, what’s the work setup like, kitchen and dining setup, bedrooms and bathrooms arrangements, and who my coworkers are the ones who are going…

    Some people (both men and women) I just wouldn’t want to share a house with – for a huge variety of reasons.

    It would probably be awkward to be the only one to stay elsewhere, but it’d be worth it – if that’s where my decision landed.
    Good luck!

    1. BellStell*

      My former team was led by a woman who was very needy and in 5 years working in that team there were 3 conferences where she pushed the team to be in a shared Air BnB. The company could afford us to stay in hotels. So a few of us on the team stayed in hotels as we preferred to have some time away from work people especially her as she was needy and all about “we are all friends and so close look at my team” ugh. In the end I was glad to have those boundaries. In the end too this was only one aspect of her lack of management skill and she has since been demoted so there is that.

      1. DJ Abbott*

        My manager is like that too. She is good at other things, but her social needs are her priority and she tries to make everything a party. Thankfully, we don’t have to travel together! If we did, I’d probably pay for a hotel myself before I would stay in an Airbnb with her.

  5. higheredadminalumna*

    #2 – would you have your own bedroom/bathroom? I (F) definitely would be uncomfortable with any kind of Jack & Jill (have we renamed that yet?) set up, but could tolerate sharing a standalone bathroom, though ideally I’d have an en suite that required no sharinh. I also wouldn’t be bothered riding along with a male colleague but I have been fortunate to not work with any creepers in a couple of decades.

        1. TechWorker*

          They’re a bit anxiety inducing even amongst friends/family let alone colleagues (did I lock both doors? Did they remember to unlock the door from my room so I can actually get in in the middle of the night?)

          1. Ally McBeal*

            My godparents’ house (where I stayed frequently as a child) featured a bathroom that was open to the main hallway but also accessible from the master bedroom. Every single time I went in there, I checked the bedroom door lock twice and still sat there nervous, even though my godparents were never in their bedroom while I was using it. The anxiety is reaaaaal.

            1. Carl*

              As a woman who once had my former SO’s dad walk in on me while I was sitting on a toilet…you were right to be anxious!!

            2. WeirdChemist*

              I lived in a place with a similar set-up for a while, and my roommate and I settled on just locking/blocking the door through the bedroom and only using the hall door. The only way we were comfortable with it!

              Definitely not a situation I’d want to be in with a colleague (or a work superior!)

          2. Emmy*

            I lived in several apartments like this where one door went to the hallway and one went to the master bedroom. We worked it out that the smaller, non-master bedroom was a bit cheaper which was great for me for saving money but OH MY GOD the anxiety of getting locked out of the bathroom in the middle of the night and you either have to wake someone up or idk, go pee in the bushes

        2. linger*

          There’s one hotel-turned-hostel in my old hometown that has a modified version of this setup: two independently-booked rooms (i.e. the other room is occupied by strangers) have doors into a shared private hall space that opens into a shared bathroom/toilet.
          On the plus side, the bathroom can be locked by an occupant.
          On the negative side, the door to your own room also only locks from the inside. So while you’re in the bathroom, there’s an unlocked door to your room, accessible to strangers.

    2. bamcheeks*

      I’d be less bothered about the bathroom than the kitchen. Being the only woman AND being the most junior member of the team seems absolutely ripe for the expectation that I’m going to end up washing up every night.

      2. amoeba*

        I mean, I’d seriously hope there’s at least a dishwasher!

        I personally wouldn’t be worried about that at all, but that’s because I know my colleagues, so I’m pretty sure they’d never get that idea (and I also definitely feel comfortable enough in my role to be sure I wouldn’t volunteer/end up with that job anyway – if they “forgot”, I know it would be OK to ask “Hey, can we quickly do the dishes together?”)

        So that one’s definitely a “know your colleagues” situation, but doesn’t have to be inherently bad!

        1. BethDH*

          Agree. How well does OP know these colleagues? I’d had plenty of chance to see my colleagues pitching in on food prep and washing up around the office, including after meetings where they took equal responsibility for group setup and cleanup.

      3. Junior Assistant Peon*

        If it’s a business trip, you’re almost certainly eating out in restaurants and not cooking as a group. The kitchen sink isn’t going to have anything more than a couple of coffee mugs.

        1. Antilles*

          For a normal business trip, sure, but not for a business retreat at a rented AirBnb “with entertainment amenities like a swimming pool, game room, etc”. That very much sounds like they’re renting a cabin, lake house, or equivalent.
          Sure, they’ll probably go out to a restaurant(s) for dinner, but breakfast, lunch, late night snacks/drinks are all going to be right there at the retreat, producing dishes that need to be washed.

        2. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

          It’s not a business trip; it’s a retreat. Probably they won’t be going out much.

    3. Tammy 2*

      I had a Jack & Jill in my first apartment but I didn’t know that term so I called it my “French Farce bathroom.”

  6. Retired at Last*

    #2 – as someone who’s lived alone for 45+ years (and never wanted it any other way), sharing a house with any number of people greater than 0, regardless of gender, would send my anxiety through the roof. A room to myself with en suite would be my absolute bare minimum requirement, and even then I probably wouldn’t sleep the entire time. I would definitely consider asking for separate accommodations if at all possible.
    It’s been many years since I’ve had to travel for work, and, as a woman in a male dominated field, the few times I traveled in a group, a separate room for me was always a given, even if, in the old days, the guys had to share. The last time I shared a hotel room was for a conference related to a volunteer group, where there was no option to pay for a single room. I literally spent the entire night in the bathroom because I couldn’t cope (which was both unfair and worrying to my roommate). My usual travelling companion and I always travel as two singles, even though it is much more expensive (widowed after 40-odd years of (very happy) marriage, she likes having her own space too).
    On the other hand, the drive wouldn’t really worry me much, as long as no one minds that I spend any time I’m not driving either sleeping or reading, with conversation kept to a minimum (unless it’s my job to keep the driver awake).

    1. KateM*

      You wouldn’t sleep in a room to yourself en suite, but can sleep in a single hotel room? Is the main difference that you expect the en suite room not to be lockable?

      1. Happy*

        Those bedrooms are usually lockable – it’s probably more about privacy in a shared home.

        1. Retired at Last*

          That’s more or less it – I don’t claim it’s rational. I stay in hotels and on cruise ships with no problem and I live in an apartment building. But a shared house is somehow not the same – when I’m staying somewhere, I have a mental image of what’s “my” space and I hate having other people have the right to be in “my” space. In that situation, I would probably lock myself in my room and never use the shared facilities (they’re not “mine”), which would defeat the whole purpose of the sharing arrangement. (Not that I’d willingly stay in an AirBnB or similar in any case – that’s akin to staying in someone else’s house and I hate that, even when it’s family or friends. Do I need to mention that I’m a very shy introvert?)

        2. doreen*

          I can sleep in a shared room/home/apartment but I hate sharing and I would be uncomfortable. It’s not privacy exactly – it’s more like freedom. I’d probably use the living room/kitchen – but I would not watch TV in the living room or get a snack/drink from the kitchen if I was not fully dressed.

      2. Leenie*

        A house share is more intimate than a hotel room. Hotels are built for many people to have private space. Walls and doors are thicker than those in a normal single family home. You’re not running into your colleagues in their pajamas in a hotel corridor. You’re probably not sitting down to breakfast with people who may not have showered or brushed their teeth yet. You aren’t sharing cooking and cleaning duties, or negotiating whether or not to put on the TV in casual common space. I just don’t think it’s a comparable experience.

        1. JustaTech*

          Yes, it’s all the common spaces. A few years ago a good friend from college asked to stay with me for a few weeks while she was moving up to my city. While we hadn’t ever been roommates, she’s a good friend and I know she’s a very respectful and easy-to-live-with person.
          And I couldn’t do it. Like, a weekend or a few nights, sure, but more than a week? Sharing my kitchen? I just couldn’t do it (and I’m married!). I felt bad but it was just this sudden and unexpected “absolutely not”.
          (My friend was very gracious about the “sorry, no” and we’re still friends.)

  7. Annie*

    #1 Yeah, if you want to promote equitable treatment of local vs. non-local employees during all-hands weeks, I would push for catered lunch for all employees and leave it at that.

    1. annabel*

      I also don’t think it’s unreasonable for the local employees to be compensated for parking during the all-hands weeks

      1. Your former password resetter*

        Or compensated parking at all times, really.
        It sounds like a significant expense they’re incurring due to the demands of the company, and providing parking is pretty standard.

        1. Roland*

          Providing free parking is really not standard point-blank. Eg in expensive downtown areas it’s very uncommon because it’s expensive and there’s alternatives; while in the burbs or business parks it’s extremely common because it’s cheap to do and there are fewer alternatives. Given that OP says parking is expensive, I think it’s much more likely that few employers in the area provide free parking.

        2. mango chiffon*

          I live in a city that has public transit, and we can get pre-tax contributions towards our transit costs and can get some subsidized parking, but ultimately we are still paying for our own commute to the office (however we choose to do so). Paying for parking would be really nice, but I don’t think it’s that common.

        3. Analyst*

          ::laughs in works for a university::

          we pay for our parking, there is no option to not pay if you’re parking on campus…they very kindly take the amount directly from your paycheck…

          1. epicdemiologist*

            Saaaaame. Maybe just an annoyance for the higher-ups, but the lowest-paid staff are losing a good chunk of their pay, and our town has very minimal public transit (one bus per hour).

          2. Corrupted User Name*

            I also work for a university and when I had to go to an office with that required a (very expensive) parking pass, they tried to sell this as a “benefit”. As in “normally this would cost $2k a year, but we subsidize half of it! See we are a great employer!”. There were not enough eye rolls in the world for that!

            1. beans*

              I also work at a university and my parking is $700 a year. I thought that was, my goodness!

              1. Freya*

                LOL my local (Australian) university charges staff around AU$2,800 per year for the cheapest parking (the most expensive parking is reserved spaces for Deans/Directors at over AU$10,000 per year). Students are charged about half that, and no permit actually guarantees a parking space – when I went to that uni, they oversold so much it felt like there were 2+ permits for every parking space, and during peak times you couldn’t get a park on campus, or at all within 30 minutes walk if you weren’t willing to pay extra for a spot in a commercial car park.

        4. LL*

          It’s not in cities, though. Parking is expensive to provide when you’re in a city that doesn’t have a lot of space, so employees generally have to pay for parking. It also incentivizes more people to take transit.

          1. MisterOblivious*

            I still remember the day when I discovered some hotels charge for parking. Buddy of mine booked the closest hotel to another buddy to use his spare condo parking space for free rather than pay $20 a day at the hotel.

            I grew up rural and had only stayed in rural or suburban hotels up until then.

            Years later I had a friend of a friend take up cycling, and public transit during bad weather, to save thousands a year taking his car to the office. One year of bike and transit commuting paid for his ~$1500 investment on a bike and gear. I think he gave up eventually, but still saved money vs paying for parking and car maintenance.

      2. o_gal*

        Agree. Look at the situation as all employees are traveling. It’s just that some are traveling further than others. Would they not reimburse people who had to rent cars to be there after flying in?

      3. darsynia*

        Yeah this is the one that stood out to me. Living close by is NOT a benefit for having to still find a place to park and pay for it during the required extra days.

      4. LL*

        It’s not at all! My organization is fully remote, but when people have to be on site for meetings or whatever, they compensate us for either parking or public transit fare. And the few meetings I’ve been to have also had catered lunches.

    2. Wolf*

      And it could even be a thing for team cooperation – having lunch together can be a nice time for smalltalk for those who want it.

      1. Antilles*

        I agree and that’s even the reasoning OP should use if they want to ask for catered lunches during that week. Framing a company-provided lunch for everyone as a way to build team spirit, encourage collaboration, strengthen bonds with the remote co-workers, etc is a far better sales pitch than OP’s email arguments of “fairness” and “perks” and etc.

      2. Cj*

        also, depending on how many people are from out of town and how many are local, it could be cheaper to cater lunch for all of the employees instead of reimbursing out of town employees for what would probably be a more expensive lunch.

    3. Daisy-dog*

      I just got 3 catered lunches this week because of our all-hands week. Bonus of being a local employee: taking home leftovers. (I got 2 giant containers of sauce from our Olive Garden catering order to freeze.)

    4. Festively Dressed Earl*

      I think the framing of locals and non-locals getting the same perks for all-hands meetings is a red herring. A truly equitable solution here would address the extra burdens/expenses the local employees are taking on by coming in for the entire week; that’s not unreasonable at all. Equity doesn’t mean that everyone is treated exactly alike, it means that everyone has their needs addressed.

      Let’s say for the sake of argument that there’s not a break room to take lunch, or that it will be overcrowded during the all-hands meetings. Or, hell, maybe the local employees usually get lunch out on their single in-office day as a treat. Either way, let’s say lunch is $20. All day parking is about $25. Then there’s tolls, maybe$5. Fine, the local employees eat that $50 cost once a week. Multiply that over 5 days, though, and the locals are out an additional $200 each time there’s an all-hands week. We won’t even get into the additional hour or more taken out of each day by a frustrating commute.

      Does LW 1’s employer have to address this for the local employees? Technically no, but it would be smart to acknowledge that this is a disruption to every employee’s routine in some fashion and take steps to minimize that impact, just as they do with the out of town employees. Make a deal with the city to get local employees free or discounted parking passes for that week. Cater breakfast, lunch, or both. Add some additional expenses money to their paychecks, or give out gift cards. It would go a long way towards making the employees feel appreciated and cut down on any resentment between locals and non-locals.

  8. Me*

    #2: if you go, make sure that you (as the only woman), are not doing all of the preparation, setting up, cleaning, cooking. In fact, bring it up to your boss before the retreat. Draw up a list of these kinds of chores and talk about assigning tasks. Waiting for volunteers is how women end up with all of these tasks. Many men at this level unconsciously assume “someone else” will magically take care of this stuff.

    1. nnn*

      No way, that’ll just be her putting herself in charge of managing those tasks. The men aren’t going to suggest making a chore chart and neither should she.

      1. Mutually Supportive*

        I agree – but it might be worth finding out from the boss what her role is expected to be whilst away, and that he isn’t just thinking “I’d like OP2 to home so she can make coffee and sort the dishes in our communal house”

        1. KateM*

          Good idea – make sure that the reason he wants you as a more administrative person in the retreat is not so that you could administrate for men while they do Important Things.

          1. JM60*

            #2 I’m a guy, and I wouldn’t feel very comfortable sharing a house during a business trip. It would feel too close and personal.

          2. RagingADHD*

            If OP’s role is as an administrator in the office, of course they are being brought to act as an administrator.

            But it should not be to act as a housekeeper.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      If you’re going to raise it all, raise it as though obviously “someone else is magically going to take care of this stuff”. It doesn’t do women any favours to assume responsibility for managing the chores list, but it’s wise to be interested in maid service or cleaning arrangements, or whether you can go out and expense meals. If the house is getting cleaned, and you can order food or go out rather than cook, then it doesn’t matter if the other guests are brilliant housemates or not in that respect. It could be a good reason to request a hotel room if none of these things are available. Any one person who blinks first could end up in the kitchen washing dishes.

    3. allathian*

      I bet that’s exactly why they want her there! She’s an admin and the others are the manager and a group of male directors. She’s lower than them in the org chart, I’m sure they want her there to do the admin stuff like take notes at the meetings and bring coffee etc.

      I’d ask the manager to clarify the expectations. If she tells him that she’d be happy to attend the meeting but would prefer to stay the night elsewhere, his reactions are going to show his expectations plainly.

      1. Bird names*

        Yeah, that’s a good way to get some clarity both on potential work or “work” tasks and around alternative arrangements, if she declines to stay in the same place.

      2. Cj*

        as an admin, it could very well be that her duties at the office include taking notes at meetings and making coffee, and if that’s the case it want to be be unreasonable to expect her to do that it the retreat too.

        however, she shouldn’t be expected to to do the dishes and otherwise clean up after the guys.

        1. Moo*

          One advantage of staying at a nearby hotel would be that LW could leave when the business is done and leave the kitchen etc without a thought. Much harder if you’re trying to make your own breakfast or dinner and the kitchen is full of dirty dishes.

    4. Grizzled*

      Hard disagree! By presenting your boss with a chore list and making a system for cooking and cleaning you are going to become the de-facto housekeeper. It’s going to backfire. You could talk to your boss about what your jobs will be *during work hours*, and once work is done you should relax just like everyone else. Yes, you might have to live in a level of filth that isn’t normal to you, negating any relaxation. This is why you should try and get your own hotel room.

  9. JM60*

    #3 (Note: I’m not a lawyer.)

    Did the attorneys you consult say anything about trying to represent yourself in small claims court? You’re obviously more likely to lose (“A lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client”). However, it could be easy enough that you might win at least something.

    On the other hand, you mention the possibility that they may sue you. If they might have a chance to sue you, then perhaps even going after them in small claims court could be riskier than doing nothing.

    1. bamcheeks*

      Isn’t small claims court usually for comparatively simple cases like “they owe me a specific amount of money”? Certainly in the UK, they wouldn’t be equipped to decide things like “this constitutes illegal discrimation, the damages for that should be Y”.

      1. Seashell*

        Yes, I don’t think this is a small claims court sort of problem in the US either if it involves discrimination.

        As far as I know for the US, anyone could represent themselves in any court, but it might be a whole lot of aggravation for little or no reward.

      2. Lalchi11*

        Yes, in most places, employment cases wouldn’t be in small claims court. You can go through the EEOC or your state equivalent without an attorney, but those cases sometimes end up in court anyway, so you’d end up wanting an attorney at that point. Might be worth it to at least file the charge with the agency though.

        1. DJ Abbott*

          If they do file an EEOC charge and then post a bad review, that will make it more obvious who wrote the review.
          So it looks like it’s a question of which the OP would want more.

  10. JM60*

    #2 I’m a guy, and I wouldn’t feel very comfortable sharing a house during a business trip. It would feel too close and personal.

    1. Allonge*

      I know, right? Honestly, even with friends I would prefer a hotel kind of setup; coworkers… no thanks!

      Well the last time I slept in this kind of arrangement with coworkers I was a camp counselor in the mountains with cabins and tents and stuff. Which was what I signed up for at the time, but that was a few decades back.

      1. allathian*

        Yeah, me too.

        Last time I shared a room with a coworker was for a two-day offsite retreat about 8 or 9 years ago. She was a work friend who retired a few months later, but even so it was awkward. Both of us snored and neither of us slept well. I hated it.

        It was a lot different traveling with friends or even classmates at college for field trips. When I was in my 20s I could sleep any time, anywhere, like the one time when I slept on a rug on the floor, curled up in a fetal position, or so my friends tell me. Granted, I had my clothes on, but even so…

        1. amoeba*

          Sharing a room is pretty different from sharing an Airbnb though – I’m assuming there’s separate rooms for everybody!
          I’d say the largest difference compared to a hotel is that there’s no cleaning etc., so that needs to be self-organised. That said, I’d also ask about arrangements for food etc – are they planning to actually prepare their own meals? That might become more uncomfortable (and a great breeding ground for arguments with dishes, etc.). If you go out to a restaurant for all of your meals, there’s much less forced proximity. Also, how long is the stay? If it’s one night only, there isn’t really any cleaning required, so you should be good there – if it’s a whole week, could become more problematic. And so on.

          But honestly, the fact that it could be considered “inappropriate” would never even cross my mind (and even less for the shared ride – I share rides with colleagues all the time! Sure, if they were super creepy, I wouldn’t want to, but then they’d probably be a problem at work as well, not just in the car/Airbnb?)

      2. Elizabeth West*

        I think the only time I’ve shared outside college trips was at a conference at Non-ProfitJob. I had a suite with my boss, who also happened to be one of my BFFs from high school. She lived down the road from me and we used to spend the night at each other’s houses all the time back in the day. So it wasn’t too terribly weird — it was basically like another sleepover. She got the bed and I got the fold-out.

        Definitely wouldn’t do that now. I’d prefer to have my own room whether I’m in a hotel or a house share.

  11. LifebeforeCorona*

    #2 Being the only woman at a AirBnB has it’s own unique issues. You’re already in an admin role and you do not want to be the “House Mom”. BnB’s have their own sets of rules and a lot of them are centred on cleanliness. Do you want to be the one who cleans up every night, washes the dishes, putting things away, doing a sweep? There’s often of list of chores that must be done, laundry, changing beds, cleaning toilets, vacuuming, cleaning the pool, etc. Do you make the coffee every morning, get any groceries, cook, clean, run errands? Because it’s a house, people default to their at home personas. Cups and dishes left everywhere, dirty towels on the bathroom floors, shoes on top of the stairs. It might help to clarify exactly what your role will be before the trip. Because someone is going to have to make that first pot of coffee in the morning.

    1. amoeba*

      Huh – I’ve stayed in a few Airbnbs and have never encountered anything like that! Usually, there was a cleaner who came in after we left – we just had to leave stuff where we found it, e.g., dishes in the cupboards, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever vacuumed or dusted or cleaned a toilet or a pool (? wouldn’t even have the slightest idea where to start!)
      There was also usually a Nespresso style coffee maker, and I’d assume they’d go out for most of their meals, not actually start cooking their own.

      But yeah, definitely, clarify that kind of thing first! As you can see, there’s a wide variety of different set-ups out there…

      1. Aww, coffee, no*

        Even if the vacuuming, etc, is taken care of, someone still has to wash all those breakfast dishes and coffee cups – or, at a minimum, load and unload the dishwasher and put everything away.
        And I think it’s all too likely that it will be assumed that, as a female admin person, that someone is OP#2.

      2. mango chiffon*

        There’s a huge thing with Airbnbs these days where they ask people to wash the linens and do the dishes and take out the trash before departure. And if you don’t they will charge you fees. A lot of Airbnb related complaints I’ve seen online are around the excess of fees they are getting charged after departure.

        1. amoeba*

          Dishes and trash, sure. Linen I’ve personally never encountered, and for cleaning I’d honestly hope there’s a professional coming in, I really don’t feel like relying on the people staying there before me for that, and I’m not fussy in general – but eeew.

          But sure, dishes and stuff do need to be done and you need to know your colleagues – in my case, as I said above, I wouldn’t see a problem because I see my coworkers in the shared kitchen every day and know they aren’t the type to dump their work on others. So we’d probably be fine for breakfast dishes for two days as well.

          1. KateM*

            That’s what I was thinking, too – I would not want to stay in a place where I need to rely on the previous guests having the same idea of cleanliness than we.

        2. Babbalou*

          Yes, I always stay in AirBnbs and have yet to encounter a cleaning list. I do make sure the kitchen is tidy – dishes done, counters wiped down, fridge clean. And I usually swish the toilet brush around and wipe down the bathroom sink with a paper towel, just as a courtesy. I also take out the trash.

          But I never vacuum or dust or wash the linens. And regarding washing the bed linens – I often have an early morning flight. There would not be time to wash bedding.

          1. JB*

            IME they don’t actually tell you to wash the linens – just to strip the beds and place linens in the washing machine. Presumably whoever comes to professionally clean then starts the machine, switches over to dryer, etc.

            I’ve also only ever encountered this at airBNBs that are definitively for vacation use (like lakeside homes). I don’t think places one would book for a business trip are doing this.

          2. Elizabeth West*

            I’m not doing housework on vacation unless I’m staying with family. I definitely don’t want to do it while I’m work traveling, which is pretty tiring mentally.

            Not a fan of Airbnb anyway, since they contribute to the housing shortage. I’d rather not give them any money.

            1. Starbuck*

              Yeah, owners can ask for whatever they fancy but I’m not going to stay at a place that expects me to do anything with linens, take trash out, etc. That’s houseguest stuff when I’m staying with a friend for free. When I’m paying, there’s no way. I’m not going to leave ketchup all over the counter or whatever, I’ll wipe up my spills, but I’m not sanitizing things for you and if there’s an EXTRA cleaning fee on top of the nightly price (there nearly always is) then no way am I taking out the trash for you.

              I also find the places that have kitchen sets but no dishwasher pretty gross. I’ve seen the way some folks wash dishes by hand (especially when they’re not used to it and have a washer at home) and it’s not necessarily what I’d feel comfortable eating off of.

              1. amoeba*

                Taking out the recycling is pretty standard here in Switzerland (not just in Airbnb, but in any kind of holiday rental apartment). We do love our recycling though, so that fits.

      3. Babbalou*

        Yes, I always stay in AirBnbs and have yet to encounter a cleaning list. I do make sure the kitchen is tidy – dishes done, counters wiped down, fridge clean. And I usually swish the toilet brush around and wipe down the bathroom sink with a paper towel, just as a courtesy. I also take out the trash.

        But I never vacuum or dust or wash the linens.

    2. Ginger Cat Lady*

      This what exactly my thought on this, too. Bunch of high ranking men (do women never make it to this level at this company?) who want to bring a woman along? Of course they think “your presence will be valuable”. They want you for a maid. I would not be okay with this arrangement if that was the plan.
      I would definitely talk with your manager about this and stress that if you come, you will not be functioning as maid, cook and housekeeper but will be happy to participate in the business discussions.
      The optics of this are pretty bad, even if that isn’t what they intend.

      1. DJ Abbott*

        One thing that would help would be if she didn’t stay in the Airbnb and got a room in a separate hotel. Then she could just leave after the business part and/or social part is over.

    3. NotAManager*

      I’ve found that the list of clean-up “chores” on AirBnB has gotten rarer. It used to be true about 5-10 years ago that the owners would expect guests to vacuum, wipe down surfaces, etc. but it’s more typical nowadays to just tack a cleaning fee on or fold it into the price of the rental. The last few AirBnBs I’ve stayed at haven’t even asked us to strip the beds or take out the trash, though myself and my travel group always clean the dishes before we go, just to be nice.

  12. TiredBureaucreat*

    LW4 – one big exception to what Alison wrote is U.S. federal government work. Like, I have the information if I want it for my employees (I can look up the exact grade/step of everyone who reports to me), but everything is set very much by statute and we have no discretion on pay/promotions/etc., so there’s no point in my looking it up.

  13. MBK*

    Regarding #4: When I was hired at my current higher education job, my compensation was handled by a unit within central HR that did that exclusively. My admin unit’s local HR and my supervisors knew my salary band, but not my actual salary. I don’t know whether the dean and whoever worked on the unit budget knew it, or whether their budget was just for the band. But my direct manager did not have access to that info.

    Now that our unit is unionized, that may be different, but I’m not sure.

    1. MCL*

      I am a manager in higher ed and I’ve got to manage my unit’s budget, so I need to know my team’s salaries. Just as an alternate perspective from higher ed.

    2. doreen*

      The answer to this question is very workplace dependent and a a manager not knowing an employee’s salary isn’t necessarily a sign of weak management. I have never had a job where I expected my manager to know my exact pay – at best, they would know which salary band my title fell into, but that was it. They also didn’t have any input into how much I was paid beyond giving me an annual evaluation. ( A satisfactory evaluation got me a step on the salary ladder, anything lower didn’t)

    3. Wayward Sun*

      When I worked in higher ed, it was in a state where all salaries were public records. So anyone who cared to look knew exactly what I was paid.

  14. Charlie*

    LW1 – I actually kind of see where you’re coming from, in terms of having to purchase lunch every day rather than eat at home at least, and think the company should provide lunch for all staff during those weeks. They could cater lunches for all rather than reimbursing traveling employees.
    Also, it might help reframe in your mind that staying in a hotel for work trips is very different from staying in a hotel for leisure. The hotels are unlikely to be mega luxurious and the staff would likely much rather be at home. It’s not the treat it initially sounds like!

    1. londonedit*

      I agree – if the OP doesn’t usually go to the office, and this is a big thing where everyone’s in the office together, then I do think it’d be good if the company put on lunch for everyone for that week. That bit doesn’t quite seem fair, that the ‘home’ employees have to provide their own lunch while the ‘away’ employees are reimbursed for theirs. But I don’t think you can begrudge the ‘away’ employees having their hotel and dinner paid for – they’re there on a work do, they’re not choosing to be there, and it’s unlikely to be hugely fun for them. A week is a long time to spend in a hotel when you’re not travelling for pleasure!

      1. doreen*

        I’m not sure if the LW would know for sure if the others were being reimbursed for lunch – I know the letter says the company reimburses all of their meals but I don’t know if the LW would have reason to know specifically that they were being reimbursed for lunch and not just breakfast and dinner. I know when I traveled for work I got a per diem which was broken up into breakfast and dinner so technically I wasn’t being reimbursed for lunch but I could almost always stretch it to cover 3 meals.

        1. OP*

          I’m the original poster — yes, the company allows all remote employees to expense all meals while they’re traveling, including lunches. There is no per diem.

    2. Ann O'Nemity*

      Generally I agree with the advice that lunches and parking shouldn’t be covered for local employees, but there may be some exceptions.

      For example, how much is daily parking? My last company was in a downtown area and monthly parking passes were $60 and you were guaranteed a spot. However, daily parking fees were $12-20/day depending on the garage or lot you used. Spot Hero and similar apps are making this better, but it’s still a big hassle and financial hit!

      Similarly, can local remote employees bring a cold lunch or are they required to purchase something? If it’s the latter, that’s even more money that employees have to come up with. And it’s especially egregious if everyone is going out together, but only some employees are getting a free lunch.

      Regarding hotels and dinner, these are not special perks! It’s the bare minimum companies do for traveling employees.

        1. Aww, coffee, no*

          Wow! Okay, that is a *lot*. I can totally understand being annoyed that you’re having to spend something like $100 extra that week compared to normal.

        2. Ann O'Nemity*

          Yeah, that was my fear. That’s a big chunk of extra money that you aren’t used to spending on this job. I also wonder if there’s a way for the company to come up with a more economical option if there are a lot of you in this situation – economy of scale and negotiating power.

        3. Leenie*

          Do the people who normally work onsite get their parking paid for? Or do they have to pay that out of pocket? Where I work, the parking is over $200/month. Ours is paid for. So if we have guests from other offices, we validate. But if everyone in my office was paying 2 or 3 thousand dollars a year to park, I wouldn’t have a ton of patience for someone arguing over paying for a few days a year.

    4. Travelling*

      Agree. Like…not a hill to die on but providing a light breakfast, some snacks throughout the day, and lunch would be a courtesy, as would parking vouchers for the week.

      Traveling for business is not a fun vacation, even if you enjoy some of the activities.

    5. JB*

      Nobody is making them buy lunch, though? The travelling employees don’t have any other option, but normal commuting employees could surely just bring lunch from home if they prefer, like usual.

      And catering lunch would not remove the need to reimburse travelling employes. People eat more than one meal a day.

      I do agree that it would be nice to cater at least a few lunches during that week though.

  15. Orange Line Appreciator*

    LW #3: when you were terminated, did you sign a non-disparagement agreement in exchange for severance pay? If so, I would proceed with extreme caution, but otherwise, you’re unlikely to get sued provided you’re not being defamatory!

  16. Jobbyjob*

    #3 A close friend was actually sued for a Glassdoor review and though the court ultimately ruled in his favor he dropped $100k defending himself and wasn’t able to counter sue. I am very cautious about this sort of thing now.

      1. TeaMonk*

        Glassdoor is way less useful than it used to be. I tried to check some stuff and they decided to start off with sub linked in nonsense to crowd the UI up. And the salary estimates are laughable.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          They changed up their interface; it’s far less user-friendly than it used to be. And it wasn’t that great before, either.

      2. ecnaseener*

        You think a Glassdoor employee is trying to warn people away from using Glassdoor? Interesting reverse psychology marketing strategy

      3. JustEm*

        presumably a Glassdoor employee would want people to post reviews on their site, not be discouraging it

    3. sofar*

      I know people are dragging you, but I also came her to post this. These review sites can (and do!) track people down by IP address if there’s legal action. My friend left a bad (it was a really bad, really angry review) on a doctor-reviewing site. The practice contacted the site, it traced it to her, and the practice threatened legal action. She agreed to remove the review, and they dropped it.

      1. Wayward Sun*

        I left a mildly negative review after a frustrating experience at a doctor’s office, and they blackballed me from their whole medical group.

    4. Jobbyjob*

      Just coming back to the thread now. Nope, definitely don’t work for Glassdoor (and the logic of that argument does seem a little backward). If it helps, the company was a small techy one and the review alleged some unethical behavior that they claimed was false and harmful to their reputation. So I imagine just saying the leaders are bad managers or something would be less risky but yep, the friend was IDed but IP and like I said even though the lawsuit was never going to hold water in the end they still got far enough to drain his savings at the time on lawyers and turn the whole thing into a stressful several year saga.

  17. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

    I used to travel to India for work for two weeks at a time, and they would put us up in. a guest house, so there were three of us staying in one house though each bedrroom had it’s own full bath.

    The chores didn’t factor in however because it came with a “houseboy” (for lack of a better word) who did all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. It was weird for the firs couple of days but was very spoiled by the time I got home.

      1. A*

        Curious where there is a “yikes” here?

        I agree the houseboy term is probably not actually the best for this arrangement. But the actual arrangement seems like heaven.

        1. Starbuck*

          The term (and practice) is a relic of British colonialism. It’s gross! You can probably imagine the dynamic. Calling someone who is presumably Indian by this term is… even worse.

          1. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

            I think it’s the practice itself that’s pretty bad – nobody should have to sleep on a counter!

          2. Joron Twiner*

            During British rule yes, but India also had extremely wealthy classes with servants before British rule also…

      2. amoeba*

        I mean, the name is obviously super problematic, but apart from that, I don’t see how that’s super different from the personnel in a hotel?

        1. doreen*

          I suspect it’s the cooking and laundry that make it feel different and also it sounds like this person lives in the house, unlike a hotel housekeeper who generally comes to clean when the guests are out of the room.

          1. metadata minion*

            Live-in staff are definitely a thing, though in the US I associate that with absurdly rich people. So long as the person is compensated fairly and doesn’t have to sleep on the kitchen counter (!!), it seems like a perfectly reasonable job situation. Lots of people wouldn’t want to do that, but plenty of other people would be fine with it.

      3. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

        There was a Yikes moment one night when I came out to the kitchen around midnight to get some water, and turned on the light and he was sleeping on the kitchen counter…

        1. I Have RBF*

          On the kitchen counter? You’d think he’s at least have a mat in the pantry.

          Live-in staff are very common in India, and it’s considered a decent job in the poorer classes, IIRC.

  18. JAASON*

    #1 “Local employees, however, are required to pay for their lunch every day”.

    I think Alison skipped over this phrase while reading the letter. The local employees are paying the same cost for lunch as the out of towners. Why would you reimburse one group for this cost but not the other?

    Hotel room, breakfast, evening meals, yes that would be a stretch to get reimbursed while living locally but the lunch (were the local employees are “stuck” at work) their meals should also be covered . Cater in a meal for everybody?

    1. 1-800-BrownCow*

      I was curious about this statement as the OP didn’t really elaborate. If the workplace ordered in lunch and made the locals pay their portion and the out-of-towners got it for free, then yes, that is wrong. But I wondered if this was just a typical workplace where you’re on your own for lunch, so either bring something from home or get food from a local restaurant. I do work with people who order delivery every single day and I wondered if OP was someone who orders food instead of bringing food from home. If that’s the situation, I don’t think OP has an argument that it’s unfair they have to pay for their lunch just because they chose to order out when they have the option to bring food from home.

    2. fhqwhgads*

      Because one group does this every day they’re ever in the office, not just during this week.
      It’s not the “same cost for lunch as the out of towners”. It’s “whatever you normally do for lunch” for the locals, and “you’re on a business trip” for the out of towners.

  19. bee*

    it’s usually the sign of a culture with weak management (including that managers there aren’t well-trained or supported, which can trickle down to the people working under them in all sorts of ways)

    Alison hit the nail on the head here! I worked for a company like this. Managers tended to be great ICs strong-armed into taking a management role to get a modest pay bump, but they received no training, mentorship, or support into a people-leader position. Not really knowing/ taking accountability for what their direct reports make was the norm bc many managers were expected to keep being ICs in some capacity and just do a little management on the side.

    Advocating for proper pay takes time and effort to build a compelling case. Our managers did not have that bandwidth. That meant every year when folks were faced with a 2% “merit raise (when the COL went up by 7%), managers shrugged and said it was out of their control. Many folks at the company would get offers for $30k-$100k more and ultimately depart. The company struggled with retention overall, but it made me sad to hear about the long-term employees who truly didn’t realize what was happening wasn’t normal and how wildly they were underpaid.

  20. A*

    2: I would ask for clarification about meals and light housekeeping during your Air BnB stay.

    Unlike a resort or hotel, Air BnB guests are required to provide meals and pick up after themselves throughout the stay. If they want the LW to make dinner and follow all the check out instructions for them, then that expectation and compensation needs to be determined before the LW agrees to go.

  21. ReallyBadPerson*

    LW2, I’d ask your boss why he thinks your presence at the retreat will be “valuable.” Valuable to whom? The dudes whose dishes you are expected to wash?

    1. JustMyImagination*

      If she’s admin and it’s a work retreat then it’ll probably be a lot of her same duties. Making sure supplies are handy for whatever work they’re doing, having meals catered, arranging phone calls with people not present, taking minutes, scheduling follow up meetings, etc.

    2. metadata minion*

      I absolutely have the same suspicions, but in theory having lower-level staff at a retreat can provide a really valuable perspective. I can’t count how many policies I’ve seen handed down from upper management by people who don’t understand why those policies are a bad idea because they really have no idea what our day-to-day work entails.

      1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        I’ve been involved in similar meetings, and strongly agree.

        But you have to be there on broadly the same terms as everyone else (same accommodations, per diem, etc) and not half-consultant, half-maid/-gopher.

  22. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    #4 – I want to add a caveat for organizations that are matrix-managed or mostly do project billing. This applies to a lot of government contractors.

    A manager who’s responsible long-term for an employee should know their salary (or at least be able to look it up quickly).

    But project manager will probably only know the employee’s billing rate (on the revenue side) and fully-loaded salary rate with overhead, etc (on the cost side).

    eg – Fergus is billed to the client as a Senior Teapot Engineer, at $189.35/hour, and we have him budgeted as a 50% contributor during months 1-8 of the contract, and 25% for months 9-14. The rest of the time he’s on another project or two. And as project manager I know that his loaded rate is $142/hour.

    But I don’t know the overhead structure for the department and office that Fergus works out of, so I can’t reverse-engineer his salary. I can probably guess that he’s around $150k +/- 10%. If Fergus gets a great performance review and his salary goes up by a lot, then I’d expect to get a call from my boss or from the project accountant, telling me that Fergus isn’t profitable any more on that contract, and that we either need to bump him up to Lead Teapot Engineer (and justify that to the client), or cycle somebody else onto the project to replace him.

    1. Managing is Complicated*

      This – and it’s been the case for every large (e.g., 10k+ people) company I’ve worked for. Salaries are managed through a central HR team who’s responsible for things like market assessment, parity across teams, etc.

      While I have data that I can use to extrapolate “Tiana probably earns more than Lilo” and “Belle may be underpaid for her role”, and I could probably calculate likely salaries within a $20-30k range or so, I don’t have more specific data. My job is to understand how their performance aligns with their role, career level, and grade and provide feedback on that to HR. (E.g., “Belle has outperformed her peers this year and should be at the top of the list for rewards and salary increase.” or “On the teapot team, I would rate Lilo above all of her peers, and Tiana at the middle of the group.” along with evidence-based feedback for each person on my team.)

      HR then does a lot of calculus to ensure that there’s equity and parity everywhere that it needs to be.

    2. Engineery*

      Great comment!

      In my work (internal R&D project management, no clients so no billable rates) we just use a table of standard burdened labor rates for project cost projections, so we can swap out personnel of the same level without the budget bouncing up and down. Consistency and simplicity are more important than absolute accuracy.

      This works for us because, as a manufacturing firm, we already have a cost rollup process to reconcile the “useful fiction” of burdened labor and material overhead with actual monthly and yearly operating costs. If the standardized costs deviate too far from actual costs, the standard rates are updated.

  23. OrangeCup*

    #4: I was hired at my current job (which is a pretty toxic environment in a lot of ways but does pay me really well), and it became apparent very fast that I needed an Assistant My Title right away to help with backlogged work. They did hire someone right away, they have no problem spending money to give me the resources I need. They did not, however, tell me I was her manager. I assumed she reported to my manager until she told me on her first day she reported to me because she had questions about reporting her time sheet. Bad/weak management structure indeed!

    All this to say as I was not part of her hiring negotiations (although I was part of the interview and did approve her hiring) I had no idea what her salary was until her yearly review and I was horrified she was not being paid nearly what I thought she should have been. I guess they thought the overtime was a sufficient bump up but it wasn’t, so I got her a $20K raise.

    2. bee*

      Yeah! It causes issues when the person assigning work and managing the workload of a person does not have insight into what they are paid. My situation is just that my actual people manager is kind of a rando who doesn’t have any insight into my day-to-day. People delegate work to me that would mean working late, probably on an assumption that I am being paid enough to do so. But I am not! I am being paid $30k below market for this position alone and talks of promotion are always dashed because “it’s not the right time for the company financially.”

      I am a hard worker. I spent the first two years of my time at this job working very hard, working late hours. But without proper compensation or any incentive to go above and beyond… I will not strain myself for this company.

  24. Red Lines with Wine*

    At my company, no one but HR and a few top execs knows how much people make. It’s been a sticking point since I became a manager 5 years ago. I can’t spot inequities, I can’t advocate for raises or bonuses, and I find it disquieting that I don’t have visibility into my people’s pay. I’ve accepted it since it won’t change, but still. Dumb.

      1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        You know, I first thought you meant HR, and I was like, “They did”. Then I realized you meant Red Lines could ask the employees! Obviously they know their own pay.

    3. Relentlessly Socratic*

      All companies I’ve worked for in the past 12 years have been like this, not spotting inequities here is a feature not a bug. As a manager I didn’t know anyone’s salaries or even the bands.

  25. Llama Llama*

    I think in general when you have a big in person event it creates a lot of good will to feed your people at least once.

    My work once or twice a year will host our client showcasing what we do. There is lots of work for each team that goes into it and we have lots of individual meetings in addition to presentations.

    A year ago, they only catered lunch for ‘main’ presenters and the client. There was a lot of grumblings in that. Last time, it was for everyone and people were way happier.

  26. Safely Retired*

    #2: One woman, who is in a mostly administrative role, who the boss thinks would be “valuable” at the gathering. . . It sure sounds like the purpose might be to have someone to fetch and clean up, make and pour the coffee, and otherwise relieve the honchos from getting their hands dirty. Or maybe her role would be to take notes, but I have to wonder.

    1. bee*

      Yeah, I think LW is the odd goose out in two ways: gender AND seniority. That creates a lot of questions in my mind about how the directors envision LW’s role at the retreat.

      It’s really unfortunate because from one angle this does look like she is being invited to take a seat at the table. Being a more junior person invited into the room to hear high-level discussions is a great opportunity. BUT are they inviting her to have a seat at the table or to clean the table and fetch them coffee?

  27. Georgia*

    I’ve been tempted to leave an honest review of my last job, but it was a very tiny business with under 15 employees and the owner is quite vindictive. I actually have his number marked “Do Not Answer” in my phone book. At this point he has gone through a bunch of unhappy employees that he drove out so it might not be so obvious that I did it, but many people do not believe the level of manipulation and bullying he uses as a management style because he seems so “nice” to his clients and outside colleagues.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I similarly wanted to leave a bad review of my last job, which is a tiny NP (~15 employees), but did not since it would have been obvious it was me, and also because I didn’t want donors thinking it was a bad organization and stop donating. The org isn’t bad, there’s just a few ppl in leadership who are doing a very bad job. I wouldn’t want my old coworkers to get screwed, though, and it is a very good cause that needs support.

      1. Zarniwoop*

        If I was a donor I’d want to know that. I wouldn’t want to give to a charity that pursues a good end by the means of abusing its employees.

      2. Stu Has the Flu*

        With a small nonprofit that has bad leadership, could you write a letter to the board, or at least to a few board members you trust to handle the information discreetly? Give the people with the power to rein in or fire the bad apple(s) what they need to know. This can’t be anonymous, so maybe tone it down, as in, “I left on good terms and I fully believe in this organization, but I want you to know I wouldn’t in good conscience recommend working here to someone in my network, and here’s why.”

  28. Glazed Donut*

    #1 – my assigned office is the main office 2 hours from my home. There’s an office in my town, but no one uses it and it sits empty most days. When we have all-hands meetings close to the main office once a year, I don’t get travel or meals because technically my assigned office is so close – when in reality it’s a 350 mile drive from my home. It’s so irritating, but that’s what I agreed to when I took this job.
    Being able to go home at night — or even just bring your own meal in a lunchbox — is a perk in itself!

  29. MicroManagered*

    Ehhhh I think Alison was just a little quick to call OP1 unreasonable. I think they’re being a bit one-sided in their view of the situation, not thinking about what a disruption it is to be away from home for a week, but they have a point.

    I think it would be reasonable for the locals to ask for reimbursement for parking and during-work lunches, but only those two things.

    Can you pack a ham sandwich or whatever from home for lunch? Yes you can, but I get why it would feel unfair, say, to watch all the out-of-towners go to a nice restaurant for a free lunch everyday.

    It costs me about $11 to park at work for one day when I have to go — that would add up over a full week! Say the out-of-towners are sharing one rental car or an uber from their hotel, expensed… I get why that would feel unfair.

    I can follow the logic of business expenses perfectly, but the human element matters too. I get why it feels unbalanced right now.

    1. Tired*

      I think Alison recognizes that this is outside the business norms. Expecting lunch and parking for a local commute in would be pretty out of touch at every place I’ve worked and honestly the only reason it seems more drastic is because they WFH several days- something most companies already consider a very generous perk.

      1. Leah*

        Is it really out of touch to ask for parking? That seems weird to me like I don’t want to pay to go to work. Maybe it’s just the city I live in?

    2. iglwif*

      I’m very interested in the assumption that the out-of-towners are “going to a nice restaurant” for their free lunch — it’s far more likely that they are getting a tray of sandwiches in the board room. But I certainly agree that if you’re feeding some people, it makes sense to feed everyone, just for the goodwill.

      (I personally would much rather bring my own lunch, but that’s because I’m a vegetarian with a long list of weird food allergies, so it is much more relaxing to know what’s in my food because I made it myself.)

      1. fhqwhgads*

        I don’t think it’s either. I think the locals are doing exactly what they always do any time they’re in the office, be that bringing lunch from home or running out to get something. And I think the flown-in folks are doing similar takeout to whatever the locals who don’t bring from home do. So, like, Jersey Mike’s or Panera or Chioptle.
        I guess I can see how some folks might feel like it’s unfair that they’re paying for their own when an out of town coworker might go get the identical lunch and be reimbursed, but the difference is the out of towner didn’t have a choice. And the local person could’ve brought their own.

      2. MicroManagered*

        I’m very interested in why you focused on “nice restaurant” and assumed I was stating that as a fact, when it’s clearly a hypothetical/made up example. The same way you could tell that I don’t know for sure that OP made a ham sandwich… hopefully that helps.

  30. mango chiffon*

    #2 – Eughhh I don’t find a swimming pool at a work related event an “amenity”. Unless we are all lifeguards or something, I wouldn’t want to be in swimsuits with coworkers.

    1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

      “I wouldn’t want to be in swimsuits with coworkers.”

      Especially male coworkers. Especially as the only woman in the group. No, just…no.

  31. Honoria Lucasta*

    #1: I know I’m in the minority of commenters so far, but I think the most reasonable expense to ask about is the parking, actually. It’s unavoidable if you are going to be present, and it’s the primary thing that is a significant necessary expensive change from your regular routine. A lot of people have talked about lunch, but you can presumably pack a lunch if you want to since you’re local and have access to your regular grocery stores, your home fridge/kitchen, etc. But expensive parking that is normally $X per week and is now $5X per week can really add up; if you’re going to be out $100 more for the week because you had to come in every day instead of just once, you might raise that with your manager as something to consider reimbursing. The other commute costs are not worth mentioning, but the parking is easily quantified and clearly something you’re being asked to do that is out of the ordinary.

    1. Parenthesis Guy*

      I think the question you need to ask about parking is whether it’s an area where most people are expected to drive or just take public transit. For example, if this is in NYC, then asking for reimbursement for parking isn’t reasonable because most people are expected to take transit. Then again, if this is in a small city, I’d expect parking to be free.

    2. OaDC*

      I’ve had several jobs that required frequent travel. It was an even spilt as to whether lunch was covered when you were out of town; the theory being that you had to pay for lunch when you were in the office. (Whether you actually ate out for lunch was not relevant.). But even the cheapest of these companies would have covered parking in this case.

      1. Texan in Exile*

        What? When I am in town, I take my lunch – I don’t go to a restaurant. That’s not an option when I travel. I guess they could reimburse my restaurant lunch less the dollar it costs for me to take leftovers or a peanut butter sandwich, though.

      2. iglwif*

        I mean, one pays for groceries, but I’ve never worked anywhere where people “had to pay for lunch” in the sense of buying lunch instead of bringing it with you from home.

        Some people would do that sometimes as a treat. Not even senior leadership ever did it as a regular thing.

    3. Snarky McSnarkerson*

      I do sort of agree with you Honoria Lucasta, but then I am reminded of the thousands and thousands of workers to drove and paid to park every weekday in expensive downtown areas before the pandemic. In my case, my salary did not go down when we were made to WFH as some others experienced. But the crux of the matter is that wardrobe and parking is a normal part of working in an office.

      Yes, I would be a little salty about having to pay for parking for the whole week at this point, but I certainly would not expect my employer to pay for it. I like the lunch idea more

  32. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    #1. I agree with Alison. You have the perk of getting to go home, sleep in your own bed, and be able to do the normal activities that you enjoy at home while your coworkers do not. I do think, besides the offering lunch, the company could pay for parking for all employees. I assume that they are paying for parking, car rentals/taxis for those who traveled.

  33. el l*

    OP1:
    First of all, remind yourself this. Compared to most workers today, you’re doing well if you only have to come into office ~1.3 days per week. Most places have far more onerous expectations on employees having to spend their own hard-earned money to participate in office life. That’s the scheme of things.

    Second, it would be ideal if management would pay for parking. Lots of companies validate or make parking arrangements, and that sounds like frankly the biggest pain point. But not paying is a business decision they’re entitled to make, and it’s not a moral outrage that they don’t. (Paying for gas, dry cleaners, lunches, etc – meh, same wherever you go)

    Finally: As someone who’s on a scheme just like your remote workers, the hotel and expenses paid honestly doesn’t feel like much of a perk. Even if it’s a nice place, it feels like meh, whatever.

    Because the price of that nice place is having to make childcare arrangements for when I’m away.

  34. Touchofthe'Tism*

    LW 2: I don’t know that I’d be comfortable with that setup, either. Even if you know these guys the reality of being a woman is being on guard, and that’s a pretty vulnerable situation. I’m not passing any moral judgement on those guys, but I think you’re justified in not wanting to put yourself in that spot.

    1. juliebulie*

      That was my first thought, before I even thought about taking notes or making lunches. No matter how much I trusted those guys, this situation is out of the ordinary, I think it’d be a weird vibe and I wouldn’t like it.

  35. Who knows*

    #1 – I’m also voting that the company should pay for
    1) lunches – nothing fancy, just Jimmy Johns or something would be nice
    2) parking on the additional days, since this is an additional expense not normally incurred even for those WFH

    1. juliebulie*

      Agree, if the parking is not a usual expense for people in the office, they should be compensated or have their parking validated or something. And at LEAST give them lunch since they’re not in their usual place and don’t have the usual options available.

  36. Brad Deltan - Avoider of Glassdoor*

    I find it impossible to believe that Glassdoor’s business modem *isn’t* selling information about negative reviewers back to the companies they leave negative reviews on. It is, by far, the most lucrative way to leverage all the data they collect, given how many insane bosses/companies are out that who have very thin skins and narcissistic addictions to fawning adoration.

    This would explain why, to leave any review on Glassdoor, it is nearly impossible to anonymize your account anymore. You HAVE TO provide way too much data. Now you could try and create a fictionalized version of yourself, but that’s a lot of work, and you have to post information about your time at the company you’re about to leave a review of. If you lie about that, and the employer recognizes you anyway, they can sue you for libel.

    I would avoid Glassdoor at all costs.

  37. bee*

    Perks for remote employees only

    I feel like LW is not considering a lot of the inconvenience of work travel. Often, folks have flights/train trips/etc. that fall during their personal time (they fly out to the office location on Sunday afternoon in order to make Monday morning meetings). Then for the whole week, they are unavailable for personal plans in their home location. They can’t make their friend’s bday dinner on Tuesday night after work and would have to skip their weekly DnD session on Wednesday. They may need to get a pet-sitter or childcare. Or even somebody to water their plants.

    Trying to leverage traveling employees’ paid accommodations as justification to expense four extra days of parking and more lunches is going to come across as out of sync with norms.

  38. Parenthesis Guy*

    #4: It mostly depends on whether the manager is able to determine salary, bonus and raises amounts or not. If the manager is told to figure out how much of a raise their people get, then they need to know salary.

    But some managers aren’t expected to determine that. If that’s the case, then it doesn’t make sense to give them salary information. They should advocate for their people by saying which ones are performing better than others, but it may not be their role to say which ones should be paid more.

    I agree that companies can run into problems if say HR is the one with the final say on salary increases for the reasons you mentioned. But even in that case, HR should be working closely with managers to determine salary increases, and should be able to flag salary inequities. The manager doesn’t necessarily need to be the one doing that.

  39. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    Oh shoot I hit submit too soon!
    #2 I can understand your hesitation, especially if you do not work closely with the others, and if there’s a power dynamic here. You might feel like you can’t relax and that you are always on. If you want to go, I think you should 1. make sure you will have your own private space. And I think you should have a conversation with your boss, explain your feelings (but that you’d like to go etc.) and say that you’d like to have some at the end of the day by yourself, and that this shouldn’t be reflected badly on you. Since you are in more of an administrative roll could you ask him exactly what he thinks you will benefit from. I can see this being a case where the men rely on the only woman to do the cooking and cleaning. I’d also suggest that you drive or take your own car separately so that if you feel uncomfortable you can leave without relying on someone else.
    #3 your mom is way wrong here. Leave the review.
    #4Unless your boss is just like a team lead or another lower level manager I’d find it odd that a manager doesn’t have at least a cursory knowledge of your earnings. Like I could understand not knowing the exact amount without looking it up but they should at least know the ball park amount.

  40. Happy meal with extra happy*

    When I left a prior job, my old boss left a Glassdoor review pretending to be me, gushing about the company. It was a super small business, and I was the only one who had left anytime recently, so it was obvious she meant it to be me. It was funny because it read like a job posting, talking about how “you” get to do this and that, rather than “my” experiences. I was pretty peeved when it happened, but not it’s just funny.

    2. Shipbuilding Techniques*

      Oh wow! Evil almost-genius boss! It didn’t occur to me that people mught do that.

  41. Strict Guidelines*

    #4. We have formal pay bands and compensation guidelines at my work place. I know the pay band for each of my employees. I don’t know their exact pay.
    It is is not a secret and I “could” look it up, but I don’t need that figure for anything. My firm does percentage salary increases once per year based on performance ratings. I can advocate that my employee is exceptional versus average (or anywhere else on the rating scale). But I don’t need to know their exact salary to do that. All employees that get the same rating will get the same percentage increase.

    1. Aww, coffee, no*

      Well, without that knowledge you don’t know if there are inequities within your team. And even if you are giving fair evaluations, if two employees are getting the same percentage rise but one started out higher then that original inequity will just get worse over time.

  42. Buni*

    #2 I would absolutely seek clarity on what exactly my ‘value’ at this event would be, ie am I to be sitting at the table or hovering around with the coffee pot in one hand? And I would ask for clarity on things like cooking and cleaning too. AND I would absolutely want my own room and my own bathroom.

    But – and I seem to be in a minority among commentators here – I would have no problem simply being a woman (I am) in a house with a bunch of men. So what? What exactly could these work colleagues do? I find it hard to believe people genuinely think these men you’ve worked around day in day out are suddenly going to get weird en masse just due to geography.

    1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      I agree with you that my concerns would centre around seniority rather than impropriety.

      But gender is a factor in that consideration, depending on the culture at that company.

      1. Buni*

        Oh absolutely, which is why I’d want to be *very* clear on my ‘duties’ before going – not turning into a house-mother for these guys! There just seemed to be a few responses about having a ‘bad feeling’ and being put in a personally vulnerable position, which I didn’t understand.

        1. Beany*

          I’ve also seen a few responses about personal vulnerability, but that’s a far cry from the majority of the comments I’ve seen. It looks to me like you’re actually in the *majority* among commentators here.

    2. Red*

      Given that the pool is being touted as an amenity, combined with the seniority and gender factors, that personally does put my hackles up about appropriate behaviour.

      I’d also like to point out that an office is a very different environment to someone’s house. And that it’s not about them acting weird en masse. It’s about the chances that *one* of them might behave inappropriately while the LW is in a much more remote and isolated environment than the office.

      I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable in this situation at all, though obviously I wouldn’t fault someone for not batting an eye at this situation either.

    3. e271828*

      This. What are the business reasons that LW #2’s presence would be “valuable” and what does the boss expect them to contribute to the meeting? Is this an on-call office support/maid role? Does LW #2 have hidden business acumen that the boss wants to highlight in this odd setting? If the role is genuinely limited to business support like note-taking (are these men incapable of taking their own notes?), how about an offsite hotel room for LW so that LW is emphatically not responsible for any housekeeping?

      It’s not the one-woman-houseful-of-men thing, it’s the one-admin-houseful-of-execs thing with the vaguely unspecified duties.

      Also, LW, if you’re hourly, this is paid overtime, right? Right?

      1. Bruce*

        I’m not clear if LW2 is a “assistant” or a salaried worker who does “administrative” work. If she’s in the later role then it seems less likely that they will be expecting her to do the clean up and such, and there may be a real business reason they want her there. She certainly deserves some real clarity on the rooms and privacy and what the expectations are!

  43. Jane 2*

    The hotel isn’t a perk at all whatsoever! It’s a basic logistical requirement. If you’re having workers travel – where are they going to stay if not a hotel?

    At my first job out of college I was sent on a work trip in a very expensive city and my managers asked if I had any friends I could stay with in the area and told me I was making a fool of myself by asking for a meal stipend. I know you are advocating for more equitable financial support for local workers – but requiring a worker to travel far away from their home and making sure they have somewhere to stay and some compensation for not being able to manage their food budget by cooking & meal prepping in bulk like they normally would is not a perk, just the bare minimum.

    I am also team ‘buy everyone lunch a few days.’

  44. Ginger Cat Lady*

    LW1 those are not “perks” – business travel isn’t fun. The people who are coming in had to make arrangements to be gone: pet sitters, child care, etc. They are separated from their families. Some of them are likely to be single parents, parents of kids who have medical needs, or caregivers to a spouse or elderly parent. Do you know how hard it is to travel when you need to find someone to take care of your kid’s gtube while you’re gone? Or even be away from your baby for a week while breastfeeding? This isn’t a vacation for them. You need to stop thinking of the situation like they’re in a freaking day spa.

  45. Eleri*

    #4 – I don’t think it’s a great practice that managers don’t know their employees’ salaries, but I’m also not surprised. In my previous organization, my employees’ salaries were fully visible to me and I was expected to keep an eye on them and propose changes if needed, along with everything else in my department’s budget. However I knew of many other managers who had no clue about what their staff were earning – but they also didn’t have much of a clue about their own budgets, or what their staff were working on, etc. They were just bad managers and allowed to be bad managers. One of the things that really stood out to me – I was told by various employees of these managers that their bosses never talked to them, and asked me or my own employees how often we talked. They got the impression that supervisors just never talked to their employees except for the occassional email or a ticket assignment (we were in IT).

  46. Jo*

    #2 If it were me, I’d definitely attend, channel my inner Donna Paulsen (character from TV show Suits), and maximize my own benefit at being in such a gathering. This is an opportunity to both increase visibility/credibility and the opportunity to have ideas heard.

    Naturally, I’d verify that I had private space (both sleeping and bathroom) and also no expectations of me becoming “house mom”. And, hey, at least it’s not a camping or hunting trip!

  47. Pay no attention...*

    #1 Even when employees get to expense their meals, IME there is usually a $ limit or restrictions that really don’t make it all that much of a benefit at all — more like basic minimum. I get $15 per meal reimbursed and no alcohol — I can obviously buy my own if I want, but not expense it. In my area, $15 just about covers a fast food meal depending on if I’m at the Chipotle’s by the airport or further out in the suburbs. Getting the extra guac is right out.

  48. Snacks Please*

    LW 4 – It’s weird, but it wasn’t until just a few years ago at my company that direct managers had salary information for their employees. For many, many years only the VP level staff had that information. They started making it accessible to managers in the name of transparency.

  49. Restored*

    LW-4: I am in a somewhat similar situation that has me full of silent rage! I recently discovered that a coworker (Arya) earns more than I do, in spite of having more years of work experience.

    I was told by the HR Manager that the policy and practice at our organisation for salary increase is a successful probationary period of 6 months, upon which your appointment is confirmed, then at your one year anniversary with the organisation, you get a pay upgrade called a cost of living allowance.

    I started at this organisation one month before Arya, did my appraisal reviews and was confirmed before Arya, neither of us has reached the one year mark with this organization but Arya has received a significant pay upgrade and I haven’t.

    When I went to my line manager who is a member of senior leadership with this information and a script from AAM about salary increase, I received a very demoralizing and unsatisfying feedback about salaries which has prompted me to start a new job search.

    I have been with this current employer for 10 months only but they’ve shown me who they are and I’ll be foolish to not believe them. There’s a glaring bias and favouritism among two members of senior leadership in particular that is rage inducing.

  50. Always Tired*

    OP2, at the risk of sounding insensitive, have any of attendees behaved inappropriately towards you, or have you heard rumors of untoward behavior on their part? I am also a woman, and I wouldn’t think a work retreat with a group of that size would be inappropriate or questionable unless the others had shown poor judgement on other occasions. You’ll note most of the comments are concerned with you getting pushed into doing domestic labor, rather than anything immoral. I would be more concerned about the image of sharing a house with just one coworker, but six of them? That is more than enough chaperones, unless you feel that being male inherently makes them unable to act as such, which is a whole different can of worms.

    It’s fine to be personally uncomfortable sharing a house with coworkers, it’s odd that the issue is that you would be the only woman and that would somehow make it inappropriate.

  51. WFH can be hard too*

    LW1 is not considering the disruption to remote workers lives at all – it’s not always a fun excursion to go visit the home office. If I have to leave home for a week, that means my partner is caring for our two kids, our dogs, all of the transportation to activities for said kids, all of the meal planning and preparation, shopping, and a whole host of other things. And she, by the way, also has a full-time job that *is* out of the house, so many of those duties usually fall on me because I’m commute-less. It’s a serious disruption in a way a daily commute is not, and would not be even if we WFHers were going to an office locally every day instead. Saying “pay for your own meals and other incidentals” on top of that would be punitive and not respect the difficulties it introduces into our lives. WFH is great if you’ve got it, but it does have its limitations and trade-offs. Nitpicking our ability to do stuff like eating food while we’re on the road is petty and lacks empathy.

    1. WFH can be hard too*

      Also keep in mind that these “junkets” to the home office usually include dinners, long meetings, and nights up catching up on emails and other workflows that are disrupted by travel. Sure, a dinner at a nice restaurant is great in a vacuum, but if you got up at 5am to catch a flight, a 7pm dinner is sheer torture, no matter how nice the food is. Days on the road are long, even if “on the road” just means “going to the place where some of my coworkers go every day.”

  52. Head Sheep Counter*

    LW1 I’d be irritated by the additional commute costs and lunch. That’s it. The hotel and the other meals and expenses are the cost of travel and its petty to sweat that.

    I think what’s missed in responding to the letter is that the requirement is for everyone to be in the office for that week and the local people aren’t in the office full time. So everyone is actually impacted but only some folk are reimbursed for the impact. I do think that breeds hostility unnecessarily. Especially if it could be mitigated by economical catering and parking vouchers.

  53. FunkyMunky*

    I disagree with answer to #1 – I think everyone should have a lunch included for the mandatory week. Possibly parking costs – at least for 4/5 days

  54. Bruce*

    LW2: As a guy I can understand why you would have questions about this set-up. I wonder what they are expecting from you if you attend? Are they going to expect you to be doing Administrative support work late into the evening? What is the floorplan, will you have your own en-suite or be lining up to take a shower and brush your teeth? If you have a lot of privacy you might feel OK, but if it is like a summer camp set up then it could be cringy.

  55. Bruce*

    LW1: A lot of companies subsidize commuting costs, you might ask about this as an option without making it about the perks that out of town people get

  56. A. D. Kay*

    No, managers generally know how much people on their teams are being paid
    Unless you work for a toxic company like my old one… where they thought I was a CONTRACTOR instead of a full-time employee. They tried to “hire” me at $20K less than I was already making, and and were speechless when I informed them of that. They didn’t notice that they never got a bill from the staffing firm they were using??

    Turns out they were going to proceed with a massive salary cut–and this was in early 2022 when the tech sector was having a hiring frenzy. Needless to say, I didn’t stick around.

  57. kt*

    #2 I was in a similar situation recently. I wasn’t the only woman, but it was an Airbnb with shared bathrooms, and with people above me in the hierarchy. I ended up expressing my discomfort to my skip level and got them to book me a hotel room separately. It was a little awkward to be the only one in a hotel, but honestly, I was so grateful at the end of the day to go back to own space. If it helps, I framed it as an issue of me being introverted and needing to decompress, because I felt that would go over better with male leadership than the gender issue.

  58. Grizzled*

    #2 – my biggest issue with sharing an AirBNB with coworkers (any gender, any seniority), is that they can be slobs. Waking up and finding that all the mugs are dirty, water all over the bathroom floor, people’s dirty socked feet on the coffee table, etc. This means that all your time before and after work will be the opposite of relaxing. If you absolutely can’t get out of it, I recommend bringing your own dishes so that you don’t have to wash someone else’s stuff. Do not ever clean another person’s mess or you’ll default to the job of housekeeper.

  59. Leah*

    In number one it stood out to me that they said parking was expensive where they work. Is it normal to pay for parking at your job? If it’s a parking garage don’t they normally cover it?

    1. Zee*

      Not always. Both jobs I’ve had that were in places where I’d have to pay for parking, employees had to pay for it themselves.

  60. Zee*

    #1 – I disagree with Allison. You are being asked to travel to somewhere other than your usual work location for 4 days. I think it’s entirely reasonable to have your parking covered for those 4 days, and the company should provide lunch for everyone that week.

  61. Jay*

    Ooh! I work somewhere and it’s damn near impossible for managers to find info on how much their subordinates make (this applies to me looking at our student workers as well as my supervisor looking at my compensation), and you’re so right Alison that their manager training was awful (nonexistent)- I have been in this position for near six months and still feel utterly unqualified to be managing these students in any way more involved than clicking “approve” on their timesheets >.<

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