Rommie wrote:I'm trying to figure out if this is a general thing that happens in workplaces, or more one you encounter in academia where the professional lines are a bit more blurred so people don't understand privacy often. That and astronomers tend to be very frugal after their tight grad school years, so the fact that you'd be ok with spending 20 Euro extra for convenience is inconceivable to many, even when it's travel for work.
Yes and no.
Industry goes through cycles of frugal and very-not-frugal, depending upon how the company (or in my case, the parent company) is doing. Often, when frugal, it is the penny-wise / pound-foolish kind of frugal. But even when frugal, I'm never asked to share a room with a co-worker on a business trip and I wouldn't - I want my privacy and free time;
especially on a businees trip, where I'm probably "on-call" entertaining customers or whatever, all day and through dinner and such. I need my quiet time after all that.
But yes, the friendship/professional lines can get blurry at work, and sometime in not good ways.
I generally would like to be at least casual friends with my co-workers, but sometimes that gets a little strange. There was one guy that worked here who would seem to oscillate back and forth between seemingly being your best buddy and ignoring you. On several occasions he started off a Monday morning with:
"How come you didn't come to my party on Saturday?"
"Uh, because you didn't invite me and didn't know anything about it"
"Oh... really? I thought I did".
This actually happened like three times. After that, I started more actively avoiding socializing with him, even when I did get invited to something.
There is a group here that goes out to lunch together just about every day. I usually go, but sometimes I just want to be alone and will come up with an "I got to run an errand" excuse.