While I completely agree with the general sentiment and I think Microsoft went in the wrong direction here, presumably his wife is an adult and could find a Starbucks or something to entertain herself for an hour or two.
While it would have been completely reasonable and courteous of MS to accommodate the speaker's wife, it's kind of wild to equate not letting her in to kicking her to the curb/abandoning her.
What would it have cost Microsoft to let his wife come inside and hang out for an hour to watch her husband speak? It wouldn't require giving away an expensive ticket, or buying meals for her, or giving her a swag bag. It would only have required one decision maker to say, "sure, you can go with him but should probably leave afterward so other attendees don't wonder what's up". That's all.
I wouldn't have been nearly so polite if I were in his situation, and my wife would have a conniption if I were banned from watching one of her talks.
Again, I can't think of a single legitimate reason not to have let his wife go to his talk, and that simple act would have bought a lot of goodwill. The fact that no one was able to make that simple judgement call is a sign of terrible organization.
I imagine they take a hardline because otherwise it creates a precedent. "Can this guy come in and take photos? It's my boyfriend/brother/BFF/etc." Becomes a potential loophole.
Very unlikely to be exploited, but I imagine that's what they're thinking. If they are thinking...
Of course it creates a precedent. The question is whether such a precedent is OK. There are other examples here where that precedent happened and created a lot of good will consequently.
The problem with leaving things to common sense is that different people's common sense will lead to different decisions in many situations - it can lead to questionable forms of selective enforcement.
"Other speakers' wives were allowed to attend their talks, but my homosexual life parter was escored out by security!"
"I paid $$$ to attend but this speaker brought 5 friends who got in for free!"
If you depend on common sense, you either have to make sure to hire only people who don't misjudge, ever, or have to deal with embarrassing mistakes.
Misjudgements will happen no matter what, and it's not like it's an either-or proposition. It's perfectly possible to have a set of guidelines that can be used together with common sense, but no matter what people should have the authority to _fix the problem_. The root problem in this instance wasn't using common sense to allow someone into the conference, it was a complete failure to find a satisfactory solution to the problem. Had the wife been told to wait in the meeting room, that would suck but would probably not have ended up causing a shitstorm.
Companies like Microsoft know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
You can't qualify customer support and kindness at a company like Microsoft - although I'm sure they have some USER EXPERIENCE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ENGAGEMENT MATRIX with a catchy turn of MBA phrase somewhere.
New Orleans right now has the highest murder rate in the US. It is not only a very dangerous city, it is in fact currently the most dangerous city in the entire country.
I've never seen a major conference center that didn't have a place to drink coffee and read for 2 hours without being killed. There are even large, open pre-registration areas in the center for folks to chill for exactly this sort of reason.
That said, it sounds like he and his wife were treated horribly.
"I've never seen a major conference center that didn't have a place to drink coffee and read for 2 hours without being killed. "
Both the perfectness and absurdity of this sentence is awesome.
New Orleans may be bad, but it isn't _that_ bad, especially an area that MS (or any big firm) chooses for a company sponsored gathering. If MS was bright had any respect for their speakers they would have dynamically made room available for this speaker's wife in some area inside the conference center. They are idiots for not bending rules doing it. But to also think they shoved her out a door and steel barred the entrance and left her there by herself in the middle of Voodoo Shantytown New Orleans where the creole shamans and werewolves circled her is just as crazy.
I get where the author is coming from and totally understand his stance, but I honestly do not believe that MS intentionally put his (non-invited?) wife in harms way. From his description MS treated him awfully and I hope they realize this and attempt to correct it in the future and see where being human in some instances is indirectly worth more than the price of admission to TechEd, but lets be honest - they didn't make his wife walk the plank to circling sharks.
I've been to this conference center. It's in a very decent, touristy part of town with plenty of hotels, cafes, and restaurants. In fact there are two hotels right across the street, one of which has a Starbucks in the lobby.
The real issue here was conference organizers being officious and failing to use common sense, which the OP had a legitimate reason to be annoyed about given he was a speaker and apparently went to some trouble and expense. No need to be over the top, it was bad enough without the hyperbole.
This is hyperbolic nonsense. A high murder rate across the city as a whole does not imply that you are in physical danger standing outside a conference center in the middle of the day. That's simply not how murder works.
She's not being left... an adult should easily be able to either get a cab, or find somewhere safe nearby, or have some plan -- I'm sure she had a hotel room, she could get back to that the same way she got to the conference center in the first place. I am not saying the whole situation wasn't ridiculous, but I feel like people here are acting like this woman is a helpless child.
I got dropped in Paris one day and my friend never showed up, I didn't have a place to go and I didn't know the area or speak French, but I managed to find a guest house and a grocery store and I lived for a few days -- any adult can do the same, this is not rocket science and being a woman doesn't make this more difficult.
Im sure it was a frustrating experience but they already worked around your schedule and got a ticket (although only one way) for your wife. If you emailed the conference or talked to someone a head of time and they said it would be ok to bring her in then you deserve to be mad. If you just showed up with her, I'm not sure why you expected her to just enter with no problems.
Obviously they didn't expect her to come since he didn't communicate his intentions ahead of time. I've worked security at these kind of events before. You say no to any special kind of request and if the guest insist you refer to a manager if they are available. If they aren't you go back to no. If you want a special request you communicate this ahead of time and definitely not 30 minutes before you have to be inside. Everyone has a story for why they should be allowed to bend the rules.
Seeing as we were that strict when the tickets were in the range of $30-$200 I personally think it was a failure of the initial security guards to even let her in the building to begin with.
I'm not suggesting the security was at fault. However, I'm pretty damn sure if security knows that someone needs to be there for the show to go on, and they are saying they need person X to attend as well, the security isn't going to make this decision. They are going to get someone who can make this decision. And that would be Microsoft or some representative with the power to make the decision, and those are the people at fault.
Regardless…
> Obviously they didn't expect her to come since he didn't communicate his intentions ahead of time.
That doesn't matter one damn bit.
> You say no to any special kind of request and if the guest insist
Except it wasn't a guest making this request. It was, effectively, the talent. So I'm pretty sure security doesn't make the call when the talent makes a request.
I am, and my wife isn't helpless. If I am on a work trip, she makes preparations to entertain herself while I am busy. Being married doesn't mean that your spouse is attached at the hip or helpless in your absence, it's pretty wild that people in this thread seem to feel that this person's wife is incapable of autonomy. It's crazy that MS escorted her out, it's crazy that it came to that in the first place, it's even more crazy that he didn't walk out with her and sort things out and that people feel like an adult female is somehow incapable of spending a few hours without their husband, it's kind of sexist.
From the article "What man would just leave his wife in a foreign country stranded outside a conference hall for almost two hours without even letting her know what was going on."
That he couldn't say "Well, this isn't working out, let's meet in 2 hours at X." before she was escorted out seems very implausible to me.
I've spoken at plenty of conferences, and brought my wife along, and have had my share of complications, and my wife has been able to "wing it," as I expect any adult should be able to do.
I'm not saying it's completely absurd that she should have to wing it, but I just don't feel like this is the substance of the issue being presented. His wife is not a helpless child with no money, information or ability to move freely, so I am just not willing to accept that being escorted out (which was stupid in the first place) is tantamount to being abandoned.
> That he couldn't say "Well, this isn't working out, let's meet in 2 hours at X." before she was escorted out seems very implausible to me.
The article clearly explains this:
> Thinking its a small misunderstanding (security is almost always contracted through the venue not the conference) I went to room 238 to try to figure things out. After explaining the situation going on to three staff members I was given the “opportunity” to buy a ticket (full conference on the last day) for her. They then handed me a shirt and said “you need to head over to your talk”
Basically, the author believed that he could just work something out, so at the time that his wife left, he did not make plans to meet up anywhere, and she did not know what was happening. Furthermore, the conference organizers then said that he needed to go speak immediately, which would have prevented him from letting her know what was going on.
I'm presenting at two conferences in the next week, and my fiancee is luckily able to attend one of them. Not having a seat for her is one thing, but having security bring her out of the building and giving me the "opportunity" to buy a full-price ticket is absurd.
I'm a male adult and regard myself as being quite independent, if I want to. If my significant other just after arriving in a foreign country where I planned to follow her would leave me alone in such an unexpected way without a clear plan how to meet and a clear message of what is going on, I wouldn't like that very much. Not at all. Even though I'd not be helpless in such a situation, it is just absolutely disrespectful.
And, which is a severe thing, it would also show that me that the other person allows others to treat him that way, something I'd also think I'd not accept at all for myself.
This wasn't a choice between keeping his wife alive and speaking at a conference, or annulling a marriage! His wife knew he'd be speaking at a conference. She's an adult and is surely able to read a newspaper at a coffee shop, find an art gallery or whatever else for a couple of hours.
Non-speaker could've insisted on speaking to his wife to arrange a time to meet afterwards, fulfilled his presentation/speech, then written a complaint about lack of flexibility later.
If I am invited to a conference and even if I tweak the flight arrangement so they pay for my wife's ticket to suit my person plans, I don't expect that my wife will be allowed inside for free.
Sounded like a pretty awkward situation as it was handled (shouldn't have been led on, and should've been encouraged to speak with his wife to arrange a meeting time later), but the non-speaker seemed a little precious to me.
Many things could go wrong, I am not saying it did, or would, but could. Perhaps it was too crowded, perhaps she was really tired, perhaps she is not confident with her english, perhaps she was not feeling well otherwise. Also, US cities are quite strange compared to european cities, they are not exactly pedestrian friendly. Check out the front of the venue: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=morial+convention+center+new+...
All in all, cut him some slack, he as a very valid point. They could have solved this easily, yet they chose to treat him like he doesn't matter.
I agree, all the points are valid, I'm just pointing out that the comments here which are making an emphatic point about his wife being thrown to the curb are not compelling unless his wife is disabled or unable to communicate. Everything about the situation is all kinds of wrong, and singling out this one detail is a huge distraction to the real issue -- that Microsoft dropped the ball and treated a valued contributor like shit.
It "started" in the text of the post itself, since the author, the person actually affected here, didn't much like his wife being kicked out. So it was straight-up threadshitting to call it no-big-deal.
There's nowhere in this thread where I said it ("it" being that his wife was escorted out) was no big deal. What I've said is that focusing on this particular detail and equating it to abandoning his wife in a dangerous, threatening place, which is what's been done here (note the repeated citing of crime statistics), distracts from the real issue, Microsoft mishandling their guests.
I agree that it's not exactly abandonment to all, but from the OPs perspective, who knows his wife best, it may have been as such. Not everyone takes to new and foreign places as well. I sincerely salute your ability to, but I get the impression that OP knew that if he'd left his wife to just take care of herself, he'd be in the doghouse later.
I'd know. I'm an expat, and while both my wife and I were eager to come to this assignment, we're not the same when it comes to unfamiliar surroundings. If it'd been me? Sure, I'll be at the nearest espresso bar I can find. Her? I would have done the same thing as OP.
This is all anecdotal, I know. But my point being, its wrong to assume that everyone is capable of just seamlessly taking care of things when you're newly arrived in a foreign country. I'd agree that its frustrating when someone can't, or just feels too nervous or intimidated, but that's something we accept and work around when we select the partners we do. OP was right in choosing his partner first. I'd have done the same.
If this is your day job, yes, you should expect and anticipate these things. When you're presenting at a conference in a foreign country, all bets are off. I think how he reacted was reasonable given the evidence presented.
No she was actually kicked to the curb, when she was physically escorted from the building by security. That right there is unacceptable behaviour. No one gives a shit about your precious bureaucracy and petty little power plays. Accommodate the people you've invited to your conference!
Picture having been left outside while your SO goes to figure out what's going on. She tells you she'll be right back.
Two hours later, she comes back. "Sorry, I had to give my talk. They didn't give me a choice. I hope you didn't get too bored standing out here waiting for me."
Personally, I applaud the author for realizing that there was, in fact, a choice - and then choosing it.
> While it would have been completely reasonable and courteous of MS to accommodate the speaker's wife, it's kind of wild to equate not letting her in to kicking her to the curb/abandoning her.
It is if they had told her they would let her in and then when they got him separated from her, they lead her out to the street. How is that not kicking her to the curb?
While it would have been completely reasonable and courteous of MS to accommodate the speaker's wife, it's kind of wild to equate not letting her in to kicking her to the curb/abandoning her.