http://www.npr.org/2012/07/05/155986277/new-orleans-struggle...
Leaving someone out in a strange foreign city of this nature to just deal with it is absurd.
That said, it sounds like he and his wife were treated horribly.
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 never seen a major conference center that didn't
have a place to drink coffee and read for 2 hours without
being killed.
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.
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.
Because it's the right thing to do? And because they knew she was coming, and had bought here a ticket?
Sorry, they were wrong. Simple as that.
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.
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.