I'm just completely baffled at this. A bit of a background: I just started at this company a couple of months ago. We have several locations across the US, corporate is located in another state. We were told last week that next month they wanted to have a Team Building conference where those of us at the other locations would fly into corporate location, meet our co-workers (most of us have never met face to face), do some team building and all that stuff. Important to note: travel is not the norm for my job, I don't have a corporate card, and I was never told during my hiring process I would be expected to travel either.
My manager sent out a reminder this morning to let them know flight schedules ASAP so they can arrange transport. Prior to this, I've only traveled once for work for another company and they handled booking the flight and hotel under a corporate account – I assumed it was the same here. So I asked my manager about the procedure I needed to follow and how would the cost be covered and her response is that I'm to put the cost of the flights and hotel on my personal credit card.
Obviously I'll be reimbursed later, but am I wrong for not wanting to do this? The charge for the flight and hotel would be $850, that is a big amount to float on my personal finances until I get reimbursed. I'm not the one who wants to travel, work is expecting me to. I never like to mix my personal affairs with work – I won't use my personal cellphone to make work calls and I don't want to use my finances to fund a work trip. Who thought this was an acceptable thing to ask of their employees?