Yes, it boils down to a trust issue. People on both sides of the table pressing the defect button over and over. Realistically, conference attendance is a perk

Yes, it boils down to a trust issue. People on both sides of the table pressing the defect button over and over. Realistically, conference attendance is a perk, and should be understood as such and accepted. Of course to a shareholder breathing down the neck of the business admins, it's unsqueezed slack in the system that has to be better justified than that. And realistically the employee would go, attach a few extra days, maybe skip a day of the event, but still feel some kind of duty (what a quaint word) to make use of the actual conf too. It's an arms race where both sides are saying, if you don't give a shit, we don't give a shit.