When Your Colleagues All Live in London and You Do Not
The hardest version of a business trip is the one where the team is local. Why six in the evening is a cliff, and what to do about it that is not waiting to be invited.
By KF.Social·5 min read·Published 23rd September 2026
There is a version of a work trip that is genuinely fine: four of you fly in together, you are all equally stranded, and the evenings sort themselves out badly but they do sort themselves out.
Then there is this one. You are the only person on the project who is not from here. Everyone else has a flat, a partner, a five a side game on Wednesdays and a bus they need to catch. At six o'clock the floor empties in about eleven minutes and you are standing by a desk deciding whether to stay another hour so that leaving feels less strange.
This is the hardest shape a work trip takes, and it is worth understanding why, because the reason is not the one people assume.
01Nobody is excluding you
The instinct, especially in the second or third week, is to read it personally. It is not personal, and the mechanism is fairly mechanical.
People with an established life in a city do not have spare evenings in the way that visitors do. Their week is already allocated: family, a class, a standing thing on Thursdays, a friend's birthday, being tired. When they leave at six they are not choosing a hotel bar over you. They are going to the thing that was already there.
The other half of it is that colleagues rarely think about your evenings at all, because from where they sit you are simply a person who is at work, the same as them. It genuinely does not occur to most people that the person they had a good three hour workshop with is going back to a room with a kettle in it. Not out of coldness. It is just not visible.
So the shared evening never forms by accident, which in a team of visitors it always does. Nothing has gone wrong. The default is just empty.
02Ask early in the week, not on the day
Almost everyone who tries to fix this tries it at half past five on a Wednesday: turning to someone as they pack up and saying something like, do you fancy a drink. That fails most of the time, and it fails in a way that stings and stops you asking again.
It fails because you have asked a person with a full week for an evening they had already spent, with no notice. A local person needs the same warning you would need. So:
Ask on Monday for Thursday. Three days is enough for someone to move something or to know they cannot. Asking on the day is asking for a cancellation of their existing plan.
Be specific. "Do you fancy a drink sometime" is a question nobody answers. "I am here until the 19th, is there a night this week you could do dinner" is a question with an answer in it.
Ask about lunch too. Lunch is the underrated one on this exact problem. It costs a local person nothing, it is far easier to say yes to, and it is where you find out that two of them also moved here for work five years ago.
Ask them to pick the place. People like being asked about their own city, it removes the work from your side, and it usually produces somewhere better than you would have found.
03The thing they will say, and what to do with it
You will hear some version of "we should do something before you go" a great deal, and it will mostly not turn into anything. That is not insincerity. It is that the sentence feels like an action to the person saying it and is not one.
The only reliable thing to do with it is to convert it on the spot: yes, which night. That single follow up is the difference between a friendly conversation and an evening, and it is slightly uncomfortable to say, which is why almost nobody says it.
04Have something that does not depend on the office
Everything above is worth doing and none of it is sufficient, because it makes your week dependent on other people's diaries, and on a six week posting that is a thin thread to hang on.
The more durable fix is to have at least one evening a week that exists whether or not anybody at work is free. The test for anything you choose is simple: it happens on a fixed night, you can turn up not knowing anyone, and nobody minds if you were not there last week. That rules out most things and rules in more than you would expect. London has an unusual number of run clubs, quizzes, drop-in classes, language exchanges, choirs and casual sports slots that meet exactly that description.
The point of it is not the activity. It is that Thursday now has something in it that does not need anyone's permission, and the rest of the week gets easier once one night is not a decision.
05The bit worth saying plainly
Being the only outsider on a local team is a specific kind of tiring that has nothing to do with the work, and it gets worse rather than better as the placement goes on, because in week one you are new and in week seven you are furniture.
It is also not a sign that you are bad at this. You have been dropped into a city where every single person you meet through work already has a full week. Nobody solves that by being more likeable. They solve it by asking earlier than feels natural, and by having one thing that is theirs.
06What we do, in one paragraph
KF.Social books you a seat at a table of six in a London restaurant, on a set evening, with other people who are also in London for work. It is 15 pounds for the seat, shown before you pay, and then your food and drinks at the restaurant. The restaurant lands about six hours before, and who you are sitting with about an hour before, which is when the group chat opens. Booking is open to anyone over 18 who pays. If your plans change, and on this kind of trip they do, cancelling 72 hours or more ahead puts the 15 pounds back on your card, and inside 72 hours it does not come back.
We only run in London, which is a real limitation and worth knowing before you look. If you are here, the tables coming up are here.
Related Questions
Why do local colleagues never invite you out?
Because their week is already allocated and, more importantly, because it does not occur to them. From where they sit you are a person who is at work, the same as them, and the fact that you are going back to a hotel room is simply not visible. It is very rarely exclusion.
When should I ask a colleague to dinner on a work trip?
Early in the week for later in the week, not at half past five on the day. A local person has an existing week, so asking on the day is effectively asking them to cancel something. Monday for Thursday works; be specific about the dates you are in town.
What do I do when someone says we should do something before you go?
Convert it on the spot by asking which night. The sentence feels like an action to the person saying it and is not one, so the follow up is the entire difference between a friendly exchange and an actual evening.
What kind of thing works when you are only in a city for a few weeks?
Anything that meets on a fixed night, takes people who turn up not knowing anybody, and does not mind if you were absent last week. Run clubs, quizzes, drop-in classes, language exchanges, choirs and casual sports slots all pass that test, and London has an unusual number of them.
Is lunch a better ask than dinner?
Often, yes, and it is underrated for exactly this situation. It costs a colleague with a full evening nothing, it is much easier to say yes to, and it is usually where you discover which of them also arrived in the city for work and had the same first six months you are having.
KF.Social
