Years ago, when I worked at Holt, Rhinehart & Winston Educational and Professional Publishing, my female superior and I attended a national teacher’s conference in San Antonio, and were forced to share a hotel room because of a late booking. What could have been a profoundly awkward experience — my boss! in her pajamas! — turned out to be one that strengthened our relationship, allowing us to get to know each other in a way that can rarely be found in the frenzy of daily work. The kind of bonding that I inadvertently experienced may be more frequent these days as the byproduct of a corporate mindset reshaped by Great Recession-driven austerity practices — among them requiring employees to share rooms. Major corporations such as Pfiizer, Bristol Meyers-Squibb and Microsoft have experimented with the practice. Nimbleness and frugality, after all, remain critical to growth, and it’s been interesting to see that even as the economy slowly recovers, plenty of business travelers voluntarily and even eagerly share hotel rooms with colleagues. An Embassy Suites survey of 700 business travelers discovered that “17 percent said they try to share a room with a colleague.”