> I probably would have taken a $99 room over the commute every now and then
Your employer should have done this for you, and paid the bill. At some point there is liability as it’s a safety hazard.
Large employers in Germany will enforce the max 10 hour rule for non-managers not from the goodness of their hearts or because they don’t want to be stuck paying overtime, but because here, they have a good chance of having at least some of the liability if you are involved in an accident.
When my skip-level’s boss spotted me in the office at 7pm during a very serious outage, and told him that I’d been there since 6, he commended my efforts and insisted I take a cab home and have them bill the company directly, no matter how far away home was, and stated that I was under no circumstance to set foot on company property before 8am the next day, and that I needed to have at least 10 hours between arriving home and leaving for work the next morning.
first time was in my car and was kicked out of the parking lot by security, I probably should have protested more
second time was curled up against a wall in our equipment room, and the poor cleaning lady let out a shout when she discovered me haha
on one hand a company hotel seems kind of perverse to me, on the other its cheaper than the super 8 was in 2010, and I probably would have taken a $99 room over the commute every now and then