This was and is still industry standard at some places. It’s total nonsense I think we all agree.
This was happening to me and my customers were getting pissed, and a few places kicked me out for good. What I did to handle it, and it worked very well, was I brought my boss with me to one of the offices that was upset that I was having people come on ride along. It was a friendly office that I called on a bunch and I asked them to let my manager know that right along and stop and droppings are unacceptable. When I spoke with my boss about how angry my customers were, his response was pretty predictable in that you have to make sure your customers understand. This is part of the process and then asked him to go in with me to that office and explain that to them , I also told him that we are supposed to meet customers where they’re at with their needs on a customer service level. To his credit, my boss did come with me to that office and they let him have it. The doctor laid into them for about 10 minutes on why it’s disruptive, unnecessary, and quite frankly unprofessional . My doctor also said there are many drugs out there like the one that we were selling, and if it comes down to it, he would rather use somebody else to deal with all these constant ride along. He even did one favor extra and told my boss that he didn’t like his presence and he felt like it truly interfered with what I was supposed to do as a sales person .. When we walked out of the office, I asked my boss if he was OK with the fact that we were going to lose a customer OT two because of the ride along policy. At that point, he was a dick, and said it’s no big deal and I told him that I would bring that up at our next team meeting when we had leadership in the room just to let them know. And guess what? The ride alongs stopped.