Tell them you feel it would make you even more productive - that’s gotta be a good incentive 
Try it and let me know what how it goes 
I tried mine again and this time I turned off automatic graphics switching -before- opening the laptop and the fans didn’t go into overdrive 
I then turned automatic graphics switching back on and it seems to have carried on working as normal and so I am now thinking about buying a second monitor arm just to house the laptop. I posted a pic of my updated setup with monitor arm here: Post Your Workspace - #13 by regulardevtalker.
The arm I bought was this one - it’s incredibly well made is extremely sturdy - no play at all once you’ve moved your monitor to your desired position. Here’s a promo vid for it:
Want an alternative to an ultrawide monitor set-up? How about a big OLED TV 
Good for game devs who want to test things, but I think for the rest of us a HiDPI ultrawide would be better. Until that time comes, I think what we have now may be hard to beat if set up with monitor arms like in the video above - a larger Retina display and a smaller secondary display…