One of my managers is having a wedding ceremony and reception (although I believe the actual official thing already happened) and has invited the entire team. I like them well enough, and the feeling is apparently mutual, but I don’t really want to go. I’ve spent the last three weekends out and about, and I was looking forward to actually having a lazy Sunday again. But I feel vaguely guilty for not just swallowing what I want and going to be nice to someone who actually has done right by me at work.
How do y’all decide when to “just go” in such situations? I mean, there are obvious examples, like family funerals and kids’ recitals, but where is your line drawn? Where do your feelings of obligation begin? Or is this just something unfairly thrust upon us all by an extroverted, socially oriented society?
Mostly, having committed. If I said I would go, then come the day I gotta show up and do my guestly duty.
What makes me say I’ll go in the first place if I don’t really want to?
A) If the hosts really want me there or my presence will be doing them a significant favor somehow.
B) If my not attending would seem like a snub or a lack of support for people who have a right to expect me to be supportive to them.
C) If I have a pretty clear idea of the nature and time commitment of the event and know I won’t get stuck there for hours.
D) If I know somebody else will be attending that I’d enjoy spending time with and vice versa.
It is very seldom that any of those factors apply to an invitation from work colleagues whom I don’t routinely socialize with outside of work. It’s nice for co-workers to be friendly, but that doesn’t mean that they have to treat one another as genuine friends.
(I tend to make an exception for cases where co-workers let colleagues know about a funeral of one of their immediate family members. Those I will go to, if it’s local, to show sympathy and support for my co-worker. I don’t feel obligated to go help you party at your wedding with a bunch of strangers, but I do feel obligated to stand with you in your sorrow at losing a loved one.)
It’s hard to say , because it depends on so many things but mostly it depends on how close I am to the person and then the event and how much travel/time it will take. So I might go to a coworker’s parent’s wake if it’s 15 minutes away and I can just make an appearance but if the funeral is an hour away and I will have to stay for an hour-long service the bereaved would have to be a close friend or relative of mine. I probably wouldn’t go to the wedding of a co-worker if I had plans to be out the three weekends before - but that’s assuming I knew I didnt want to go and declined the invitation.Because the thing that would definitely make me go is if I had already accepted the invitation.
A number of years ago, when I was a pretty new manager with about 7 direct reports, one of them asked me to attend her father’s funeral/memorial service. I was surprised and confused – although we had known each other for more than 10 years, we hadn’t worked together for a while before she became a member of my group, and we really weren’t personally close. So I asked my boss what I should do (i.e. do I have to go?). My boss said it was an honor to be asked, a gesture of respect to my position, and it would be a very nice thing to do. Which I took to mean Yes, I have to go. So I did, in good grace, and while it wasn’t fun it wasn’t horrible either, and I earned a brownie point or two.
Your case seems different to me. A manager asking the entire team sounds more like work, not that you will be doing actual work, but you will be building relationships with the rest of your team, and then maybe he can write off some of the reception costs as business. I think team building should be on company time, not my time, and if it were me I would be working on my cast-iron excuse. But that’s me, I’m a little cynical.
Most of the time it is if I do not want to offend the people involved. Especially if I at least like them. I am usually up for and enjoy a thing with my closer friends. I am crap at chit chat. So an event with a group of people outside my personal group sees me mostly observing, not participating.
Best situation is a work event where I have a few friends on my wavelength there. Currently, I like most people I work with. But have little in common with them to chat at an event. So I go. But remain aloof.
Though many go out of their way to comment, I clean up good.
As long as I know the event isn’t going to be boring, I’m pretty much up for anything. Boring events, only my wife or kids can force me.
However, very few events are boring. Always people to chat to, food to eat, wine to drink… the only boring ones are the sit-down-in-pews-and-listen-to-speeches kinds.
As a socially-oriented extrovert, you have my apologies.
For me, and if the event is close ( and informal ) I’ll show, briefly, as as not to appear as snubbing/being aloof. It’s not that I dread going, as such, it’s usually just a case of being at a time I just want to hang and home and chill.
I’ll add to this that over the past few decades, that my job requiring me to work most holidays ( unless they just happen to fall on my regular days off, which isn’t often ) have gotten me out of plenty of holiday-oriented engagements I did not care to attend.
For me, I recognize the fact that I have trouble anticipating having pleasure/good times at social events. Yet for most events I go to, I do end up enjoying myself at them just fine. So I push myself to attend them, even as I think to myself “what a PITA, it’d be more comfy to stay home”.
It really depends on the social situation. In general I find any social event to be akward, uncomfortable, and generally pointless. Especially since most events serve no purpose other than for people to meet and mingle and catch up on the latest gossip and maybe appear to be Doing the Right Thing so that they can curry favor with the boss / pastor / professor / whatever.
So:
A big family dinner? I would go, even thought I wouldn’t want to go. All the pomp, grandeur, and nonsense that comes with Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter… not my thing. But I participate to make my wife happy.
A church potluck / garden party / holiday celebration? Fuck that noise.
A wedding? Thankfully I rarely get invited to those. Unless its my kids getting hitched I’d likely find an excuse to skip it. The bride and groom likely wouldn’t even notice.
Something hosted by my boss and presented with a “suggestion” that I attend? In Bad Old Days I would go because failure to do so would be noticed by the boss and that alone could be enough to be placed on his shit list. Now that I work at a place with a strong union I can ignore such events with no excuse needed.
Funerals are not social events in my view and I attend those without issue. Thankfully those are very few and far between.
I know this board seems to skew more introverted, but nothing is being “unfairly thrust upon you”. We live in a society and people generally like to socialize with their fellow humans.
The only events I might really not want to go to are ones involving my wife’s extended family. So those I go to out of personal obligation.
But usually if I really don’t want to go to a social event, it’s because I have something else planned, it’s too far away, or it’s simply something I don’t want to attend (in which case I would just politely refuse).
That’s pretty much my process as well. At the end of the evening, I usually find that I enjoyed it in retrospect even if, prior to the event, I just wanted to stay home. Even if I’m not especially social at the event itself (and I rarely am).
I also tend to feel some level of sympathy for wanting their event to be a good one. Like, if I stayed home from someone’s gathering and then found out that nearly everyone blew them off, I’d feel pretty guilty about that because I’d assume they’d feel shitty about all their invited guests skipping it. So if someone presumably thinks well enough of me to invite me to their event, I’ll make a serious effort to show up and validate it. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that the bridge and groom will be kicking rocks in the empty reception hall of their wedding party.
I’m an extrovert - I love the opportunity to spend time with friends (and friendly coworkers) when I can. I’m married and have kids, so those opportunities are very few. But here’s the deal - many extroverts are well aware of the pressure they put on introverts. We (extroverts) know plenty of introverts (they’re the majority, I believe). We certainly want you to attend events we put on - but we’re also happy to just hear from you. Drop us a line saying “hey, I’ve had a really stressful several weeks. I’d pegged this weekend as a restorative weekend of having some much needed me time. I’m really happy for you and your wife’s new life together (and can’t wait to meet her [if you haven’t already]), but I have to take a pass on the celebration this weekend.”
We LOVE that interaction. We really do.
Or is this just something unfairly thrust upon usall by an extroverted, socially oriented society?
From our perspective, socially interactive in-person events have been drastically curtailed (for obvious reasons), and we really cherish the opportunities we have to spend time with the people we like.
Well, that’s sone of the things I was thinking of in the OP: “oh, just go, even if you don’t want to; you’ll have fun!”, whether external or internalized.