AITA for refusing to participate in my office’s “mandatory fun” day? (lemmit.online)

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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Peter-Mayfield_MR on 2023-10-02 20:58:35.

I work for a company that values ‘team cohesion,’ and every year, a “mandatory fun” day is organized, where attendance is seemingly compulsory. It’s classic corporate team building bullshit (ice breakers with people I've known for years, falling over and being caught, that sort of crap)

The event was announced with less than a week’s notice, and my manager, "Greg", emphasized its importance, insinuating it would impact our performance evaluations (I didn't really understand this but nodded along). I was frustrated and felt coerced, as I have a bunch of ongoing projects and pressing deadlines, so I expressed my concerns to Greg, explaining the inconvenience and the impact it would have on my workload.

He was dismissive of my concerns, asserting that the event was crucial for team building and that missing one day of work wouldn’t hurt. I agreed to attend. They day before I was stuck working late, and ended up deciding fuck it, I'm not going to the teambuilding event. That evening I pinged a colleague I'm friends with saying as much. I slept in till like 9am the next day, worked from home and was pretty productive all things considered.

This wound Greg up. The next day he confronted me, accusing me of being uncooperative and antisocial (fine but I don't see why I need to socialise with my colleagues, especially when it all feels so forced). He was very aggressive, basically shouting at me in the office in front of the team. I said I'd be happy to come to more reasonable social stuff, but I won't be going to team building days since they're a waste of time - would be easier and nicer for us to just get lunch somewhere instead.

After all of this Greg effectively punished me by telling me I'll be getting coffees for the entire team (people just do this for themselves normally) for the next week. I'm a mid 30s senior software engineer, not some intern, so this is pretty embarrassing for me.

I get that I shouldn't have decided I wasn't going so last minute, but the day is a complete waste of time and going would have meant I'd have been working Saturday most likely. I also think that Greg is trying to embarrass me with coffee duty, which doesn't sit right with me.