There’s a potluck going on. I participated and brought food. As a pick me up before lunch, I grabbed a plate of snack foods. I thought I’d just munch before I went to my real lunch hour to take my personal hour of me time to do personal business.
I got back into my office and got lectured that, no, I will not be leaving, and actually, my lunch hour started when I got the plate of food, because this was meant to be a camaraderie, team building thing. Since it’s meant to encourage socialization among offices, I am not to leave, since I took some food.
I was not told this prior. In fact, she did a little, “oops, sorry, guess I should’ve explained that clearer. :)” kind of deal.
I can’t figure out if this is legal or not. I think the expectation is mostly that I either shmooze in the room the food is in (nobody is doing that, I was alone in there) or work.
It’s just, if I’d known it’d be this way, I wouldn’t have bothered participating. I have personal things I need to do on my lunch break that I refuse to do in the office.
Just doesn’t feel ethical to me to be told by my boss as a bit of a gotcha that, basically, since I took food, I can’t leave.
Tl;dr I was not told beforehand that participating in a building-wide potluck would result in being literally not allowed by my boss to leave for my scheduled lunch hour. So, when I went to grab a snack before I left, I was told I could not leave, that the potluck is for socializing, and leaving wouldn’t be socializing.