You know, things like mandatory pizza parties, or (especially in East Asia) drinking parties with your boss, or even more trivial things like “team-building questions” such as a boss asking “is the dress blue or orange?” and you trying your hardest to pretend like it’s not an irrelevant question that: 1. Has nothing to do with the job and 2. Is a forced way of trying to make comraderie out of someone whose social dynamics would render that impossible in any natural way (due to things like power dynamics, the workplace incentives, etc)
Maybe it just bothers me alone, because in many ways I’m considered neurodivergent in our society. And if this is the case, this is yet another way that neuroatypical people are disadvantaged and discriminated against.
Can we all stop pretending like our jobs are some “family” that doesn’t only exist because isolated workers are all dependent on the company for money? Can’t we just do our jobs and go home? These coerced activities are a gross overstepping of boundaries, and I imagine that you wouldn’t feel comfortable interacting with strangers in such a forced way in any other setting.