Corporate work environment –
There is an all company event coming up. It was never expressed to be mandatory, just a “please come anytime and leave anytime during this 4 hour window” basically. My team is mostly remote so our team isn’t often all together in the office anyway. This event conflicts with my schedule for commuting. My spouse works a noon to midnight shift the same day. We currently have one car as we haven’t needed more than one since I work mostly remote. At best I can go into the office early but I’d have to leave before noon (event starts at noon) to get back home, so my spouse can use the car to get to his job. Public transport is out of the question as we live in a rural town. The event was held last year as well. I didn’t go to that either as there was a Covid spike and my family had Covid and I didn’t want to expose anyone. Am I worrying over nothing? It shouldn’t be that big of a deal right? I’m sure a couple others on the team will not attend this event. But I’m sure to hear about it from my supervisor that she “missed seeing me there.” How can I explain that my spouse schedule conflicts with mine and I didn’t have a car to attend? Should I tell her before the event? She’s not asked our team to say who is or isn’t attending. I’m probably overthinking this but I don’t want to deal with the potential confrontation after the fact.