The screen glowed, a digital siren’s call right as my fingers were hovering over the shutdown button. My internal clock, usually so precise, had just struck 5:30 PM, signaling a hard stop. Then, the inevitable: a Slack message popped up in the team channel from my manager. “So excited to see everyone at the optional trivia night in 15 mins! :)” The emoji felt less like an invitation, more like a subtle yet firm directive. My day had been a relentless grind, each task demanding an energy I no longer possessed, feeling like a single person trying to lift 23 heavy crates all by myself. Now this.

That peculiar tension, the one that coils in your gut when something supposedly ‘optional’ carries the weight of a mandatory performance review, began to tighten. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? That brief, flickering moment of hope that maybe, just maybe, ‘optional’ means what the dictionary says it means, only for it to be extinguished by the unspoken truth. It’s a test, isn’t it? A measure of loyalty, a gauge of performative engagement that extends far beyond your compensated 43 hours. It’s not about trivia, or camaraderie, or even genuinely wanting to unwind. It’s about being seen. Being present. Proving you’re “one of the team,” even when your soul is screaming for the quiet solitude of your own space.

I remember Thomas B.K., our inventory reconciliation specialist. He was meticulous, almost painstakingly so, with figures. Thomas could spot a discrepancy of $3 in a ledger of $33 million like a hawk seeing a mouse from 33,000 feet. His work, his actual, measurable output, was flawless. But Thomas rarely joined the “fun” stuff. He saw ‘optional’ as precisely that: a choice. “My time,” he’d once mumbled to me over a particularly stubborn spreadsheet, “is my time after 5:03 PM. Why complicate a simple arrangement?” He believed in the clear boundaries, the clean lines of a well-kept balance sheet. He was a man who, if you asked him for directions, would give you the most direct, unambiguous route, free from hidden cul-de-sacs or scenic detours that just added miles.

But the corporate world, increasingly, thrives on those scenic detours. It thrives on blurring those lines. Thomas, despite his impeccable performance, started to notice a subtle chill. His suggestions, once considered valuable, now seemed to meet with a slightly longer pause, a less enthusiastic reception. He’d hear casual mentions about “team spirit” in his absence, about “engagement” outside of work hours. No one ever explicitly said, “Thomas, you need to attend the virtual karaoke.” That’s not how these things work. It’s an insinuation, a feeling, a slow, insidious erosion of the perceived value of someone who simply prefers to excel within the clearly defined confines of their role, rather than in the performative theatre of after-hours entertainment.

This subtle pressure can lead to fascinating contradictions within oneself. I once believed I was above it, that I could separate the wheat from the chaff, that ‘optional’ truly meant I had a choice. But I was wrong. I’d told myself it was fine to skip, that my contributions during the day spoke for themselves. I was, in a way, giving myself wrong directions, leading myself down a path I thought was principled, only to discover it was simply naive. I remember a particularly stressful week when I missed 3 team lunch outings. Each time, I had a genuine reason – a deadline, a client call, a quick doctor’s appointment. But the cumulative effect wasn’t “Oh, she’s busy.” It was “She’s not really present.”

And that’s the brutal honesty of it. In a corporate setting, showing up, even for the ‘optional,’ signals availability, enthusiasm, a willingness to sacrifice personal time for the collective. It demands not just our time and skill, but our social and personal identities. It’s asking us to bring our whole selves to work, not in the empowering sense of authenticity, but in the demanding sense of sacrificing personal boundaries for a perceived professional gain. The insidious part is that it often works. We attend, we smile, we participate, because the alternative-the quiet judgment, the missed opportunities, the feeling of being slightly out of sync with the team-feels like a higher cost.

The truth is, we are often complicit in this system. We see others attending, we feel the subtle pull, and we conform. It’s a collective hallucination where everyone pretends the emperor is fully clothed, even when we all know he’s parading around in his underwear. And the cost? It’s not just a lost evening. It’s the mental load, the emotional toll of constantly evaluating whether to prioritize genuine rest or performative presence. It’s the slow chipping away at our personal autonomy, until the line between work and life becomes so blurred it’s almost indistinguishable, a hazy grey smudge where clear, vibrant colors once stood. The idea that we should feel grateful for the opportunity to extend our work presence, unpaid, into our personal lives is perhaps the most audacious claim of all. What if we, all 3 of us, the collective ‘we’ who feel this pressure, started to draw our own clear lines? What then? That’s a question worth pondering for a good 33 minutes.

It’s not about being ungrateful for a job, or for the chance to connect with colleagues. It’s about calling out the insidious manipulation of language, the weaponization of the word ‘optional’ to extract more than what’s fair. And perhaps, for Thomas B.K., for me, and for all of us caught in this web, the real optional choice is whether we continue to play along.