I work remote, but occasionally have to travel to New York City for in-office events. During these events I sit in a conference room with the rest of my team all day. We usually have a team dinner planned during the week or something.
Tuesday I got into New York and later that night we went out to dinner. This ended up going until 10:30pm, which is pretty late for me (I usually am in bed by 10). It was also announced that day that we would go bowling today (Wednesday). After a day of sitting in a conference room for 8 straight hours, I really didn’t feel like going out with my coworkers or drinking beer til 10 or 11 at night. I told my coworkers I was going to skip it because I wanted to go to the gym and I made something up about having to file my taxes by tonight, but I think they generally understood that I just didn’t want to go.
I also was never explicitly invited; we were just told “we are going bowling on Wednesday”, so I think there was the expectation that I go, but I strongly feel that nobody should be obligated to go to an after-work event (especially since I already went to one).
How would you handle the situation? How do you get out of these kinds of events?
2 night outs in a week is too much IMO. At my work, the maximum is 1 dinner+team building event in the middle of the week (never Friday because people have families to go home to for the weekend). We usually try to go to a place where an activity can be done and the place has food and drinks as well, so it’s 2 birds with 1 stone. But to answer your question, any respectable professional environment should accept a simple “sorry, I can’t go” answer without any further questions. Any simple excuse should also be fine, like “I’m tired from all the meetings today and will retire early to get some rest, since we still have a ton of meetings tomorrow as well”.
It’s not a regular thing, OP works remote and sees his team like a few times a year, or less.
Yes that’s exactly my setup at work. I’m part of a global team so it’s only once or twice a year were enough people travel to one office location that it becomes an “event” of visitors in the office for a week.