A reader writes:
Recently there was an email sent out in my office that said “Volunteers Needed.” It was to work shifts at an event with an organization that my company partners with. Nothing in the email made it sound like it was mandatory, so I just chose not to sign up. The organizer (a manager, but not someone I report to) kept reminding me and others to sign up. Eventually, she asked directly which shift I could do. As the location was very inconvenient for me, and it frankly wasn’t something I was interested in, I wrote back saying I would prefer not to, but not directly refusing.
Well, that didn’t go over well. One of the higher-ups accused me of not being a team player and said that wasn’t an appropriate way to respond. I said I thought it was voluntary, and he said it wasn’t. It seems no one wanted to call it mandatory, but in actuality it was, unless I had a “valid” excuse. It’s settled now, but I’m wondering what the best way is to handle in the future. I feel like it doesn’t come across well to blatantly ask “Is this mandatory?” But at the same time, I feel like that should be on them to make that part clear. It seems like ignoring it doesn’t work, and just saying no or even “I’d prefer not to,” which I did this time, clearly rubs people the wrong way. At the same time, if it is truly optional and I’d rather not do it, I don’t want to say yes. I don’t think this is the last time something like this will come up, so I’d love to know how to handle it better moving forward.
Yeah, this is on them for claiming they were asking for volunteers when in fact they expected everyone to sign up for a shift unless they had a “good enough” reason to opt out.
It’s not your fault that you assumed “volunteers” did in fact mean optional.
It’s not uncommon for workplaces to do this — bad management, but not uncommon. And as you point out, in those workplaces that means there’s no way to know what’s truly voluntary and what’s not … which means you can never take them at their word.
The best thing to do when you don’t want to sign up for something that’s been presented as “voluntary” is exactly what you started out with: ignore the solicitation. They said it’s voluntary, you’re not interested, so great, you’ll just leave it alone. If someone then “reminds” you to sign up, at that point you should say something like, “I’m not available then, but I hope it goes well!” That language can be a lot more effective than the “I prefer not to” that you used because it implies can’t rather than won’t. It allows for the polite fiction that you’d be happy to help out if you could, but sadly you can’t. (“I prefer not to” is also more likely to annoy someone who wanted you to understand their code and realize you were expected to participate.)
Of course, in real life it can be more complicated. You might be on a team where the solicitations for volunteers are genuinely optional individually, but you’re still expected to say yes to one or two of them over the course of a year. Or you might have a team where no one will force you to “volunteer” but it’s still going to reflect badly on you if you never do it (potentially in ways that matter, like how you’re evaluated and what opportunities you get). So you have to know how this stuff works on your particular team in your particular culture. If you’re unsure, you can often figure it out by talking to coworkers (just be sure to watch out for the coworker who assumes it’s all necessary when it’s really not) or, if you have decent rapport with your boss, by talking with her. It’s reasonable to ask to ask your boss, “When we see emails like the one today asking for volunteers, are those truly optional or is the expectation we’ll sign up unless we have a specific reason we can’t?” (Then again, in some circumstances there’s an argument for not having that conversation, and instead maintaining plausible deniability that you reasonably assumed “voluntary” did in fact mean optional.)
