Some companies have cultures where these things are important.

Mine, no so much. We have optional meetings that you have to show up to though if you want to stay off the negative radar.

My husband's - if you want to advance, you better show up to the social stuff. You don't have to stay long, but you have to show up 75% of the time.

Yup, amateur move honestly OP. Play the office politics better, going to a farewell happy hour is an easy to do on your part to score brownie points with your new boss

I think in general you should go to these things, and it sounds like the office disconnect is a problem the boss wants to fix. You weren’t wrong to skip, but now you know you should go in the future to all team events. I hate them myself but go and chat for half an hour if possible. But they are terrible and I wish I didn’t know it is better for my career if I go…sigh.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the room. Your boss considers these team events. Doesn’t matter if you know the person whose farewell, birthday or baby shower or is.

Fair enough and I will attend moving forward. I got the wrong impression as the first ‘team event’ I attended had low attendance and I saw multiple people sitting in their office eating alone versus attending the ‘team lunch.’

Was the first team event for someone? Retirement, birthday, promotion, big project, etc? Maybe the difference here was that it was a HH *for* a person, not a generic HH.

Farewell HHs are really for the people staying. The company doesn’t care about the person on their last day of work.

Anonymous wrote:I think it would be inappropriate to go to someone’s send off if you didn’t know them. It looks like freeloading.

In the OP work organization few know each other well or at all. What's freeloading? Either company pays or everyone chips in. If company seems to want teams to f2f as is the case here, it's slacking not to go.

I think it would be inappropriate to go to someone’s send off if you didn’t know them. It looks like freeloading.

Hmm, HH is not team-building. If your boss wants bonding, he should have enough sense to schedule an actual bonding event.

I skipped HH all the time in my previous office.

Anonymous wrote:Not in the wrong. Maybe go to the next one for 30 minutes. If boss wanted staff to go, s/he should have written an email saying it would be a good opportunity to get all staff together, or something like that: "Let's all get together and wish Larla a fond goodbye."

This, it's up to the boss to signal things like this. Maybe OP missed those signals, maybe the boss was vague, but now OP knows and will go to future events. NBD. Personally I hate HHs and company parties and things like that, but I do make an effort to connect to my coworkers one on one in more personal settings.

Yes in the wrong. How are people going to get to know each other except by going to these gatherings? Plus it was rude to the departing person.
You sound very transactional. People may sense that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was bad form not to attend a farewell event.

Not if you don’t know the person.

Seems like OP doesn't know a lot of people at this job. All the more reason to attend any event she doesn't have a schedule conflict with.

Anonymous wrote:It was bad form not to attend a farewell event.

Not if you don’t know the person.

Anonymous wrote:You aren't in the wrong, but you are bad at office politics.

Now you know it’s something your boss cares about.

Also, it can be really helpful to your work to get to know colleagues.

Anonymous wrote:Read the room. Your boss considers these team events. Doesn’t matter if you know the person whose farewell, birthday or baby shower or is.

Fair enough and I will attend moving forward. I got the wrong impression as the first ‘team event’ I attended had low attendance and I saw multiple people sitting in their office eating alone versus attending the ‘team lunch.’

Read the room. Your boss considers these team events. Doesn’t matter if you know the person whose farewell, birthday or baby shower or is.