The mouse cursor has been frozen for a full 43 seconds. It hovers, a tiny, impotent white arrow, over the word ‘Decline.’ My chest is tight. Not a panicky tightness, but the dull, compressed weight of a tedious calculation. The invite sits there on the screen, gleaming with corporate cheerfulness: ‘Project Phoenix: Q3 Sync (Optional).’
Optional. The word is a masterpiece of passive aggression.
It’s a test, and you know it. It doesn’t mean ‘your presence is not required.’ It means ‘we are abdicating the responsibility of deciding if you’re important, and we are now handing that hot potato to you. Good luck.’ Declining feels like raising a small flag that says, ‘I have judged my own work to be more important than this collective gathering.’ Which is true. But you’re not supposed to say it. You’re definitely not supposed to broadcast it via a calendar notification. Accepting, on the other hand, is a quiet surrender. It’s an hour of your life exchanged for the political currency of being ‘a team player.’
My real work is waiting. A report that requires deep focus, the kind that can’t be achieved in 23-minute fragments between meetings. But the social calculus is deafening. Who else will be there? Will my absence be noted? Will a decision be made, a conversation sparked in the final three minutes, that tangentially involves my team? The institutional FOMO is a powerful drug. So, with
