Allowing you to say a flat “no” without giving you at least mild shit for it later requires competent and strong leadership, so unless you know that’s the case, some other tool will be easier. There are socially acceptable “lies” for this situation, where it’s kinda clear you just don’t really want to, but you’ve given lip service to their gesture.

• “I’ll be right there, just need to take a phonecall.”

• Play along until you are leaving the building, then go “oh shit I forgot my phone/medicine” then “forget” to come after.

• “Oof, I might have some stomach issues coming on, give me a few minutes to see it if is anything serious - I’ll catch up.”

Story time! These are all thoughts I formed after spectacularly failing at a similar scenario: There was supposed to be a social lunch in the office which is usually just some sandwiches and Powerpoints about positivity in the sofa lounge.

This time they surprise invited everyone in the office downstairs and funneled us into a huge lecture room, think cinema theater. They gave us all popcorn, and the head of marketing went on stage to declare they were going to show us some of the cool promotional videos they made recently! And they would be filming us for reactions to use in other promo material!

I panicked. I was seated in the middle of the middle.

Tried to keep calm, but eventually I just blurted out loud “I really hate this”. Then a pause. Then looked at my phone going “my daughter is calling me”, got up grabbed an extra bucket of popcorn and left. Then sent a complaint at the Office Manager for letting them surprise us like that.

In the end, nobody cared. I was known as a kind and competent weirdo, and far from the only one in the office like that, so it was just ignored. But I felt I could have handled it better, haha.