(no subject)

At an old job, the department head started having optional "lunch and learn" sessions. You brought your own lunch to the meeting room and an outside contractor taught about stuff.

(It was never stuff that was actually relevant to our work, from what people told me.)

I took the "optional" bit literally and skipped them. After three of these sessions, the director cornered me and demanded to know why I didn't show up. Apparently the "optional" language on the invite was a polite way of saying "required but we don't want to say that".

Anyway I still did not show up for the fourth session. Neither did the rest of my coworkers, who learned that I'd skipped and taken my lead in interpreting "optional" literally (read: correctly). There was no fifth session.