To expect work colleagues to go for meal on theirs days off?

My initial thought is your work colleague is deranged! Who would expect / think that people they work with want to give up a precious weekend evening - and pay for the privilege?

Is the Saturday her actual birthday? If so then I would feel a bit sorry for the colleague. Does she have no friends or family to spend her birthday with? Is her relationship with her husband a happy one? I'd assume not if she'd prefer to spend her birthday with people she doesn't know very well. However none of this is your problem @Makkka (nor the problem of your colleagues) and Hell would freeze over before I would be guilted into giving up a Saturday night - or any night actually I am an introvert with limited time and money, when I socialise it has to be worth it for me

If her birthday isn't the day she is proposing dinner then I am back to thinking she is deranged!

But for some people this is how colleagues BECOME friends. I totally get some people may not want to make new friends. If you feel you have enough and don’t particularly want to make anymore or you really don’t like your colleagues then sure just decline. But I don’t really understand this need for the harsh thick line between colleagues/work and friends/fun. Where you ONLY see colleges Monday-Friday 9-6 and ONLY other types of friends outside of those hours. I work with my colleagues 5 days a week. When I see them on a Saturday I don’t class that as work. So for me it doesn’t affect my work/life balance. At work I’m busy with clients and we are discussing them with each other. On the last Saturday day out we were at The Crystal Maze live experience thing laughing at how the manager couldn’t work out how to do one of the games. Then we had dinner and drinks. It didn’t feel like a work day to me at all so it didn’t affect my work/life balance.

Wow, this is a big no no in my office. Of course some people are friends and meet up on weekends but you don't ask for a team meal on a Saturday!

I would be quick to decline and say you have family commitments on weekends that you can't re-arrange but that you would be happy to have lunch during the week.

Plus someone then presumably has to arrange flowers, a gift and a card for her?

Maybe she thinks you’re friends

Agree. Some of my closest friends, who feel more like family, were made through work

And when I moved to a new place I am so grateful to the colleagues who took me under their wing and not only socialised me but also introduced me to their friends!

This. I'd go after work, either for drinks or a meal, but not on a Saturday if that's a non working day.

Just reply saying lovely idea but weekens are too busy so how about after work drinks.

And we have a loneliness epidemic/ I can see why

make no effort to mix and socialise and grow new friendship sand one day wake up and all your old friendships have faded away, you don’t have new ones and you don’t have the skills to create them

and it’s not as if you have to go - it’s just an invite not a three line whip

If I knew a work colleague seemed isolated I would definitely do this for them

And that's your choice, if you feel that attending a colleague's birthday meal on a weekend night would disturb your boundaries/work-life balance. The 'miserableness' from some posters is largely in the implication that the woman doing in the inviting is doing something wrong, rather than simply issuing an invitation which can be accepted or rejected.

I would have thought that’s pretty normal to have a party/meal at the weekend. Any party celebrating a birthday is self- indulgent, whether it’s for a ten year old, eighteenth or fiftieth. There’s never going to be a good night to suit everyone.

Don’t go if you don’t want to.

Miserable?
I would call it boundaries/ work/ life balance
I have colleagues
I also have friends
I would not attend this other than a work lunchb or gathering
Thats the norm, work lunch or tea and cakes/ buffet style gathering with gift, card / flowers
Nothing miserable at all

Agree she's asked, thinking it might be a nice thing to do.
She may not get any takers and decide to rearrange it for a work day. Or she may have already had a couple agree to go and not be the slightest bit bothered by you declining.

Obviously I don't know the person concerned but it's an assumption to say 'she wants to be celebrated'. I've been for many work birthday meals out and none of them have had the vibe of 'celebrating' an individual - it's been a 'lets have a nice time' vibe. Yes, there'll be a card/gift for birthday person somewhere along the way but other than that it's just a meal out.

Unless OP's colleague wants everyone to be singing a continuous round of 'Happy Birthday' while 'The Greatest Hits of 1976' plays in the background to accompany a photo montage of all the significant moments of her life, I don't think it's going to end up being all about her 😆

And that would likely have resulted in a thread about “why on earth would a colleague suggest a lunch or dinner out of the blue with no reason behind it??”

I think that's a weird, rather unpleasant take on an invitation. She's asked if people would like to go for a meal at the weekend. No one is being held at gunpoint.

You fully WFH so you don't even see this woman during the week, it wouldn't hurt you to put yourself out, it's a meal not a week away! However, if you don't want to go then decline the invitation, but I still think many MNers are a miserable bunch of misanthropes - and I'm hardly the most social person myself.

Well, it was for her 50th birthday so she wants to be celebrated by work collegues she doesn't know outside of work- that's self indulgent. It would have been different if she had said
"Who wants to get together for a lunch/dinner? Here are some suggestions of dates (week and week-end) in a poll."

It's not odd to invite colleagues for a meal, if you don't want to go don't, just say you are busy that weekend. She's done nothing wrong by inviting you. I went to a works 50th drinks a couple of weeks ago, a colleague who I like well enough but don't socialise with outside of work. I'm going to a fancy dress party in November for another colleague's 30th much to the horror of most mumsnetters. Again I am friendly with get at work we socialise at work events but not otherwise, but she's nice she's having a party, she invited me, I'm free so I'll go. It's not that complex

Just say something along the lines of ‘ huge apologies but I already have previously made plans for that day. Hope you have a lovely day. Xx’

If everyone works from home is she in the office alone?

Yes, that's the oddity of this thread. Not 'X has invited me for a restaurant meal -- do I want to/am I able to go?' but 'I don't want to go, but I also don't want to feel the discomfort of refusing, so I'm going to focus on how odd and self-indulgent she is to have issued the invitation in the first place, to my mind.

So it’s not a formal work event , just someone being friendly and suggesting a social meet up ? What is the world coming to that we can’t suggest meeting up and building relationships and friendships ?

I find it very sad that people’s first thought on being invited to an evening out is that it’s self-indulgent on the part of the inviter. What an unpleasant perspective to have on life generally. If someone invites me to spend time with them, even if I don’t want to go, I feel nice that someone values my company and wants to see me. I can’t imagine being so offended almost by an invitation.

Just another thought: you say you all work from home so don't have much chance to get to know each other. Perhaps that's exactly why she's invited you all? Maybe she's looking to build better relationships with her colleagues and her birthday is a convenient excuse to do that.
You are not obligated in any way but I don't think it's odd in the slightest for her to have asked.

I'm another person whose best friends have been met through work and who finds the MN aversion to socialising with anyone who isn't family bizarre.