I love my role, albeit I’m junior and have only been there around 2 years. My team is small (6 of us). We all know each other well and work together well
On the periphery we have another maybe 30-40 people that work in a couple of other departments. Some work overlaps but most doesn’t and due to the role being pretty hybrid, I very rarely see or even communicate with other employees who aren’t on my team and same goes for them to us - except they all know each other better as they’ve worked together for many years and in comparison I guess I’m still newish. There’s a handful of colleagues that I have maybe met once.
It’s someone’s leaving do coming up. I can count on one hand the amount of times I have met them, and there have maybe been 3 days where I’ve worked in the same office as them and had a couple of ‘small talk’ kinds of conversations. They seem a very nice person but we don’t know anything about each other really.
They have invited everyone to drinks to celebrate their retirement but I am unsure about going. I don’t usually choose to go to work events but don’t want to be seen as odd or rude to the person for not going, drinking routinely isn’t my thing and tbh I have other things I’d rather be doing
Sorry this was way more long winded than it needed to be. WIBU not to go?