I've caused WW3 at work - vegetarian

[Lazykitten]

I'm veggie. Nearly vegan but once in a blue moon eat cheese so don't refer to myself as that.

We have a team meal booked. In theory it's for us plebs as a thank you for hitting targets. In reality it's to network with the big bosses who comes up to celebrate with us.

Meal is booked in Manchester in the evening at a restaurant renowned for its meat. You don't order a meal, they just come round with sides of beef,lamb, pork etc every 5 minutes and carve at the table. I'm not going to eat this. Nor do I want to sit there surrounded by meat, its been so long since I've ate it the smell turns my stomach a little. Plus it's Manchester not exactly a small town so there was opportunity to book plenty of other nice restaurants. So I've said thank you but no thank you as I wouldn't enjoy it.

Team manager says I'm being ridiculous. That there's a salad bar. And if I don't come I'll need to book the day off as leave.

We've locked horns before as in the summer we had an event at a famous race course - one where there are often fatalities. I said I didn't want to go as I disagree with horse racing, he pushed me into it, so I went and felt awful. I'm not going this year so I'm going to have that battle coming up too.

I'm not a confrontational person so this is really upsetting me. I just wanted to quietly decline but now it's blown up and everyone seems to have an opinion.

Do you think I need to suck it up and go?

Tot agree.

What's their equality and diversity policy?

Has management taken this into account?

Suggest to HR that your E and D policy can easily go further than the law and should include events whether out of hours or not.

Is the venue accessible to anyone with a disability? Are there seperate toilets for males and females? What about those who don't eat certain foods for reasons of health, culture or belief? What about people who do have to eat certain things?

You are in Manchester, a city with large populations of Jews, Muslims, Chinese and other groups. Surely when booking a place to eat it should be suitable for all the group. This should be in your E and D policy even if you currently do not employ a disabled Orthodox Jewish woman and / or a baptised Sikh. You won't be employing them unless your E and D policy accounts for them.

Purim was only a couple of weeks ago. It is currently Ramadan so no one who is fasting could attend, well they could but they couldn't eat or drink.

BTW for anyone saying they have never had good food in Manchester, head for the curry mile or Chinatown.

It sounds performative and tedious.

Yes!

Fusing tradition with modern sophistication in opulent surroundings.

This is from their website.

Just makes me eyeroll.

It’s not like they’ve booked the restaurant out or tables for 30. This isn’t difficult for your boss to change venue. A table for 6 would be easy to find in another restaurant.
I don’t understand why your boss doesn’t understand OP
Stick to your principles and don’t let anyone force you into going anywhere you find morally repugnant and that includes cruel sports.

Perhaps ask if they be happy betting on a bit of dog fighting !

This.
What‘s staggering to me is that the boss has taken an event that’s supposed to be a celebration of the whole team and treating it like it’s his birthday party or leaving event for him and is refusing to accommodate the reasonable feelings of one of five of the team this is supposed to honour. It’s nuts!

I don't think you really understand. The OP is describing a visceral reaction that many vegetarians experience - a sense of disgust which comes from the realization that slabs of meat are corpses, dead bodies of living creatures. The reaction arises from a totally different way of thinking about the provenance of what we eat.
I'm vegetarian. I don't blame people for eating meat. Even the Dalai Lama eats meat. Jesus stated that it's not so much what is put into one's mouth as what comes out of it that counts. It's just a different mind-set.

Yes.
He wants to go to this meat fest restaurant and he’s trying to do so at the businesses expense.
Its all about him not the group!

I notice a number of people saying that this particular restaurants does a few vegan dishes, so inferring the OP will be OK.

I don't think that was the point. The OP doesn't want to sit at a table where so much meat is brought out and cut up at the table.

Just go into work during the day and don't go to the meal. You can't be forced to take a days leave!

Reflecting back on OP….
very telling
calls the food issue WW3
and looking for support on Social Media
….
being the person that cannot resolve a basic issue regarding food
and not getting along with boss & coworkers
->
Creates a very lonely place to spend your workdays
—-
try being the person who can solve own issues.

Commenters have given many suggestions for positive resolution.
it’s your choice
if you can’t get along without starting WW3,
You should Find a new job

There’s a lot of projection and presumption in your post that is equally telling. Nowhere has OP said she doesn’t get along with her colleagues.

Compromise is important, but so is respect for difference. When you work for a manager so out of touch and domineering, who takes an event that is supposed to be about the team and makes it about their own wants and needs, who persists in pushing their own preferences even when they are in contravention of their own team‘s values and then responds in othering you, then yes work might be a lonely place.
Do you manage people?

I understand clearly. I think you want to believe I don't understand because you disagree with my view. If a child thinks somethings someone else is eating is disgusting - because of what it is, how it looks, how it smells etc -- they're taught tolerance. It seems to me what you are trying to say is that because you 'don't blame' (meaning you are judgemental about eating meat) people - you have a visceral reaction. I think that's an excuse to behave impolitely. Go ahead and sit in front of Inuit and tell them you can't help but be disgusted that they survive on animal sources of fat and protein.

"I'm veggie. Nearly vegan but once in a blue moon eat cheese so don't refer to myself as that." (OP can eat cheese, so forcing cows to be milked is ok...)

"its been so long since I've ate it the smell turns my stomach a little." (OP use to eat meat so clearly she was born with the ability to tolerate it).

I understand that you think that if a meat eater has conflicting views and thinks some of the expectations and views of some vegans and vegetarians are not acceptable then they must just not understand you. You can read some of my examples of my vegan friends and vegetarians friends. And FWIW I asked a friend of mine raised by a vegetarian mum - their response was that my view is completely valid and that the only reason for the OP to be offended by this dinner is if there are no options for her (which she said there were) and one of my suggestions to OP directly was to contact the restaurant and ask them directly if there are other options and I shared a link for a popular restaurant that seems similar to the one she is referring to - which has a whole section their website about what they offer (so obviously there are plenty of other vegans and vegetarians dining at their restaurant where they walk around and cut meet off the spits onto the plates).

OP isn’t going to be hosted by the Inuit in the frozen wastelands where there is very little choice of puffin guts or wild salmon, though, is she? If people offer you all they have in that cultural context, yes that wouldn’t be polite.
But she’s being taken out in the Greater Manchester Metropolitan area with literally hundreds of restaurants that would meet the cultural needs of everyone.
Not the same thing at all.

An awful lot of people seem to be missing what I see as the point: And if I don't come I'll need to book the day off as leave.

The OP will be at work that day, is perfectly happy to go to the pre-dinner drinks, but does not wish to attend the meat-fest, which takes place later in the evening and at a different location from the drinks. Why should she book the day off as leave, given that she'll be working?

I’m vegetarian and, like most, have little problem tolerating people eating meat in my presence.

But eating in a restaurant with meat hanging around the place and being performatively carved at the table? That would make me very uncomfortable and I’d likely feel quite nauseous. I would not want to go.

Being “rewarded” with a trip there? Fuck that.

And being told I have to go, outside of work hours, or I have to use a day of annual leave? Absolutely fuck that.

I, like the OP, would have little problem eating in 99.9% of restaurants. The boss is being a total prick by insisting on this one.

I'm not vegetarian @AzureNewt , and I feel exactly the same way. I want to eat my dinner in peace without people bustling around me waving huge chunks of meat around and the one time I did go to one of these places it was exhausting being hovered over all the time.

I also abhor food waste, and the amount which gets binned must be appalling. I know some food waste is part and parcel of running a restaurant, but the quantities in these places has got to be on another level.

So many people missing the point here - it's supposed to be a reward for hitting targets and she's being bullied into taking a day's leave if she doesn't want to go. It's not about if a vegetarian should tolerate meat eaters.

That’s a good point. She should be able to say it’s not for her irrespective of the reason. Why can’t managers just be pleased to have reliable colleagues who work hard but don’t want to do all the crap after hours?

You've got the wrong end of the stick. I don't blame people for eating meat = I'm not judging them. My view is that if you live in an environment where you have to eat meat to survive, then you must do that. I think there is a duty to sustain the precious human body. I follow Hindu teachings. Lord Rama ate meat whilst in exile in the forest. Sri Ramakrishna, famous saint, ate meat. One other saint used to offer meat and honey to God. Jesus ate broiled fish. But if a person is trying to meditate, it's best not to eat meat as it makes the mind more unruly.

I thought this as well.
Particularly when you said he was playing the "hysterical female" card.
This is the second time you've mentioned that you've been forced to make a stand over issues that could easily have been non-issues if a more considerate manager was in charge. Is that a co-incidence, is it a blip or a pattern of behaviour? I think you need to keep a watchful eye on his behaviour.

Consciously or not, he seems to be putting you in a position where you are forced to say that you don't agree, to be the only objector in the group. He's also choosing things where he must know you would object. He also gets a power kick out of insisting you have to comply anyway. Even when, or perhaps particularly when, its not strictly a work task. On the surface people don't tend to object to something everyone else considers a "treat" so because you are it makes you look unreasonable/difficult and puts you apart from the rest of the team. And its easy for him to categorise not eating meat/ objecting to animal cruelty in an eye rolling "hysterical female" category.

It's classic bully to isolate one member of the group to make themselves more powerful within the group.

Sounds like that's just his modus operandi, so he can create a "We are all just macho blokes together" atmosphere. It's useful to him to bond the other members of the group to him and to control them by implying that any idea/objection/behaviour that he doesn't endorse from them is a bit "lazy kitten" - a bit hysterical female and less than macho, which would pressure them to back down because they don't want to be aligned with someone outside the gang. (I'm not saying that the rest of your colleagues go along with this BTW, just that the pressure to conform to Boss's ideas is there)
I'm also not saying he deliberately sat down and thought up this as a plan. Far from it, I think it just comes naturally to him. Divide and rule. Your boss is probably so used to doing this that he barely knows he's doing it. It is probably learned behaviour from his more junior days.
And of course once you've selected a person whose views you have successfully mocked as trivial and hysterical, on things which the rest of the gang consider treats, then its easy for him to mock the rest of your real work ideas too. Making himself seem wise and all knowing and establishing you as the lowest in the pecking order.

Again, I really don't think you have understood. I really cannot tolerate eating or even the smell of cabbage or coconut. I don't think that either of the things are disgusting, I din't think that people who eat them are disgusting. In normal restaurant circumstances, where there are other smells around, I could tolerate the fact that those things would form part, even a large part, of some of the dishes on offer. I still would not eat them myself. BUT I would not go to a restaurant whose raison d'etre was dishes where varying kinds of cabbage
and coconut were the main ingredients, because the smell would make me nauseous. Its not about judging or ethnicity.

Just message on the day saying, " I'm not feeling great today, so I'm going to work from home and give the meal a miss." They can't say anything about that, because you're still working.