Currently a student in Finance, working in a MNC.
I have been holding this annoyance for a while and wish to get it off my chest and gain some opinions. I felt that I was wrongly blamed.
I have recently joined a new company and I’m the youngest. My team consist of about 8 of us and most of them are in their mid 30s.
2 weeks ago I was tasked to choose a place for our team lunch. It is a tradition where the youngest usually is the one choosing the place. I was given less than a day to think.
It is known that there are quite a few factors to consider:
1. There are 3 lacto-vegetarians in my team. As such, the restaurants need to have vegetarian options.
2. We worked at Buona Vista and our lunch need to be quick as we have important work to finish. This also means it needs to be nearby. For dinner, there must be additional of alcohol as we have heavy drinkers in the team.
3. The ambience must be pleasant and nice. No coffee shop, no rundown places.
4. They want a generally expensive place. (It is known as they are quite well-to-do individuals). They won’t settle for coffeeshop. FYI, our first team dinner when I joined the company was for 8 pax at Artemis and we spend close to $2000 for it. The company paid for it.
I tried finding around Holland Village for a restaurant with vegetarian options as it is fairly close-by and there are a few restaurants there. I found this western and Italian place with vegetarian options and suggested it to my director. Him being a vegetarian himself looked through the menu and agree to it saying “There are quite a lot of vegetarian options and ambience is okay.” I gave the menu and restaurant name to the rest of my team and they all looked through it. Pizza, pasta and some tapas are the vegetarian options.
Fast forward: After we had our lunch at the place, I overheard another director (he) and colleague (she) talking bad and laughing about the place, saying “Pizza and bread for lunch?! Hahaha.”
Shortly after I conversed with them and came to know that they don’t see pizza as a proper food item, but rather a side dish. There was no direct confrontation but just some sourness during the conversation.
I was fairly offended after. There was no direct confrontation but it still left me quite confused and angry.
For myself, I didn’t come from a very well-to-do family and I’m okay with pizza for lunch. I wouldn’t even mind going to a coffeeshop and just have noodles and rice.
My family don’t have a high status in society, just an average Singaporean. The most expensive food meal I ever have and paid myself is probably just kbbq that cost around $30+.
This is why I went an extra mile to provide them with the menu to see if they are okay with the food but the result wasn’t what I expected. There were no direct objections at the start and I thought they are totally fine with it. After getting negative gossips behind my back over this makes me feel upset.
What do you think? If it is you, would you be upset?