Coworkers constantly exclude colleague from work lunches, they wonder how to bring it up: 'It would mean a lot to be included'

JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor

Nov 1, 2026 4:30 PM EST

It hurts to be excluded from something.

It never feels good to be left out of something, especially in the workplace. It can even be a detriment to your career if you're left out of too many things. But sometimes it's on you to make sure that you're in the right rooms at the right time. It's not always good to assume malicious intent; sometimes you just get lost in the shuffle. But that doesn't mean you can't advocate for yourself and ask for what you want. That's what this worker was trying to do in this story that caught people talking about unspoken rules in the workplace.

*_{Individual pictured is a model used for illustrative purposes.}*

*A woman looks tired on her desk, resting her head in her hand*

Coworkers have a lunch group without me.

I started my job about two years ago. I heard something about a lunch group with members of my team, but never got asked to join. Today, I heard my boss asking my coworkers why I don't go with them, and someone said "he probably just quit going or didn't want to."

I would actually really like to, but nobody actually ever invited me. It especially bothers me that our new team member, who joined two months ago, started having lunch with them pretty much right away.

There are so many unspoken rules in the workplace, and you just have to get into them over time. It's hard to immediately catch on, and sometimes it takes you a while at a job before you figure out what's up and what's down. There's no handbook that tells you exactly how to act in every situation; you just have to figure it out for yourself. Like when your coworkers all start going out to lunch without you. Maybe one of them thought that they asked you when you said no, but really you just slipped through the cracks. This can be a pretty frustrating experience, and you probably want some perspective on it. It's hard to be the one that's constantly left out of stuff. Maybe you have childhood wounds about it, when you were picked to last for basketball, or when all your friends had a sleepover without you. That stuff can really imprint on you and hurt you way down the line. So when it starts to happen in your adult life, maybe you have an outside reaction to it and don't quite know how to work around it. That's what was happening to this employee, who didn't quite know why everybody was hanging out without them. It can sometimes be a detriment to your career when this stuff happens, because so much of work is about relationships. It's about how you make people feel, and how you work together. If that stuff isn't in place, then a lot can go wrong. But when you notice this happening, it's not always clear how to move forward with it. This person left, wondering what exactly they could do about their situation. They didn't know how to move forward without making it awkward for everybody else involved. This is why they reached out to the Internet. Sometimes we need outside perspectives on our lives in order to make informed decisions. There's nothing wrong with that, and sometimes you need to hear it from somebody else even if you know it deep down inside. So keep reading to see what happened here and let us know what you think.