By skyforbes He was known to be a suckup, and wasn't really liked prior to his promotion. After the promotion he was wildly hate.. Apart from a couple sycophants. Quite entertaining, in retrospect, how people will degrade themselves for the barest scraps of power…
Anyways, middle management knew he was reviled and told him he had to find a way to get people to like him. His solution was "not required but you should think of them as required" happy hours every month. For the first one, most everyone felt like they had to go and started figuring out how to fit it into their schedule. Some of these people had an hour drive each way and were finding sitters for their kids. These people were terrified they would lose their jobs if they missed drinking a few beers with the boss. (I should note that he has roped in everyone under the manager, I'm not even technically under this guy)
I knew my rights and declined the invite. He comes by my cube a few times and the day of to try to pressure me into being there. Dude, there is no way I'm spending my free time with work people. You can either keep me on the clock or you can't ask me to be there, I know my rights. (I liked my team members well enough, had been to parties at their houses, etc, but I'm not going out with the Team Lead under any circumstances) Team Lead did not like that, and walked away in a huff.
Next day everyone comes in and everyone is pretending like they had fun when it's very clear they're just trying to get away from Team Lead's attempts at chumming with them. Around 10 we have a standup and he talks about how great it was to have everyone at the thing. Then he singles me out, talks about how anti-social I am, and how management notices when people aren't team players. Don't skip required events, etc.
LOL, okay dude.
About 20 minutes later I email the entire team "Hey all, <team member> asked me about required after work events that are unpaid so I figured i'd share with everyone. State statute <blah> says that for hourly employees like us that we can't be required to go to these sorts of things without being on the clock. So if you can't find a sitter and can't make it, you don't need to worry at all"
Totally friendly, totally non-confrontational. Totally effective. Team Lead sat by himself at the bar for the next two "required but not required" happy hours and had to find another way to force people to like him.