If it’s a free employee lunch, then you shouldn’t have to pay for it. This seems pretty obvious. But it wasn’t for this group. 

When things say they’re going to be free, they should probably be free. Especially at work. I’ve never met an employee who was excited by the idea of having to spend money at their workplace. You tend to go there to make money, not to be forced to part with it. Sure, you might incur a work lunch expense every now and again, but you probably wouldn’t be too happy if you had to pay for something at work that you weren’t expecting to. If your boss suddenly hit you with a Venmo request, you might feel pretty weird about it. You already sacrifice so much for your place of work, and you probably don’t want to fork over cash for something you didn’t ask for. That’s what happened here, though.