TL;DR

Go

Long version

At my company (~25 people, located in Germany), we're doing this once a year. It usually takes place on a Friday after lunch (during office hours, approximately ~2 hours). It's a lot of fun for everybody involved and a great opportunity for team building. Also, my boss participates himself.

Think about it this way: what's the worst that could happen to you? You could spend 2 hours doing something you don't like (cleaning) with people you do like (or at least respect). There are worse ways to spend your time.

(In case you're wondering: yes, I dislike cleaning very much)

Go even if not everyone else is going.

If it turns out I'm wrong, going once won't hurt your career, even if you don't get paid for it. You could even leverage a non-productive unpaid office cleaning exercise as an example of why you are in the future as careful about always getting paid as some feel people should be.

The people most integrated to the team will be going, unless they're otherwise unable to go. That likely includes the effective team leader, whether or not that's your manager. And it's team-building for everyone who does go.

We had an event like this at my first career job. This was, admittedly, in the US (Texas), and I was working for a contracting company, and this was at the contracting company office, rather than where I worked.

I expected it to be a team-building event. Two people showed up for it. I expected my manager to show up, at least, since he'd been the one to invite everybody. He wasn't there. The woman who was the other person to show up wasn't somebody I even recognized, but she somehow knew me, at least by name and contract.

She explained why three people weren't there. One of them was a sales manager, but the other two were just people I vaguely recognized as office staff. After waiting a bit longer, she said she guessed it would just be us, and we got to work.

She and the other three people she mentioned turned out to be the driving force of the office. She was the office manager, and one of the other people was the HR person I hadn't already met. Partially because I went there and gave it my best, and continued to be involved in things like that, I never needed to worry about having a contract, because the people who mattered knew me, and if I was an option for a contract, I was one of the first people they considered for it.

Also, while I wasn't interested in management positions (I was well aware I lacked the people skills to be able to do that), I was considered for them briefly several times, and most of the people I knew who rose quickly through the ranks at that company went to those events.

That particular company had a lot of optional events to go to that you could use to impress the people in charge, so there were other ways to make such impressions. But if you want to convince your office team that you care about the company and the work environment, there may not be a better way to convey that than going to this thing, because almost nobody likes to clean.

Furthermore, if you don't go, then you don't get to be the one to clean your workspace, which means you have no say in how your workspace is cleaned.

That having been said, I also strongly recommend that you talk with your boss about how the work for that will be compensated. That was a thing that I had failed to do, as I come from a workaholic family, and I was more concerned about making an impression about being a hard worker than I was for getting paid for every second.

But my manager called me after I turned in my next timesheet, confirmed that I had gone to the event, and reprimanded me for failing to fill out my timesheet correctly, and for having gone over on time for the week without approval. These things were considered important. It was certainly better for me to have gone even without having gotten the timesheet business right, but it would've been better if I'd have gotten that right, too.

If this office cleaning day is at the customer office rather than your employer's office, and your customer boss says it's unpaid time, double-check with your employer boss before going to this event.

Different companies are different, so rather than assume the company is a certain way, you should ask.

Note: Depending on who exactly is in your office, it may not be nearly as important career-wise as the event that I'd gone to turned out to have been for mine. But it's still team-building that's most likely with some of the most influential people in the office, and it's likely to get the notice of people that matter.

Of course, that's only helpful if you actually do a good job. At one of the later office cleaning events I went to, an individual performed in a way that inspired my comment about the importance of having a say in how your workspace is cleaned. That particular individual managed to influence himself out of a job.

Correct me if I am assuming wrong but I feel you think cleaning out desks is a janitor's job. And by making you do it, you feel it's free-loading. An office janitor is for cleaning the office floors & toilets & taking out your trash. He can't clean your desk as he wouldn't know what is unimportant.

You say this cleaning drive is for removing unimportant & useless things piled up on office desk & buying new stuff if required & redecorating the office space. Nobody other than you knows what's useless on/in your desk. One spends most of their time of day in office, so redecorating it does concern & affect you.

You are not getting paid in money but there is free food and beer. So the office management isn't strictly free-loading.

If you don't go, it shows that you don't care about office space & your co-workers outside your written work contract. Which is fine if you don't need their help in the future. They are not obligated to help you outside of their written work contract.

Standing out from a group only matters if its about ethics or morality. For anything else, it looks petty & arrogant.

TL; DR; GO

The first thing you need to realize is that this is not "cleaning" in the sense that you seem to be applying.

Generally, "cleaning" an office consists of functions such as vacuuming carpets, emptying wastebaskets, cleaning windows, etc. Or, in other words, janitorial services.

The activities which you have described (apart from the plant part) really require the participation of the office inhabitants, since tossing stuff out really does require a knowledge of what can be tossed.

With that said, any activity (other than parties) which takes place at your place of work and which affects the operation of the business really ought to be paid. So, you probably don't have to go. Just be aware that if you don't and something you need gets trashed, you are going to have very little grounds for complaint. Since you have flexible hours, "choose" to schedule your hours so that you are being paid for "cleaning".

If it's in "working hours"

You should go.

There are, however, a couple of caveats:

• 
  

  If it's in "normal" working hours (i.e. some weekday between, say, 9 AM and 5 PM), but outside your working hours, you should still go (and move your hours appropriately).

  
  
  

  If your hours are written in your contract (as opposed to just being a perk at the company's discretion), you may have a stronger case for not going, but I'd still recommend going.

  
  



• If you already have other concrete plans (which doesn't seem to apply here), it's reasonable to decline the invitation. In this case, I would advise simply apologising and saying you already made other plans, without going into details. This would also apply if it's in your regular working hours but you've already put in leave for that day.



• If they are just looking for a small number of volunteers instead of everyone, you could still go, but I wouldn't feel compelled to do so.

If it's outside working hours

You should go if most other people are going.

A similar caveat as above applies to already having plans.

How do you find out who else is going?

• Look at how the invitation is presented. If they ask for "couple of volunteers", that's probably a good sign that the majority of people won't be going.


• Check RSVP's, if possible. If the invitation is via Google Calendar, for example, you can see who is and isn't attending.


• Ask around. Simple ask some coworkers "hey, are you going to the office cleaning [this Friday]?" in some informal setting.

Final notes

Important deadlines should be given higher priority. I'd say you shouldn't attend this if it would cause you to miss a deadline (or you have to work overtime to make up for it). Although if the deadline is more than a week from now, that wouldn't really be a reason to not attend.

Them asking you to do this isn't all that different from them just asking you to do whatever you do in day-to-day in your job (or attend a team-building, if you wish), so you could apply here whatever arguments you'd use for them asking you to attend a meeting or whatever instead at the given time. Related: How do I decline responsibilities that go beyond what's stated in my job description?

If in doubt, you should go. It is better to be the only person (or one of few people) to show up than the only person who didn't.

Going might allow for some networking to help you get ahead in your career, so you should go regardless of any of the above if that's particularly important to you.

You've described it as a general office activity using paid time and with a "party" atmosphere, including food and music. Sure, tidying up the supply closet and purging abandoned science experiments from the shared fridge aren't normal duties for software developers, but you have nothing to lose and quite a bit to gain by being part of the team. Other people have already said all that, but there's an additional factor: you said this is happening in Scandinavia.

I don't know if this is true for all of Scandinavia, but Norway at least has a long tradition of the dugnad, and it sounds like that's what's happening here. A dugnad is a community cleanup/improvement effort -- cleaning up the park, getting the school building ready for the new session, planting gardens, and so on. An article from Life in Norway describes the dugnad as part of the community contract:

I learnt about the dugnad quite early on in my Norwegian indoctrination. It was during my Norwegian language course in the beloved “På Vei” text book. The story was about a family who were new to Norway. They had recently moved to a block of flats and were invited to come along to the dugnad. The moral of the story was that dugnads are important and everyone participates. This, I can tell you, is true to the experience I have had so far.

In Aftenposten this weekend, I read an article by Hadia Tajik (the deputy leader of the Norwegian Labour Party) about the hot topic of immigration to Norway and she sums up the “Norwegian community contract” as: first do your duty then claim your rights, in that order. The dugnad embodies the first part: duty.

While I am extremely happy with the job, the flexibility it offers and my manager, I am worried that the company is using us as a free workforce.

I am always surprised by people who work for companies which are flexible aren't willing to be flexible in return.

At least make an effort in changing your (work) schedule so that those cleaning hours in your X hours/week you're making. Start later that day or leave earlier some other day. If the invitation came late, and you already have other plans which are hard to change, then be open about it, say that the lead time is too short to change your schedule, but that you'll try to be part of this a next time.

Going will create goodwill. Ranking up goodwill will not hurt.

Well I will try to give another perspective.

Where I work we have cleaning personnel that among other things are supposed to clean the desks. Some time ago they tried to "clean" the keyboards. I knew as I saw on my Java IDE a string of gibberish. Thankfully typing rm -rf / and enter is not easy with a random continuous cloth movement. Or at least it requires skill. Now I have a look around me and after filtering out the things that I will take after I leave, I have the following on my desk:

• 2 desktops


• 2 keyboards and 2 mice


• cups used and unused (and mind you! don't you throw away my used cups because I collect them for recycling)


• 2 notepads


• some "stray" notes


• a spare pack of A4 (walking to other side of the corridor is too much...)


• a plant (no not me)


• a paper rack and


• a badminton racket.

How can I expect the cleaning people to clean the desk without messing with what I consider "my space"???

I can't and that's why once in a while I do it myself, without music, beer and burgers. It doesn't take that long (unless you let tons of stuff pile up) to justify 2 hours plus beer and burgers. The timing (Friday evening) plus the goodies sound to me like a "relax Friday" event on company's dime, but do something useful as well. I (like many others) say go. Just try not to make a mess with the beer and the burgers as it defeats the purpose. :)

But also make sure that you go for the right reasons. It's another thing to think that "you are used as free workforce" and another thing to think "damn why do I have to tolerate X guy's or Y gall's face for Friday evening?". All I'm saying is if the atmosphere in the company is good, the whole setup sounds like you will have a good time and a slightly healthier workplace after.

Caveat #1 I do my cleaning on working hours, but as I said it's a short task, maximum 20 minutes.

Caveat #2 You said desk cleaning and throwing away unused things. Carpet vacuuming, floor mopping, furniture moving are not included and are part of a different story.