Required but not mandatory [closed]

Question

I work at a moderate-sized office building (400+) which is part of a larger corporation (150k+). This morning we were given instructions on what to do during today's tornado drill. At the end of the email it said, "Your participation is required but not mandatory."

Does this mean something I don't understand? I don't know this person well and would not want to ask them, mainly because it would indicate that I don't really want to participate if I don't have to.

UPDATE I ended up just following the lead of others on my floor, which was just to continue work (pretty typical for my office). My guess is the person meant to say "requested" not "required".

Answer 1

I would suggest that you ask, given that mandatory is a synonym for required, so it appears they've misunderstood one of the words.

If you're worried about seeming like you're trying to get out of it, you could just be fairly light-hearted about it:

"I noticed the email said 'required but not mandatory'. Can you tell me what you meant? I always thought those words meant the same thing!

The intent to get across was "I got your email; I fully intend to go along with it; I just wondered about something that was written in it".

Answer 2

With some employers, mandatory training is training that must be done, so if you are away on the day, then you must book into another day to do it. For example hand washing training for anyone that works in a hospital.

Other training like a fire drill, you must take park in if you are in work on the given day. (It is as much about training other people {e.g the fire wardens}, and testing system that need you to take part so it is effective.)

Answer 3

It means participate in the drill whether you want to or not. It also means the person writing the email does not communicate well. Perhaps he meant it was required if you are there but not if you are not in the office or that managers could decide to excuse some people. In any event, you can't go wrong participating unless your own manager specifically tells you not to participate (due to urgent production problems for instance or unmoveable deadlines).

Answer 4

I think here 'required' means you need to be present in drill. And 'not mandatory' means if any unavaidable reasons happen, you are not bound to be there. Its better to clarify with your boss. Since English is funny language, it is very difficult to figure out what exactly your boss want to say.

Answer 5

I'd go with either:

a) Someone was making a little joke. ("Very little," as Spock would say.)

b) Or they were trying to say that you should consider this something Management really wants everyone to attend (for obvious reasons, for both your sake and theirs), but that they aren't going to take attendance and you aren't going to have to make excuses if you miss it.

The former is more likely, but I've seen the latter occur when a company has a semi-standardized hierarchy of priorities that has slipped into managerial jargon.

In any case, you should attend if at all possible -- as with fire drills and musical rehearsals and athletic practice, it's worth repeating safety instructions until just past the point where you are completely sick of them. So in some sense the intended meaning doesn't matter.

Answer 6

Having had 24 hours on which to consider this, I think the most likely occurrence is bad word choice while attempting to use a common idiom

"requested but not required"

Is a common phrase, and on Google currently shows 7.5 million results

specifically, I believe what happened is that the author, intending to use this idiom, transposed required for requested, and then seeing that required could not then end the phrase, substituted the word mandatory, and any further proof-reads missed the error.

The other alternative shows up with less than 10% of the frequency, at 400,000 hits: "requested but not mandatory"

As to the issue of bringing it to the author's attention, at this point, it's quite unlikely to do you any good. Better safe than sorry: don't.