I'm working on a project with a few developers from my company and a few external consultants. Our scrum master (external) invited us all to dinner to get to know each other better (group building) but said that we will have to pay for ourselves. Me and my coworkers thought this a bit strange, and so one of them (also external) asked our manager why the company wouldn't pay, and got the response that it was because it was our own initiative, and not the company's. (What makes this stranger still, is that a few months ago, management was stimulating these kind of things, because they felt the regular programmers weren't working well with the consultants. So we had several team-building events paid for by the company.)
I'm not comfortable with this. My coworkers are exactly that, coworkers and not friends, so if I have to spend €40 on dinner, I'd rather go with people of my own choosing and to a restaurant that I enjoy. Since everybody from my team is going to this dinner, it makes the dinner obligatory for me, as I don't want to be the one who spoils the whole "team bonding" thing.
What would be my best reaction to all this?