Today I received a mail from the senior lead of my team asking whether I can take up an administrative task which was previously done by another colleague.
(UPDATE: Initially this mail was routed as: requesting for volunteers. No one from the team apparently had replied. Then, later, the lead mailed me asking whether it could be taken up by me. Please note that the lead did not directly assign the task to me.)
I replied in a mail saying: No.
He responded that I would get some administrative experience.
I again declined saying: No.
Over lunch, he asked, "Is it because you earlier had differences with that colleague that you did not want to take up that task, or is it for some other reason?".
I said, "I am not interested in taking up that task".
And I also continued saying, I am interested in checking if there are scripts which could be executed to do that task, instead of doing it manually.
I am currently unsure whether my response is correct professionally or not.
Or how do I professionally reject doing an administrative task?