A recent question at Academia SE elicited an answer that used the term "business optional":
In the corporate work environment it is quite common for things to not really be entirely optional. A regional term I've familiar with is "business optional," but your supervisor might say something like "[person] is going to be at this event and you should meet them," or a mentor might tell you "this will be good for your career." All of these are effectively code meaning that even though nobody is going to force you to show up, it behooves you to show up. Usually this is something that comes up for holiday parties but it's not just limited to those.
(The region was the U.S. Northeast.)
The writer explained how it could be used in an academic environment, in a comment:
It's basically the same things as a tenure track professor hearing the "suggestion" that they should look into doing more service work for their department, to enhance their tenure application package.
I tried to find a definition of the phrase and I tried googling to find the phrase in use, and came up empty, so I thought I'd ask here.
The usual requirements for documentation will not hold for this question.
Can "business optional" mean what the cited Academia participant described? Please give some examples of its use.
An idea: might it mean that the thing being described is optional, in the realm of the business world? I found several uses of "academic optional" that worked that way, e.g."The module also complements other academic optional modules."
Best Answer
TL;DR: This looks like a highly localized usage, so localized that there is virtually no direct evidence of it available. The term is occasionally used with the straightforward meaning "at the option of the business in question (rather than mandated by some other party)," often enough that there are at least a few examples available. Possibly the more idiomatic meaning grew out of this usage.
It sounds like your informant was using the term something like
That is, business in scare quotes to show that optional really isn't. With this meaning, I would expect usage to look something like this:
However, the only use I have been able to find evidence for of the phrase "business optional" is to mean that something is at the discretion of the business, rather than some other party. For example:
This one was from a discussion about Texas "concealed carry" (of firearms) regulations in restaurants/bars; essentially, this person is saying that concealed weapons are automatically banned by the state from "actual bars", but restaurants (which get less than "51%" of their income from liquor) can ban them (by displaying a "30.06" notice) or not, at the business's option (rather than mandated by the government).1
Here, the issue is whether the timing of a business's peak energy consumption are at the business's option or mandated by its business model/customer needs.
And another:
And here, immediate installation of Microsoft updates is optional for businesses, but still mandated by Microsoft for individual consumers.
It also looks to me like this is the way the phrase is being used in the Guardian article DavePhD linked in a comment to his answer, though that example comes the closest to the usage under discussion as it seems to contrast "at the option of the business (RyanAir)" with either "mandated by the government" or, most tellingly, "at the option of the customer" (that latter interpretation is very similar to "at the option of the business, rather than the employee".
These uses are fairly rare, and the references aren't from the Northeast US, but I'd say that this straightforward interpretation of the term ("business optional" = "at the option of the business") is probably at least as common as the meaning "optional, but there will be CONSEQUENCES should you fail to take us up on the option".
Edited to add:
On further consideration, I think it is plausible that the wink-wink, nudge-nudge meaning developed out of the literal meaning. Folks familiar with the phrase meaning "at the option of the business, rather than mandated by someone else" could transfer it to a situation where it means "at the option of the business, rather than at the option of the employee." I would still use the phrase with caution, and a heavy dose of non-verbal cues to get your point across.
1 Text of Texas Texas Penal Code § 30.06 here, if anyone's interested.