Send your workplace conundrums to workologist@nytimes.com, including your name and contact information (even if you want it withheld). The Workologist is a guy with well-intentioned opinions, not a professional career adviser. Letters may be edited.

I work at a blue-collar job, and I am one of four women in a crew of 40. The guys never touch or harass me, or any of the women, as far as I know. They do, however, constantly hug and grab and bump each other in a friendly way. It’s not unusual for one of the guys to go through a whole short meeting (a stand-up “huddle”) with an arm around another guy’s shoulder. No one ever touches me, and it’s not that I want them to. That would be weird. But I almost feel left out. Should I let this “bro contact” bother me? MARY

It can be irritating or even troubling to feel left out at work — even if whatever you’re being left out of doesn’t appeal to you.

“There are a lot of ways to feel excluded,” said Eden King, a psychology professor at Rice University. “And a lot of them are nonverbal.”

Informal social rituals from happy-hour gatherings to the office Oscar pool can improve an office’s culture — unless they leave some people feeling that they just don’t fit in. At worst, this can become a “coded way of excluding people,” said Ms. King, who directs a workplace diversity research group at Rice. “‘We don’t want people like you because you don’t fit our culture,’ can turn out to mean, ‘You’re not our race, or our gender.’ ”

The classic example is golf: If you don’t play, and your boss bonds in career-shaping ways on the links, that can be a problem.