When you're being encouraged in a place that supplies your income and with that your livelihood, an "encouragement" becomes pressure.

Similarly, my brother-in-law once bought a rather expensive gift for my father-in-law and asked if we wanted to pitch in for it. He's truly a great person, we get along great, and if we said no I don't think it would have been a big deal at all... But being the one who married into the family relatively recently, it's a difficult thing to push back on. And that's in the best case scenario with someone you know, love, and trust. We don't know that OP has that same kind of relationship with their coworkers

When it's being done by your supervisor at work, whose opinion your livelyhood depends on, then yes.