I Survived a Full Day of Corporate DEI Retreat Hell and All I Got Was This Pronoun Lanyard

By Staff Reporter, Woke Watch Daily | Workplace Culture

The email arrived on a Tuesday, which should have been my first warning. Nothing good has ever been announced on a Tuesday. The subject line read: "You're Invited! Belonging & Beyond: A Full-Day Journey Toward Radical Workplace Inclusion (Attendance Mandatory)."

The parenthetical did a lot of heavy lifting there.

I am a mid-level project coordinator at a company whose primary product I am not permitted to name, located in an office park in a suburb of a city that deserves better. I have worked here for six years. I have never once felt excluded, marginalized, or insufficiently belonged. But apparently, HR had data suggesting otherwise — specifically, a third-party survey that found our "Inclusion Sentiment Score" had slipped 0.3 points since Q2. Drastic action was required.

That action was a Thursday in the Pinebrook Conference Center, located forty minutes outside of town in a converted barn that smelled aggressively of lavender and unresolved conflict.

8:00 AM — Arrival and the Pronoun Table

Registration was staffed by a woman named Destiny, who handed me a name tag, a sharpie, and a laminated instruction card explaining that I was to write not only my name but also my pronouns, my "one word intention for the day," and — I am reading this directly — "the name of an ancestor who inspires your equity journey."

I wrote 'Dave.' For all four fields.

Destiny looked at my name tag with the practiced patience of someone who has seen worse and will see worse again before lunch.

The welcome table also featured a pronoun lanyard display — a rainbow of pre-printed lanyards covering pronouns I recognized, pronouns I had to sound out quietly, and at least two that I believe were still in beta. I took one that said "he/him" and felt, for the first time in my life, that selecting my own pronouns was somehow the least interesting choice available.

9:15 AM — 'Unpack Your Privilege Bingo'

Our facilitator was a consultant named Bryce — he/they, intention: "disruption," ancestor: "all of them" — who had the energy of a golden retriever who had just discovered that eye contact is a form of activism.

Bryce introduced the morning's first activity with the kind of theatrical enthusiasm usually reserved for game show hosts and people trying to sell you a timeshare.

"This isn't your grandfather's bingo," he announced, distributing laminated cards to our table of eight.

He was correct. My grandfather's bingo involved free spaces and the possibility of winning twenty dollars. This bingo involved squares like "Attended a school where the default history curriculum centered Western narratives," "Has never had to think about whether a band-aid would match your skin tone," and — the absolute cornerstone of the card — "Feels slightly uncomfortable right now."

That last one, I noted, was a free space. Bryce had essentially built a self-fulfilling bingo card. Diabolical, really. You had to respect the architecture of it.

My colleague Janet, seated to my left, texted me under the table: "I have bingo already and I haven't looked up from my phone."

11:00 AM — Trust Falls and the 'Circle of Courageous Listening'

By mid-morning, we had been sorted into "Accountability Pods" — groups of five, assigned by a color-coded system that Bryce assured us was "intentionally randomized to disrupt our tendency to self-segregate." I ended up with two people from accounting, a woman named Rhonda from Legal who had the expression of someone counting down the minutes until she could bill this to a client, and a young man from IT named Trevor who had not yet spoken but was vigorously annotating his workbook.

The trust fall exercise was, in hindsight, the highlight of the day. Not because it built trust. But because our pod's designated catcher — Rhonda — had telegraphed via body language since approximately 9 AM that she was not here to catch anyone, metaphorically or otherwise. When it was my turn to fall backward, I hesitated.

"Lean into the discomfort," Bryce called from across the room.

Rhonda caught me. Barely. She also whispered, "I went to law school for this," directly into my ear.

We have been close friends ever since.

12:30 PM — The Lunch That Offended Everyone

The catered lunch was described in the program as a "Global Flavors Celebration honoring the rich tapestry of our workforce's heritage." What arrived was a buffet that had apparently been assembled by someone who had once watched three episodes of a travel food show and then immediately outsourced the ordering to a vendor with a very loose interpretation of "authentic."

There was a taco station staffed by a man named Gary. There was a "pan-Asian fusion" section that had managed to blend Thai, Japanese, and Cantonese traditions into something that tasted primarily of confusion. There was also, inexplicably, a hummus bar that had been labeled "Middle Eastern & Mediterranean Inspirations" with the confidence of a sign that had never been near the Mediterranean.

Trevor from IT looked at the spread, looked at his workbook — which contained an entire module on cultural appropriation — and then quietly loaded a plate with everything available. Respect, Trevor.

2:00 PM — 'Allyship: A Journey, Not a Destination'

The afternoon session was the crown jewel of the agenda. Bryce dimmed the lights, which I initially took as a merciful sign that the day might be ending. It was not. It was, apparently, the lighting preference for what he called "deep reflection work."

The workshop asked each Accountability Pod to collaboratively map our "Allyship Journey" on a large paper scroll using colored markers. The journey, per Bryce's instructions, had five stages: Awareness, Acknowledgment, Action, Accountability, and "Continued Becoming." That last stage, he explained, had no endpoint by design.

"Allyship is not a badge you earn," Bryce said, for the third time that day. "It's a practice you return to, every single day, for the rest of your life."

Rhonda wrote "noted" on our scroll in red marker and capped it with finality.

4:45 PM — Closing Circle and the Ride Home

The day concluded with a closing circle in which each attendee was asked to share their "one takeaway and one commitment." Most people said things like "listen more" and "check my assumptions." Trevor said his commitment was to "update the company's accessibility documentation," which was both genuinely useful and somehow the most radical thing anyone said all day.

I said my takeaway was "the lavender smell" and my commitment was "to return my lanyard before leaving."

Bryce wrote something in his notebook.

On the drive home, I received an email from HR thanking all attendees for their "courageous participation" and noting that a post-retreat survey would be circulated within 48 hours. Our Inclusion Sentiment Score, they hoped, would reflect the day's impact.

I gave it four stars. I took one off for the hummus bar.

The lanyard is still on my rearview mirror. I'm not sure how to dispose of it responsibly.

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