training week diary

day 1

On my notepad: sketch of a panda sitting on a bed, flipping channels on a TV with a remote control, with a thought bubble reading "I forgot my LexisNexis password" over her bespectacled head; "I got a fantastic education"; "Strunk and White"; "what a stupid thing to say"; "widows/orphans." All the notes after the panda indicate that I found the writing workshop tiresome. It was as if nobody had written a document before. Somebody said, "Footers are hard to change because the text is grayed out." I found it hard to suppress my urge to disrobe and defecate on the table.

day 2

On my notepad:

• My eyes are closing. My eyes are closing.
• Possibility of death by videoconference.
• Woman speaks primary in key of E.
• A little table, two cardstock name tags struggling to stay tented, red suit jacket, a projection screen, two thin microphones, a clear, heavy glass pitcher of water. Four associates visible in the foreground, including one Asian girl with embarrassed body language.
• Now man in pink tie, Ambien in a suit.
• I may have to kill myself. Implements available: plastic fork, wrung out Darjeeling tea bag, paper plates, first year associates.
• Core values: excellence, expertise, collegiality, teamwork, integrity.
• Pink tie shifting around so much his microphone can't adjust to volume changes, we hear only volume extremes.
• "We are in the service business."
• XNOR, XOR, AND, and OR.
• Prosaic. Cross fertilizing.
• "I’m a restructuring lawyer, an equities lawyer, a capital markets lawyer, but primarily I do lots of death." I think he said "debt," but the videoconference equipment gave him that fatal lisp.
• "We're a business. We sell our time and our expertise." Brothel slogans.
• Surveillance footage of man in Dongbei parking garage getting assaulted by two men, tied up and placed in trunk. Mom said he was found dead. Bland, dull, so unlike fiction. The struggle between the two men and the victim, the stationary angle of the black and white camera: all unglamorous, heavy, slow, terrifying.
• Man eating chicken. We check BBs.
• In New York they can see me drawing pandas on this notepad.
• Misuse of "good for goose, good for gander" idiom.
• The thrill of a red BB light.
• [drawings of pandas]

Ways I have thought of to kill myself during training:

1. Rube Goldberg machine ending with logroll of associates into pool of water where I am bound to a chair with only my nostrils above water; the associates raise the water level and I drown.
2. Wireless mouse slammed against forehead; forehead slammed against desk.
3. Plastic cup cut into conic sections; sharp-edged ring pressed into body like a cookie cutter until cookies of flesh pop out.
4. Blackberry; discover keystroke sequence on Blackberry that kills associates instantly, like cyanide capsule for spies, hara-kiri, peanut allergy.

day 3

Just survived the most boring videoconference in the history of mankind. The man to my left kept his thumbs busy sending emails. The woman to my right achieved level 9 on Brickbreaker. The man across the table from me fell asleep. I couldn't see what the others were doing, but circumstantial evidence (laps stared at, thumbs moving; eyes closed, heads resting on hands, breathing even) suggests they weren't paying much attention either. For my part, I drew 23 panda heads on a pad of paper, then seven panda arms, then played a round of Brickbreaker, using my left hand to increase the challenge.

day 4

Found another reason to kill self: diversity training. The kind of situation where people describe individuals as "diverse," as in, "If you are diverse, you might find yourself at a firm mixer wanting to eat ligaments off pigs' feet while the other associates delicately carve slivers of expensive cheese onto wafers"; "diverse" as an HR concept and a butchery of English; how can one person be "diverse"? It was such that halfway through it, I found myself declaring, "A bunch of white people sitting around laughing about diversity training makes me feel uncomfortable." I said this loudly to make the people making me feel uncomfortable feel uncomfortable. We had discussed nonconfrontational ways of telling other people they had offended us, but sometimes a direct confrontation spoken clearly works better than a peacemaking statement spoken with a mouthful of croissant.

Oh, but it was not all bad. There were some bad apples whose insincere affect cheapened the training -- e.g., those people who breezily concluded, "Yup, offensive!" to speed along discussions of "diversity" scenarios that required higher order thinking -- but there were also the sincere efforts of generally nice people who generally try not to hurt other people. One confessed that he "didn't know how to pursue diversity." I liked this comment, it seemed honest to me. I know that my sort of glowering humorlessness about this subject can drive people away, but I do recognize that it's hard to be a human, in this world, with other humans.

I took notes during one exercise. The presenters directed us to write our names on a sheet of paper, and then write five identities that we associated ourselves with. The answers were illuminating. A mid-20s white male said that he had just done this exercise, since he had recently met a stranger on a plane; the stranger wanted to know him, and he had said: John Doe, Los Angeles, lawyer, one brother no sister, and his birthday ("For women who like to ask about astrological signs and stuff," to general laughter, to my glowering). A mid-20s white woman said that she didn't know whether what she had written ("sarcastic," "blonde") were identities. A mid-20s white man confessed he didn't understand the exercise and described himself in adjectives alone ("hardworking," "fun"). An early-30s South Asian man refused to distill himself or others into five identities, since that encouraged stereotyping. A mid-20s East Asian woman failed to speak. A crone with the lovehandled body of a late-20s East Asian woman complained that this exercise could only be taken too seriously or too lightly; this notwithstanding, she listed her five identities: S's partner; a beautiful and funny unicorn; a good friend/daughter/sister; a considerate and concerned citizen; a phenotype comprising size 8 pants, size 10 shirts, black hair, slanty eyes, small face, abnormally large sinuses, green skin, no taste in clothes.

Later the mid-20s East Asian woman to my right looked at me wide-eyed and asked, "Are you taking notes?!" I wanted to remember what we said about ourselves.

I can offer one concrete action that companies serious about diversity training can take: have someone high up in the organization sit in the room during training. The person need not participate; presence alone can send the message that the company wants employees to pay attention to the presenters, rather than chat about the room temperature. It was cold, but not that cold.