How many have you got? I've got a tatty white one with my university ID on it, and a bright blue one with the NHS logo that came with my honorary contract. I have a green one from Cathay Pacific that I found in a bag with a pair of woolly socks and a fold-up toothbrush on a long-haul flight (apparently you can attach the toothbrush to the lanyard with a little clip, though I'm not sure why you'd want to). And I've got a whole cat's-cradle of conference ones (Bournemouth 2001, Blackpool 2003) sitting at the back of my knicker drawer waiting for the next clearout.
How do you wear yours? I've never been sufficiently well endowed to tuck it in my cleavage, and letting it hang loose like a garland brings out the dyspraxic in me. In busy clinics I've been known to place my swipe card, rather than the bell or the diaphragm, on a patient's bare chest. So now I tie it through a belt hook in a granny knot, though this is probably against the rules.
Figure 1.
Ribbon development
What's your most outrageous one? Last week I was sent two, unsolicited, in the post, one maroon and one purple, with “widening participation” in bold capitals as the text repeat. At more than an inch thick, they are the widest I've ever seen. If I take underprivileged schoolchildren on campus tours, I am apparently required to wear one of these to ensure that they (and I) retain clear focus and orientation on the experience.
What do you hate most about them? The assumption of a greater allegiance to corporate values than you would otherwise have signed up to? The mugshot that makes you look like an identikit reconstruction of an escaped paedophile? Finding that you're sitting in a restaurant with it still round your neck? Or the knowledge that your employer has succumbed to a trend which, like luncheon vouchers and teambuilding awaydays, will in a short space of time be consigned to the scrap heap of passing organisational fads and fashions?