〔𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 ; 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘸𝘰〕
〔𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨.〕

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WILLOW WALKED INTO WORK and immediately noticed Michael and a taller man inside the conference room. She set her purse down and signed into her computer. 

"Ugh, is today that Diversity thing?" Willow asked Jim as he picked up his desk phone and started dialing.

"Yep. And of course it's on the one day I choose to call Mr. Decker to renew their account." Jim replied. 

"That sucks." Willow said. Jim picked up the phone and dialed the number for his client.

Dwight sat down at his desk and placed a shredder on his lap.

"That's the thing. It's very sturdy paper and on the back it says, '100% post-consumer content.' What? Hello? Uh-huh. Wait. What? I'm sorry, Mr. Decker. I think I'm losing you. Hello? Hello? Yeah. Hold on one second. I don't know. Hold on one second." Jim said as Dwight turned the shredder and started shredding documents.

"Do you really have to do that right now?" 

"Yes I do. I should have done it weeks ago actually." Dwight grabbed another document and put it through the shredder.

"Dwight, knock it off." Willow scolded. He ignored her and continued to shred his documents. While Jim was trying to speak to his client, Willow reached over and unplugged the shredder. Jim mouthed a quick thank you to Willow as he continued to talk on the phone. Not even a minute passed before Dwight pressed a button on Jim's phone, ending his call and simultaneously unplugging a wire on Willow's computer.

"Hello? Thanks, Dwight." Jim sighed.

"Jesus Christ man, have some decency." Willow muttered as she plugged her computer back in.

"Retaliation. Tit for tit." 

"Nope, not the expression." Willow shook her head.

"Well, it should be." Dwight said as he turned the shredder back on. 

"Ass." Willow rolled her eyes and began her work.

♡

Michael exited his office and made his way over to the copier, where Oscar Martinez happened to be at the moment. He noticed that the representative for their Diversity seminar exited the conference room at the same moment and moved to make conversation with Oscar.

"Hey, Oscar! How are you doing, man?" Michael exclaimed. Willow looked over at the two and sighed to herself. 

"All right." Oscar replied as he finished making his copies.

"Did you have a good weekend going there?"

"It was fine."

"Oh yeah, I bet it was fun," Michael said as he turned to face the representative. "Oh, hey! This is Oscar..."

"Martinez." 

"Right. See? I don't even know, first-name basis!"

"Great. We're all set." the man said.

"Oh hey, well, diversity, everybody, let's do it." Michael said as he signaled for the employees to make their way into the conference room for the seminar. 

"Jim, could you wrap it up, please? It's diversity day, Jim. I wish every day was diversity day." Michael asked as Jim continued to try and speak to the client.

"You know what? I'm actually going to have to call you back. Thank you. Sorry about that." Jim hung up the phone and walked over to Willow.

"This isn't gonna go well." Willow said as she followed her employees into the conference room. Jim nodded in agreement.

By the time everyone came in, they all gave the Diversity Day rep forms they filled out earlier and settled in.

"Okay, thanks for filling these out and I promise this'll be quick. At Diversity Today, our philosophy is about honesty and positive expectations. We believe that 99% of the problems in the workplace arise simply out of ignorance." the representative explained.

"You know what? This is a color-free-zone here. Stanley, I don't look at you as another race." Michael explained. Willow looked over at Jim and Pam and cringed. The two maintained straight faces, but silently agreed with the younger Halpert.

"Uh, see this is what I'm talking about. We don't have to pretend we're color-blind."

"Exactly, were not."

"That's fighting ignorance with more ignorance."

"With tolerance." Willow shook her head at Michael's comment.

"No. With more ignorance."

"Ignorance." Michael repeated.

"Right, exactly. Instead, we need to celebrate our diversity."

"Let's celebrate. Celebrate good times. Come on! Let's celebrate diversity. Right?"

"Yes, exactly. Now here's what we're going to do. I've noticed that-" the representative was swiftly cut off by Michael."

"You know what? Here's what we're going to do. Why don't we go around and everybody say a race that you are attracted to sexually. I will go last. Go." 

"I have two. White and Indian." Dwight quickly said. Willow noticed customer service representative Kelly Kapoor shift uncomfortably in her seat at the comment. 

"Nope, how about we stop." Willow said a bit too loud for her own good.

"Yes, thank you. Uh, Michael, I would love to have your permission to run this session. Can I have your permission?" Willow was surprised at the response the representative had. Jim nudged his sister and gave her a thumbs up.

"Yes." Michael said hesitantly.

"Thank you very much. And it would also help me if you were seated," Michael nodded and sat down in a chair adjacent to the door of the conference room facing his subordinates. "Now, at the start of the session, I had you all write down an incident that you found offensive in the workplace. Now, what I'm going to do is choose one and we're going to act it out."

"A few of the ground rules?" Dwight asked.

"Hey, hey why don't you run it by me and I'll run it by him." Michael replied.

"OK, can we steer away from gay people? I'm sorry. It's an orientation. It's not a race. Plus a lot of other races are intolerant of gays, so... paradox." Dwight continued.

"Well, we only have an hour." the representative explained.

"I figured it would save time." 

"Okay, why don't we just defer to Mr..." Michael said.

"Mr. Brown." 

"Ah. Oh, right, okay. First test. I will not call you that." Willow rolled her eyes at her boss' comment. 

"Well, it's my name. It's not a test, okay? So looking through the cards, I've noticed that many of you wrote down the same incident, which is ironic, because it's the exact incident I was brought in here to respond to. Now, how many of you are familiar with the Chris Rock routine?" All the employees raised their hands.

♡

"So last week Michael called a conference room meeting to show off his Chris Rock impression. Apparently he watched the entirety of Chris Rock's 'Bring the Pain' special the night before and decided to recreate that one bit with the n-word. And all of us collectively complained to Toby from Human Resources. So now we're doing this Diversity Seminar." Willow explained, an annoyed look on her face.

♡ 

After an attempt to reenact Michael's incident more peacefully which resulted in Michael redoing his impression, saying the same offensive words and the signing of some Diversity Pledge, Willow and the rest of her co-workers returned back to their desks to continue working. Jim re-dialed the number of his client, Dwight started on his expense reports and Willow was just finishing a sale when Michael came out of his office.

"'I pledge to always keep an open mind and an open heart.' I do believe in that part of the pledge that I just read. But a pledge? Come on. I mean who are we, the Girl Scouts? No. Look, the guy, 'Mr. Brown,' he got us halfway there. He got us talking. Well, no. I got us talking. He got us nothing. He insulted us and he abandoned us. You call that diversity training? I don't. Were there any connections between any of us? Did anyone look each other in the eye? Was there any emotion going on? No. Where was the heart? I didn't see any heart. Where was my Oprah moment? Okay, get as much done as you can before lunch because, afterward, I'm going to have you all in tears." Michael declared.

"Oh boy." Willow muttered to herself as she hung up her phone and began to dial another number.

♡

"All right? Everybody pretty? Come on. Here we go. It's time. Let's do some good." Michael said as the employees made their way back in the conference room. Willow noticed Jim anxiously looking back over to his desk, clearly wanting to make his sale rather then sit through yet another Michael meeting.

"Hey, just stay out there and make your sale. I'll cover for you." Willow whispered as Michael kicked Toby out of the room.

"Oh my gosh, thank you so much you're a life saver!" Jim gave his sister a quick hug before running back to his desk and picking up the phone. Willow smiled to herself as she found a seat next to Dwight.  

"Just take a look at the tape." Michael said as he turned on the small television next to him. On the screen, Michael was there in front of the Dunder Mifflin sign outside of his workspace.

"Hi. I'm Michael Scott. I'm in charge of Dunder Mifflin Paper Products here in Scranton, Pennsylvania but I'm also the founder of Diversity Tomorrow, because today is almost over. Abraham Lincoln once said that, 'If you're a racist, I will attack you with the North.' And those are the principles that I carry with me in the workplace." 

Michael turned off the tape and faced his subordinates.

"Okay. Questions? Comments? Anything? Willow?"

"Is that it?"

"Yes. I only had an hour to put it together but I'm going to add on to it later on."

"It was hard to hear." accountant Kevin Malone added. 

"Uh, yes. That probably had something to do with the camera work. Anybody else?"

"I have a customer meeting." Kelly said.

"Yeah, well, if you leave we'll only have two left. Yes. Enjoy. Absolutely. Namaste," Michael said as Kelly left the room. "Okay, well since I am leading this, let's get down to business and why don't I just kind of introduce myself, okay? I am Michael and I am part English, Irish, German and Scottish. Sort of a virtual United Nations. But what some of you might not know is that I am also part Native American Indian."

"What part Native American?" Oscar asked.

"Two fifteenths."

"That fraction doesn't make any sense."

"Well, you know what, it's kind of hard for me to talk about it. Their suffering. So who else? Let's get this popping. Come on. Who's going? Who's going? Let's go here. Oscar, right here. You're on." 

As Michael and Oscar went back and forth, Willow took out her cellphone and started playing Tetris.

"Uh, pay attention." Dwight whispered.

"You pay attention." Willow fired back. Dwight fell silent before looking back at Willow's phone.

"What's your high score? Mine's eleven thousand." 

"Yeah? Try thirty-five thousand." Willow smirked.

"Impressive. Let's play later."

♡

"I have something here. I want you to take the card and put it on your forehead. And I want you to treat other people like the race that is on their forehead. Okay? So everybody has a different race. Nobody knows what their race is, so I want you to really go for it, cause this is real. You know, this isn't just an exercise. This is real life. And, I have a dream that you will really let the sparks fly. Get 'er done!" Michael said as he placed a card saying 'Martin Luther King' onto his forehead. Willow reached over and grabbed a card (reading 'Brazilian') and placed it onto her forehead. All the employees stood up and began mingling with each other under Michael's rules for the activity. Willow went over to Pam, who had a card that read 'Jewish' on her forehead.

"Hey, what's my card?" Willow asked her friend.

"Brazilian. What's mine?" 

"Jewish. So let's pretend to do what Michael asked." the two giggled as they saw Michael annoying accountants Angela Martin and Kevin Malone.

"Where's Jim?" Pam asked, looking out the window of the conference room.

"Oh, he's talking to his client. If Michael asks where he is I'm gonna say he has a stomach virus." Willow said, laughing. Pam gasped, quickly covering her mouth in amusement.

"Pam! Come here! I wanna see this interaction!" Michael called out. As soon as Pam went to Michael, Dwight went over to Willow.

"Oh! Hola! I'd like to play some soccer in Rio!" Dwight said.

"Nice, Dwight." Willow replied.

"Okay, do me. Something stereotypical so I can get it really quick." 

"No. How about I just tell you?"

"Come on, Willow! Stir the pot. Stir the melting pot, Willow! Let's do it. Let's get ugly. Let's get real." Michael said as he went up to the two.

"Ugh, okay. For the record, I disagree with these stereotypes. You may not really be a very good driver."

"Oh man, am I a woman?" Willow scoffed and left the conference room. She walked over to reception where Jim and Ryan were hanging out.

"Hey, what's going on here?" the female asked as she took the card off her forehead.

"Watching Chapelle's Show. Should I even ask what's going on in there?" Ryan replied.

"Nope. Jim, did you make the sale?"

"I did actually."

"Good. Get in there, Pam's asking for you." Willow pointed to the conference room. Jim left reception and went into the conference room. 

"See you later, Ryan." Willow said while grabbing a post it note. She went to her desk and scribbled a quick note to Dwight.

'let's play tetris. i'm bored, so meet me at my car after work. i dare you to try and beat my score! -willow x'

Willow smiled and placed the post it on Dwight's monitor before picking up her desk phone to make some cold calls.