At a logistics conference in a convention center with beige carpet and no windows, four hundred attendees were handed identical lanyards at registration, each printed with a sponsor's logo in a blue that did not appear anywhere else in nature. By lunch, a third had already knotted the excess length to shorten it. By the second day, several had removed the badge but kept wearing the lanyard, which is when the specimen reveals its true nature: not an access device but a plumage.
It signals, faintly, that the wearer has recently been somewhere with a keynote speaker and a lukewarm buffet. Back at the home office, the lanyard migrates to a desk drawer, where it joins others from prior years, distinguishable only by the conference name printed along the webbing in a font nobody chose on purpose. A small number are repurposed for actual keys. Most are not repurposed for anything, which the specimen seems to accept without complaint.
The clip mechanism fails first, usually within eighteen months, snapping at the swivel joint under the ordinary stress of being tugged by someone walking too fast toward a session on synergy. What remains afterward, badge gone, clip broken, logo fading, gets voted on by the committee that decides these things: keep, for sentiment, or toss, for space. The vote is rarely unanimous.