If there’s one thing that strikes anxiety in the heart of many, it’s the following two words: dress code.

As soon as these two words are uttered, pressure falls on participants to comply with whatever bizarre regulations are being imposed on them.

And for the celebration that the student in this story was attending, the dress code was just as hard to interpret as it was to actually comply with.

Read on to find out what happened, and how they managed to hatch a genius plan.

Vague Costume Dress Code for Disney College Program Participants

Back before the Covid-19 pandemic, I was participating in the Disney College Program at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.

The program director sent out an email to all of the participants two weeks before the end of the program, providing details regarding the end-of-program celebration.

We were all expecting a casual dress code, since this would be the conclusion of our time working at the Disneyland Resort and would take place inside California Adventure Park after-hours, instead of the Mid-Program Celebration that took place in the Disneyland Hotel ballroom.

But the dress code was definitely not what the participants expected.

However, the email informed us that due to the celebration taking place in front of Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, we were expected to wear “Galaxy Retro” attire.

Even though a few sample photos were attached (showing people wearing silver face paint and mid-century skirts), we were all very confused about what exactly “Galaxy Retro” was, or how we were supposed to put together an elaborate costume in less than two weeks.

Keep in mind that despite the Disney College Program being marketed toward up-and-coming young professionals, we were all poor college students, working full-time in a busy, hot, exhausting theme park and living in crowded apartments with our fellow participants.

Who had the time or money to scrape together a “Galaxy Retro” outfit? Not me. And, apparently, almost no one else, either. So my four roommates and I hatched a plan.

Let’s see how they tackled this bizarre requirement.

We visited a local screenprinter and asked them how long it would take to print five custom t-shirts.

We were told that if we were okay with plain white text printed on just the front of five plain black t-shirts (one for me, and one for each of my roommates), then they could complete the order within a few days.

The text on each t-shirt read, “Sorry, this is the best I can do for Galaxy Retro.”

The total cost of the custom-printed t-shirts was around $25-$30.

Read on to find out what happened when they showed up in these ‘costumes’.

We showed up at the End-Program Celebration wearing blue jeans and our custom black t-shirts, and insisted on taking a selfie with the program director herself.

Thankfully, she had a sense of humor and realized her mistake when pretty much all of the other College Program participants wore whatever they wanted, instead of “Galaxy Retro.”

Because, after all, no one cared about dress code when it was literally the last day of our employment at Disney.

Moments like this really do prove how out of touch higher-ups are with their employees and their financial situations.

There was no way that these participants had the time, the money, or even the inclination to cobble together these costumes at such short notice, and it was a really unreasonable thing for the director to ask them to do.

It’s great that she took it so well, and hopefully this was an experience that she could learn from too.

Let’s see how the Reddit community reacted to this situation.

Plenty of people tried to take their own guess at what this vague theme could mean.

While others praised the great costume hack.

Meanwhile, this Redditor shared a similar experience.

Perhaps management will think twice in the future!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.