Technology at it’s finest… and the idiot who uses it

Don’t you love tech­nol­o­gy? I do.

I think it real­ly helps us accom­plish so many things. Like cook­ing meals in min­utes, Lis­ten­ing to music any­where, keep­ing us safe and secure and mak­ing sure no one can access restrict­ed areas.… even if we have the access to them…

The place I work is a secure build­ing, so we have to wear badges that you use to slide into slots (like ATM cards) in lit­tle machines next to all the doors to gain access to a place.

Recent­ly, they have been switch­ing over to the prox­im­i­ty badges (where you just hold the card up to this lit­tle box on the wall and it lets you in).

They are start­ing with Lev­el 4 and work­ing their way down. So my lev­el is 2nd to last, so I have two cards I have to wear. I wear mine on a lan­yard around my neck… late­ly though I take it off at my desk because it gets stuck on the edge of the desk and when I back up or get up, it snaps it’s lit­tle retractable cord back and I get hit in the face.

So I had to get some change in the change machine on the main lev­el (I work in the low­er lev­els) and my co-work­er was leav­ing ear­ly and I thought I would walk her out, get my change and head back.

I do all that and get in the ele­va­tors to come down­stairs. I get out and go to the ele­va­tor lob­by doors to let me onto my floor and realize–I left my badge on my desk.

So upstairs I go to the main lob­by and the secu­ri­ty desk (Thank god it is staffed 24 hours a day) to get a temp badge. Thank good­ness they know me and let me have one with­out too much has­sle. Some­time they require you pro­vide them with your Dri­ver’s License (which is at my desk)

So I get the badge, and I am wait­ing behind some oth­er guy try­ing to get in and his card makes the walkway/entrance detec­tor say pro­ceed, then imme­di­ate­ly change to wait and back again a few time (it remind­ed me of some­thing out of Max­i­mum Overdrive–where every­thing elec­tri­cal went nuts) so I go to anoth­er walk­way and try mine and the prox­im­i­ty card works in the lob­by (their upgrade is com­plete) and I con­tin­ue on down the ele­va­tors to my floor. I go up to the ele­va­tor lob­by on my floor and slide in the ATM like card and.…. noth­ing.….. I try it a few more times and then try the read­er on the oth­er side of the lob­by.…… noth­ing. Back upstairs.

So I get up there and the secu­ri­ty guard is con­fused why it does­n’t work, but switch­es the cards out so I can try again… back downstairs.

So I try the ATM-like card in the ele­va­tors and it flash­es a few times and vio­la! it works. So I go to my depart­ment door and try my card. It flash­es real­ly slow a few times and.…. noth­ing.…… So back upstairs.

I talk to the guard and she makes some calls and real­izes that she gave me the wrong card. Because I am a con­trac­tor I get a yel­low temp badge not a green. Back down­stairs I go.

Final­ly every­thing works and I get into my depart­ment. I grab my badge and go back upstairs to return the temp badge.

Let me tell you that no mat­ter what I am always wear­ing this badge at work. That was too much effort to get back into my depart­ment. I wast­ed about a half hour.

So isn’t tech­nol­o­gy lovely.…..