The Finger Print Scanner

Yeah, sorry for the techie title but this thing has been bothering me for far too long to not write in my blog :) !!

The place where I work is like a hi-tech organization with all the latest gadgets for geeky minds to play with. So to be in with the times of "biometrics" all our office doors are secured shut by Finger print scanners. For the uninitiated they look like devices that got holes in them to put your finger in, to be identified as an employee.

Now, I personally don't like inserting my finger into holes where others have put their fingers in (pardon me if my imagination is running wild here but it is for obvious hygiene reasons!). I am quite ok with putting my finger in to mark my daily attendance, to get into the server room etc. But the one place where I really dread is the scanner right outside the restroom.

To start with, I haven't yet figured out the need to have a scanner to enter a bathroom. I can't think of having anything secure inside the bathroom that only people with a "legitimate reason" to be there have to enter! (Yeah before I wrote this post, I did a reconnaissance operation inside the men's room to see if I was missing something (I have not completely neglected the possibility of having a highly secure code on the toilet paper).

Statistically 23% of people do not wash their hands after relieving themselves. So statistically there are people in my organization who fit that description. And then statistically, I end up putting my finger in the same scanner after they have put in theirs (Its the same reason why you are not supposed to eat free peanuts kept in a bowl in a bar!).

Anyway, I decided I had to do something about it. So I complained to the HR and Admin department about the obvious lack of hygiene in the fingerprint scanner outside the bathroom. Luckily, they agreed, and viola, we got a hand sanitizer installed next to the scanner.

Now here comes the fun part. Hand sanitizers dispense a gooey liquid that takes time to evaporate. And scanners can only scan "dry fingers". And since most of us don't have the patience for the sanitizer to evaporate before we scan our fingers, we now have rendered a scanner useless by inserting our gooey fingers in it. The device now makes us insert our finger a couple of dozen times before it finally recognizes "Oh its you!". The sad part is, its the only place in the entire office where you are in a "rush" to get in. So much for technology!