In the elevator this morning, I saw a guy decked out in business casual dress with a really unflattering photo ID badge attached to his pants. He looked about as miserable in person as he did in that photo. I wondered what he was thinking besides, "I don't want to be here."
The experience reminded me of a recent retirement party at work, where a funny and self-proclaimed flat-broke co-worker said, "I'll never have a retirement party. I'll die with an ID badge attached to my pants."
At my last job, we all had photo IDs, and we all looked like we were posing for our mug shots -- all the more evidence that work equals prison. Most of the people I worked with at that company had been there for ten years or more and had never received updated ID badges. It was sometimes fun but usually disturbing to see how they had aged or gained an alarming amount of weight or had somehow given up on happiness over the years.
Rather than dying with ID badges attached to our pants, I think we need to petition the death of the ID badge itself. Are you in?
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Whenever people leave the company, the last thing I'm supposed to do is ask them for their ID badge. And I'm supposed to throw the old badges away after they leave. But I kept them in my desk for a while during a period when I was losing lots of employees due to the low pay that I offer them. It was like a little employee grave yard in my desk drawer, and it creeped me out, so I finally threw them away.
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