Biometric Clock

So it's like the Brazilian rain forest down in the shop, and I'm there, dressed in my black suit pants and button-up Ralph Lauren dress shirt. The mechanics are circling around me, and beyond them, the lot boys and the detailers and the parts countermen and drivers. I'm literally bathing in sweat, not in the least due to the palpable heat and humidity, but mainly because of the fact that I don't know what I'm doing.

"All right," I say, scanning the directions the help desk told me to ignore. "It should only take twenty seconds to log each one of you in. We should be done in fifteen or twenty minutes."

Looks ranging from boredom to distrust to non-comprehension are flung my way. Of course it takes a couple of tries for me myself to log in to the machine, to make sure the biometric hand clock registers me and recognizes me as the boss. The clock admin, that is, the dude in the store who puts all the other handprints into the system and tracks Time and Attendance and Payroll.

Eventually I get things moving. For the initial enrollment, each man is required to put in the last four digits of his social security number and then the machine takes three palm readings. It actually walks them through the process, readouts instructing them to place the hand down on the scanner and then remove it, once, twice, thrice. Contrary to popular belief these biometric hand clocks don't record fingerprints or handprints. They take 150 specific measurements of a person's hand from every conceivable angle, verified three times, and that's the beauty of the security of it. No one can punch in for anyone else.

As should be expected and anticipated, it takes longer than twenty minutes. Much longer. I eventually wind up taking two hours to get everybody in. The sauna of the repair shop poofs my hair out into an Art Garfunklish fro. In the interim the guys go back to the cars they're washing or working on or otherwise break up into small groups to gab while I get one man after another into the machine.

Some guys laugh and some guys are suspicious. Some guys can't read English and I have to walk them through the process. One guy, though, is actually a little bit scared. Of course he doesn't outwardly show it, but I see he's nervous and hesistant and doesn't want to put his hand down to get scanned.

"There's nothing to worry about," I deadpan. "The worse that can happen is the machine will generate a duplicate of you to take your place tomorrow."

The tech chuckles while he walks away, but I can see him nursing his hand uncertainly as he throws a furtive glance at his new mechanical overlord . . .