So this week y'all. Whew.
We are switching to a new timekeeping system. And it uses fingerprints. On a closed system.
And people are going to lose it.
We're in an area that's not super developed, which I actually enjoy. However, that also means that a lot of people are very resistant to change. And technology. And things they don't understand.
There's a lot of people where I work that don't understand how email works. Which is fine. It's not an essential part of their job, so whatever. There are starting to be parts of their jobs that do require more technology, and if they have a problem with learning how that's a different issue.
The timeclocks are going to be one of those issues. We have several people that are a little... suspicious of technology. Which is fine. To be totally honest, I'm just enough of a conspiracy theorist that it would bother me a little too.
On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't have a rant that I recite whenever the subject comes up, talking about how I'm not going to let people steal my identity, and we've already got my social, and birthday, what else could they want, what's next.
First, no one wants to steal their identity. It is not a massive conspiracy so I can turn into a cat burglar and steal from the Louvre using their fingerprints, with a mask like in Mission Impossible.
It's so they can clock in and get paid. The end.
So that's on my plate this week. Thankfully, Boss has gone through this before, and he's not someone to suffer fools, which is something I really appreciate.
There's enough else on both our plates that if someone raises too much of a stink about it, he'll show them the door. Especially if they get nasty about it.
That happened last week. Not the showing the door part, but the nasty. We had a early meeting, which went fine, other than the fact that it was at 6 a.m., which is not a time that meetings should be. The 7 a.m., though. There was a guy in that one that had some opinions about having to use a new program, and he was not afraid to share them. I was not caffeinated enough for that. It was so fun.
I'm not looking forward to it, but after this week it will be over, then on to the next problem!
I wouldn't want to use fingerprints either! Not for privacy reasons - those sorts of systems cannot, for instance, recreate a fingerprint that could be used in any other context - but for operational issues. They're probably using a combination of digital scanner and electronic impulse reading, both of which are sensitive and prone to errors. If I got delayed on a clock-in because of a technical malfunction, I'd be pretty unhappy. As it is, I sometimes factor in the time I have to wait for the gate to our parking lot to open into my start time if I'm running late. It can literally be the difference between arriving on time and arriving late.
ReplyDeleteOtoh, probably most people have smartphones with fingerprint technology, so they should be able to grudgingly adjust in short order.