I reached my office, sweaty, bedraggled and in dire need of rear ends to kick. I owed my saintly mood to the soul-sucking, BP-raising, face-purpling rush hour city traffic which I had just survived.
When Brian Tracy titled his book ‘Eat that Frog’, he meant ‘Get the most unpleasant chore out of your way’. Well, he probably got this idea while croaking, choking, and gagging below an under-construction flyover.
Anyway, after the hearty amphibian breakfast of my own, I steeled myself to get some work done with whatever energy was left after that terrible trip.
Here’s something you need to know about my office work culture. Or rather the lack of it.
You may goof off, sleep at your desk, play solitaire, or ogle at your curvaceous colleagues.
Doesn’t. Bloody. Matter.
What matters is standing to attention for – the act that pays the moolah and keeps body and soul together.
Your attendance.
Not any outdated pen-paper-register-signature attendance. But hi-tech, biometric, privacy-busting digital attendance.
And the contraption that records our presence is B.A.D. BAD as in Biometric Attendance Device.
Thanks to her honey-smooth seductive voice, she’s named Biometric Bimbo, aka BB. An infernal Digital Diva, who decides, on her capricious whims, whether you exist or not. You have to woo her with the ardour of a Romeo, the charms of a Casanova, and the obsession of a Devdas. Only then, maybe, just maybe, she will bless you with a morsel of her attention.
Time to face BB. Literally. She will stare, sense, scan and analyze every, pore, dimple, pimple, boil, nasal hair, and left-over breakfast on your face, until she is satisfied that it is indeed your miserable, pathetic nine-to-five slaving self, begging her to validate your worthless existence. A femme fatale, not of flesh and blood, but of touch screen and sensors. Sensors, that she makes ample use of, to bulldoze your sensitivity and torture, tease and annihilate every shred of dignity once she is done with you.
Now to eat the second frog of the day.
I step up to the screen and a digital grid frames my face. Two tiny dots appear on the screen to orient my eyes. These dots, of course, keep darting away. I try my best to fix them with my most intense glare, as I gaze deep into BB’s semiconductor heart.
“Please accept my attendance,” I plead on a metaphorically bended knee.
No response. Man, isn’t she a heartbreaker!
It’s getting late. So, I press on.
“They say eyes are the windows to the soul
Please accept my attendance before I grow old!”
No joy. As far as she was concerned, I didn’t exist.
Abandoning the visual foreplay, I decided to go physical.
The fingerprint sensor.
“Listen, you piece of inanimate artificial intelligence, the only evolved genuinely intelligent species in the room is me. Evidence? Here’s my opposing thumb.” Saying this, I press my aforementioned digit onto the screen.
A warning light blinks, accompanied by a loud beep. I freeze. Was it the wrong kind of touch? Is it sexual harassment? BB might be a lifeless machine, but with the woke culture running amok, you never know! I began to have ghastly visions of the next day’s headlines:
“Pervert employee molests biometric device. Device castrates him with radiation”.
Believe me, it could happen.
Not quite relishing the prospect of being neutered, I gave up. Just as I was leaving, BB spoke up: “Please come closer”. Ah! That voice… my nether regions stirred in anticipation.
Excited with the hope of attendance; and the prospect of sensual delights, I brought my face closer, to almost kissing distance which made biometric sense. If my fingerprint didn’t work, maybe my lip print will?
Not so fast, lover boy. BB, the heartless sadistic siren doused my flaming passions with the icy:
“User not found”.
That, my friends, was the proverbial last straw. What followed next deserves pride of place in the Hall of Hulkesque Rage. Time stopped… nay, it went back in reverse evolution. I went all the way from laptop-lugging millennial to club-wielding Neantherdal to chest-pumping ape in berserker mode.
In 3 seconds flat.
My fist slammed onto BB’s screen with the full force of an industrial-grade jackhammer. With minimal effect on the screen; and maximum effect on my pain receptors. I howled in agony.
Apparently, BB had an ape bodyguard of her own– the screen protector Gorilla Glass.
So what? Remember, I was the one with the opposing thumb. I put it to good use. I grabbed the device, wrenched it from the wall and smashed it onto the floor. Then, stomping on it with my size 8 boot, I screamed ” Who is coming for you, you useless piece of junk? We, humans, at least have friends. Who will save you?”
I stared at my fallen tormentor. Biometric bimbo was now a tangle of wires and circuits, her life breath going out in sparks.
As I raised my head in triumph, my eyes fell on an object high up on the wall. My adrenaline-flooded brain tried to make sense of it.
It seemed BB had an ally after all.
The dark circular orb, its blackness mirroring my impending doom, was nothing but the CCTV camera.
As if on cue, something blinked on BB’s screen, as she spoke up
“Thank you. Your attendance is recorded.”
