I returned from the gym today tired and hungry, and just wanted to get back to my desk. I dragged myself through the revolving door and tried to lug myself through the lobby. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that since I left, the usual security guard had been replaced by some snippy-faced-looking bitch with a bad haircut. I hoped she wouldn't bother me. The usual security guards know me, and when I come back from the gym late in the afternoon they just smile and nod. So I don't bother remembering my ID badge when I leave.
"Can I help you?" snippy-faced bitch asked as I headed for the elevators.
There have been days when a substitute security guard was so unbelievably annoying that I just pretended I didn't hear them and got in an elevator. Because it's not like those fat bastards are going to jump up and chase me.
"Can I help you?" This one asked a second time, because I ignored her the first time.
I stopped, heaved a sigh, and turned. "I work here." I said it slow and deliberately, so she would know that I thought I was talking to an idiot.
"Do you have your ID?" she demanded.
And I didn't, of course.
So here is what the geniuses of building security have me do. I "sign in" on a piece of paper at the front desk. Now keep in mind that I don't have to show any form of ID when I sign in. It is a completely arbitrary process of writing something on paper which the security guard doesn't so much as glance at.
So usually if I am in this situation, I sign my name as "Emily Dickinson" and note that I am visiting [indicipherable]. Sometimes I just write a whole line of illegible scrawling. Sometimes I sign my name as Joseph Stalin, or Lucifer McSatan. If we're all going to waste each other's time with this sham show of "security," I might as well make it interesting.
I haven't yet worked up to signing in as Elvis. I have to make sure to do that on a day when we have some really uptight jackass at the front desk, so that if they confront me about it on my way back out that day, I can have fun feigning innocence: "Elvis? No, I think he's already left the building."