An amusing picture & anecdote over at Miserable Donuts bring back memories....
When I first started working at Cyras, back in the summer of 2000, I sometimes took Tinga to the office... early on, because she was recovering from an injury and sometimes just monitoring her via webcam just wasn't good enough; later, sometimes, when I was working on a weekend and comic relief was in order.
After a few months, somebody had the bright idea of photo ID badges for everybody. Since I got wind of it a little ahead of time, I had the opportunity to prepare... and showed up for my photo sesion wearing an outrageous shirt and a plumed hat.
Not long after that, I decided Tinga should have an ID badge too. So, I fired up Sketch, created a "close enough" badge template, pasted in Tinga's name and a fake employee number (mine with a suffix, if memory serves), printed the result on glossy paper, laminated it, and presto!
When Cyras got bought out by Ciena, Tinga was the first to have a new Ciena badge - forged, of course. Not having any idea what the real ones looked like, I just threw together something with the Ciena logo on it, and of course nobody else there new what the real ones looked like, either.
Somewhat later, I forged a Ciena badge for myself, in yet a different (and still wrong) format. People were still fooled. Even some who knew me.
Still later, we got our genuine Ciena badges, and of course I showed up for the photo with the plumed hat again - by this time, it was famous. Rumor had it that someone at Corporate had taken exception to my old photo and decreed a "no hats" policy; in case this turned out to be true, I naturally had a backup plan: being fairly certain there wouldn't be a "no makeup" policy, I was prepared to take my hat back to my cubicle and put on war paint instead. As it turned out, the war paint wasn't needed; I got away, again, with wearing the hat.
I also forged badges for special occasions - mostly for Halloween, when it just wouldn't do to have a badge that wasn't in character. Somewhere in the box of archived office clutter, I should still have them... including the "Erich von Wilner" variant that went with my Boskonian space pirate / Imperial German Space Corps costume.
Much later - in the spring of 2004, I believe - there was an emergency retroactive "no hats" decree, and I had to have a hatless photo taken... after the company directory had sported a hatless, and suspiciously Asian-looking, face above my name for a few weeks. (I started claiming that my job had been outsourced, and my name along with it.) This happened just after we'd had a bunch of mysterious visitors who looked to me like mid-level Naval officers dressed up in company polo shirts. It subsequently developed that Ciena had gotten some sort of military contract, so maybe they were poorly-disguised Naval officers, and maybe this had some connection with a sudden demand for seriousness in the ID photo area....
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