About seven or eight years ago, the powers that be had this bright idea:
Let's kick up NYC security one more notch!
BIOMETRICS is the answer!
So the city spent umpteen million dollars of the taxpayers money on some FUTURISTIC devices.
They must have bought them at a fancy FUTURISTIC Garage sale! After you place your thumb into
a small indentation, you have to punch in a secret code for double the security! SAY that AGAIN!?!
Yep, you have to punch in a secret code!? B..b...but it is BIOMETRICS!
It recognizes your fingerprint right? Not really, it just recognizes the general shape of your finger?!?!?!

So, I and many other NYC employees, went to a seminar; we learned how to use this marvelously futuristic appliance.

I as usual, being eager to learn new things, had many wonderful questions that helped clarify this situation in my mind.
Some of them made the instructors unhappy, and I was dubbed a negative influence. I was however having fun!
My favorite question (after getting over a big laugh when the instructor couldn't quite explain why we needed to
punch in a code,) was the one that left them all baffled. It was: Did anyone have the foresight to clear this with my Union?
They didn't quite see why this had anything to do with the Union. I explained to them that in my humble opinion, having to
operate any kind of time keeping device after fifteen years of just submitting a signed time sheet once a week MIGHT be considered
a worsening of working conditions. I was of course being NEGATIVE again!!

The joke is, of course, on them! It turns out that the Union had the same idea and I did not even need to mention it to them.
All these years later, the two BIOMETRIC finger recognizing devices are still hanging around by the main entrance to FISA.
There are some (non-union) brown nosers who use them so the city can actually claim that this was NOT an absolute and total
waste of the tax payers money.

I hope that someday, his Honor the Mayor himself may come to read this. In the meantime, with no intention to disrespect him, I have to admit
that I couldn't resist giving the BIOMETRIC finger shape identifiers the one finger salute everytime I passed them by.

Yes, the devices are still there. There are also some cleaner dispensers next to them. A lot more people use the cleaners then the ones who used the biometrics.