And just how do you know that I don’t spontaneously combust?? I’ve been told that I’m hot…
[sub]yeah, I know - as soon as I posted it, I saw the error of my ways, but what can ya do??
Yep, I’m badged too.
I work for a credit card company. Don’t want people sneaking in and lowering their rates, ya know. 
Another fed here–we’re not badged yet, but they passed out some nifty lanyards the other day, so I guess we will soon be.
Mine is silver and green!
Photo ID and passkey here. Name, department, and color photo, plus company logo. I am the gatekeeper of the company logo, and the damned thing is WRONG! Doors into work areas all need passkey (wave in front of reader) to open, plus a passkey to get into the parking garage, plus I need a passkey (or RF clicker) to get into my parking lot at home! On good Electromagnetic Plus and I’m toast.
Passkey and photo-id here as well. Though all I’ve ever used my photoid for was to get corporate discounts at hotels. Bell Security regulations require photo-id even though we’re small enough to know everybody.
The only time anybody ever hassled me about not wearing it, I asked him if he wanted his computer fixed or not. He let me in. 
I just spent most of the last four months working TDY at the Denver Federal Center.
Prior to 9/11, you just needed a windshield pass to get on the DFC, and you didn’t need a badge once you were past the gate. Now, everybody in the vehicle has to show a gummint ID to get past the gate, and everybody wears their ID’s on lanyards.
Of course, since I was only there TDY, I didn’t have a lanyard, so I couldn’t wear my ID on the outside. I went all over the place and in and out of lots of the buildings and nobody ever said a word to me. I’m not sure what the point is.
You must look honest or official or something… Were you carrying a clipboard?!?
Aerospace worker here. Badge with bar code strip to open the “man trap” during off hours and weekends.
Company motto:
I will not drink. But if I do,
I will not get drunk. But if I do,
I will not fall down. But if I do,
I will fall face down, so nobody can see my badge.
It’s the tie, FCM. I wear a dress shirt and tie to work - most people in this outfit don’t. Fools 'em every time!
Yup, I’m badged. High-risk job and all, gotta make sure the people who are there are supposed to be there. smirks
(I work for the post office.)
Just yesterday we had a “drill”! Bosslady came over the PA and instructed us all to stand up and look at our neighbour, and if we didn’t see a badge on our neighbour we had to “bring 'em in” to the supervisor’s desk for “reporting”.
Come on. What we do isn’t even -really- essential to the mail process. And it’s not a stressful job. Nobody’s gonna shoot us up and nobody’s gonna break in. The badges are just there to humiliate us with the god-awful black-and-white pixellated photos. twitch The real money is in the door passkey.
I used to just need a badge to get in the building but now I have to show my badge to get in the parking lot. since 911
I don’t need a badge for my job. I work in a vo-tech school. I used to need a badge at my old job. I worked for EDS and every facility required a badge to get in. Ours had a photo of us and a magnetic strip which was used in a scanner that required each person to enter a 4 digit id code. More often than not, the card scanner wouldn’t work right. It never mattered anyways because people were able to find another way into the building.
I may be getting way off-base - if you meant only to ask about badges for work, skip this post.
But if you are open to discussion of the proposed
national ID, read on.
I have yet to hear any reason that issuing a national ID for citizens would stop foreign nationals from committing an act of violence within the US. But there are many objections, especially as a movement-tracker — imagine a battered spouse fleeing the situation but having to allow the other partner access to whereabouts (via job or friend in law-enforcement) — which point up that it is not only criminals who do not like the idea. See
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=back&issue=2001-09-29&id=1140
for a well-written piece.
National ID’s were used in WWII by British and US: after the war both discarded it as being too much against privacy - but more tellingly, a British study (sorry, no cite…) found that the ID had not stopped any act of sabatoge, or indeed much of anything as only one criminal case used the ID for evidence of anything other than forging an ID.
The only half-rational explanation of a perceived “need” was several years ago as a way to catch illegal immigrants -
http://www.reason.com/9510/GARVINfeat.html
followed by
Frank Abagnale:
“Look, I designed the state of Florida’s birth certificate,” says Abagnale. "It’s got a street price in Miami of $5,000, so it’s obviously a very valuable document. But it’s still ridiculously easy to defeat all the security I put into it. I’ll tell you how. A forger comes to Miami, goes to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and asks to see the death records for 1948. They’ll let him view them in the office. He picks out an infant who died at birth and copies down all the information it’s got therethe mother’s name, the father’s, the time of birth, all that stuff.
“Then he walks right down the hall to another office where he can apply for a certified copy of the birth certificate. All he has to do to get it is to pay $5.00. And once he has that, he goes across town to a Motor Vehicle Department office and gets a driver’s license in the name of the baby on the birth certificate. And with a driver’s license, he can apply for all kinds of documents. For just 50 bucks, you can create 10 different identities for yourself in just a couple of days.”
How would they know that? It’s like saying it doesn’t keep cats away. How many cats normally come by?
I occasionally have to go into a high-security data center–the ID badge isnt as scary as the hand-scan that opens the door…
There seems to be a little confusion here. I have a photo ID; a plastic card with my name and picture on it that says “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. I also have a badge; the metal object that symbolizes my secret superpower to arrest people.