The failed read
Why readers refuse people — hands, faces, cards, weather, hours — and how the pattern is read wrongly.
What a Refusal Actually Means
The device found no match above its threshold. That is the whole of what it says, and it is read as a statement about the person standing in front of it.
Why Fingers Fail
Fingerprint readers do not fail at random. They fail on particular hands, in particular weather, at particular hours, and the pattern repeats everywhere.
Faces, and What Defeats Them
Face recognition on a time clock fails for reasons that are mostly about the room rather than the face, and the room is the part nobody adjusts.
The Card That Stopped Working
Badges fail physically and predictably, usually after about the same number of months, and the replacement process is slower than the failure rate requires.
Cold Mornings
Refusal rates have a season and an hour. Cut the figures that way and the argument about whether people present their hands properly ends at once.
The Reader Nobody Cleans
A time clock is the only piece of equipment on site touched by every employee every day and maintained by nobody. Its performance degrades accordingly.
When It Is the Network, Not the Reader
A terminal that cannot reach the server behaves in one of three ways, and which one it chooses was configured by somebody who has left.
Reading the Refusal Log
The device already knows everything in this section of the collection. Pulling the figures out of it takes an afternoon and nobody has ever done it.