I Can’t Put My Finger On It
This happened about four years ago when I got a summer job at my university. The job was working for professors that I had worked with before, and they asked me last-minute to teach a summer workshop to 9th and 10th graders. So with fewer than two weeks before the camp starts, I have a bunch of paperwork to do first, including “clearances” that say I can work with kids.
One of these is an official FBI check, for which they need my fingerprints. Well, I needed to do the physical fingerprinting right away in order to get the result in time. Luckily I was able to book a fingerprinting appointment for that Friday, which would be just barely enough time to get the result. That Friday I catch the subway to campus and it’s atrociously slow.
I’ll admit I should have planned for this—the subway here is always behind. Anyway, I end up slightly late getting to campus so I literally run to the station and enter the front room at EXACLTY 5 minutes after my appointment time. I know this because as I stepped through the door, I felt my phone buzz with what turned out to be a “Your appointment has been canceled” email.
I speak to the security behind bulletproof glass inside and I learn the appointment was indeed canceled after he checks my confirmation number. Apparently, they are automatically canceled if you’re not checked in within 5 minutes. Obviously, this is outrageous, but I’m usually a patient guy, so I ask if I can book a new appointment.
That’s no good since it would have to be Monday or later. So I grab a coffee from across the street and return to sit inside the station to try and solve this with some Googling while I slip into a more and more frantic state of frustration. I can’t find anywhere in the city that can fingerprint me before Monday. But here’s what really pushed me over the edge.
While I’m sitting there, at this point 30 minutes past my appointment time, someone else comes in for fingerprints. She shows up 5 minutes early. They take her in immediately, and she’s out BEFORE her appointment was even scheduled to begin. The entire thing took her about 2 minutes. I point out to the cop behind the glass (as politely as I can) that CLEARLY someone could see me RIGHT NOW because her appointment is already over.
Why can’t I have the current slot? But the guy insists that since my appointment was canceled, my registration info was “no longer in the system” and I can’t be seen today. That’s when the idea comes to me. I confirm with him that showing up early is not a problem, because they would have my appointment and registration information in the system.
You see where I’m going with this. So I quietly sit back down and take out my phone. About 10 minutes later, I calmly approach him again and say “Hello, I have a new appointment to be fingerprinted. I’m about 72 hours early.” I have never seen such an exasperated sigh in my life. But he checked my new confirmation number and everything was in order. Within 10 minutes, I was walking back out after getting fingerprinted.