Failed to Authenticate

Do any of you remember the Healthy Kids copier that starred in one of my "Wordless Wednesday" posts? In a Facebook comment, my friend Laura called the copier "zen."

That was in July. We now have a new copier at work. Sounds pretty innocuous, right? To make a copy (or to fax, scan, or print), the user has insert their index finger into the "biometric identifier" that has supposedly been trained to recognize us, and retrieve the copy (in the case of copying/printing) that will then be released.  I understand this new system was necessitated by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITEC) Act in order to add additional protections of PHI (Protected Health Information).  All I know is that it ticks me off and makes me lose valuable time, standing at the machine, begging it to recognize my fingerprint when I repeatedly get this message:  Failed to Authenticate.

I stood at our new copier recently, finger in the biometric identification device, following the graphic rules demonstrating how to appropriately insert the identifying finger into the biometric device, and waited four minutes and thirty seconds for the machine to decide I was me.

The Hopeful Start:

What I frequently still see four to seven minutes later:

I make it a point to commend at least as often as I complain in my life and in my blog.


Put this post firmly in the "complaint" category.  (Are you out there, KonicaMinolta?)

While it's my index finger the machine is looking for to "authenticate me," it is a different finger that I usually want to give it!

Have you been driven to distraction (or to taking awkward one-handed photos because your right finger is being held hostage) by a piece of office machinery before? If so, share with me!