Six months

This is ridiculous. I have been trying for more than six months now to get my new security badge. I suppose it could be worse; at least they've been extending the old one, roughly a month at a time. It has been comical once or twice, when security guards at the entrance or a different person at the desk of the badge office tells me that it can't be extended for more than a month... and then it gets extended anyway. Because this is really, really, not the fault of anyone around here. It expired in December. I put in the request for the new badge a month before that. I should have put it in earlier than I did (I forgot until I got a reminder by someone else), and I happened to be the first person going through a new process (they've changed the contractor or something), but still, I can see no good reason at all why this should take this long.

I went into work today expecting it to be expired; as best as I can remember, it's been a month since the last time. When the badge is valid I just swipe it at an automatic gate and walk through; when it's not I have to go by a different gate, punch in my computer ID PIN, and go through a metal detector. This takes between three and 20 minutes longer depending on the line - usually there's no one or just one or two people, but if I get there right after a big group, I'm in trouble.

It let me in today, though. Either I counted wrong or last time they extended it for longer than usual. Who knows. Well, I'm told that we're past the one really time-consuming part of getting the new badge and the next step started last week, so I have some hope of getting it in the next week or so, but we'll see.