At most workplaces today, each employee is required to have some kind of ID badge. Usually worn on a lanyard or clip, it has to be on your person at all times and can also be used to access certain areas of the office, or even provide access to the office itself. Essentially, they have become integral to our everyday routine. Here’s the kicker: Because they are so important to you, they almost always are difficult to replace. Following that logic, because they are so difficult to replace, it is inevitable at some point that you will lose yours. This brings us to the subject of this post: Funny ways to lose your badge.

To break the ice, I’m going to turn this over to my wife who actually lost her badge in a way I have never heard of before: She lost it in the toilet.

Her story is below:

Last Thursday at about 9:30 AM I did the unthinkable- I flushed my ID badge down the toilet. Really, I didn’t do this on purpose. As I was pulling up my pants my thumb flicked my badge clip and sent my badge and clip soaring through the air. I made a valiant attempt to catch it, but my hands were preoccupied with my pants so I missed. Of course, it landed in the toilet as the flush was almost complete. I decided against sticking my hand into the toilet to rescue my badge before it went down the drain. After it was gone, I stood staring at the toilet water for a couple of minutes, with my pants unbuttoned, repeating “It will come back… It will definitely come back. Needless to say, my badge did not reappear and luckily it did not clog the toilet.

I tried to get a new badge without having to recount the story, but failed miserably. The only bright side to this story is that I found out someone else in my office had a similar experience (said person will remain unnamed); however, the person actually clogged the toilet and had to contact the facilities office. Hopefully, there are more of you out there that can join me on what is probably a rather short list of people who have flushed their ID badges down the drain.

What’s your funny badge story? I’m sure you have some, don’t be shy it won’t end up on YouTube….maybe….