On my first day at a new job, I was issued a name badge.
This felt normal. There was a lanyard. There was a small plastic sleeve. There was a smiling HR coordinator who said, “We’ll get you set up,” in the tone people use when they have said that sentence thousands of times.
The badge had my photo, my first name, my department, and the company logo. It also had a typo.
Not a dramatic typo. Not the kind that turns a name into an insult or a punchline. Just one letter off. Close enough that the intention was obvious. Far enough off that it technically wasn’t my name anymore.
I noticed it immediately. The HR coordinator did not.
I pointed at it. She squinted. She nodded. She said, “Oh yeah, that happens sometimes.”
Then she said the sentence that quietly set the next month in motion.
“You can get it fixed later. For now, it’s fine.”
I clipped the badge on and went to my desk.
Within ten minutes, someone walked past, glanced at my chest, and said, “Morning.”
He used the wrong name. Not sarcastically. Not as a joke. Just confidently, like we had already met.
I corrected him.
He apologised and said, “Sorry, that’s what your badge says.”
Fair enough.
By lunchtime, four different people had used the badge name. Each time I corrected them. Each time they apologised. Each time they gestured vaguely at the badge as if it were an external authority they could not argue with.
After lunch, I stopped correcting people.
This was not a deliberate experiment. It was fatigue.
By day two, something subtle shifted. People I had already corrected started using the badge name as well. They remembered my face. They remembered conversations. They remembered what team I was on. But the name on the badge overrode whatever they had stored before.
I started responding to it.
Not intentionally. Someone would say it and I would look up. Reflex beat principle.
By day three, the badge name had momentum.
A senior manager stopped by my desk, looked down, smiled, and said, “Good to finally meet you properly.”
He used the badge name.
I stood up. We shook hands. I did not correct him.
This is usually where a story pivots into something about identity or confidence or authenticity. This is not that story.
This is a story about systems.
On day four, an email went out announcing a cross functional working group. The list of attendees included me.
Under the badge name.
Someone had copied it from the internal directory. The directory had pulled it from HR. HR had pulled it from the badge system. The badge system had pulled it from a spreadsheet. Somewhere in that chain, one letter had shifted.
No one questioned it.
At the first meeting, the facilitator read the agenda aloud. When she got to my name, she said the badge name and looked up expectantly.
I introduced myself using my real name.
She paused. She checked the agenda. She checked my badge. She said, “Right. Thanks,” and moved on.
After the meeting, two people asked which name they should use.
I said either was fine.
Again, not strategy. Momentum.
By week two, the badge name had practical advantages.
It was slightly unusual. People remembered it. It gave them something easy to comment on. “That’s an interesting name” is a dependable opener in a corporate kitchen.
I was invited into meetings I had no business being in. The badge name fit someone’s mental model of who should be present. Nobody cross checked.
At one point, someone asked where we ordered the badges from because they were rolling out a new office. I pointed them to the supplier listed in the onboarding email, which linked to https://magneticnamebadges.com.au/
. That detail stuck too. The badge, apparently, was now part of my professional credibility.
Then payroll got involved.
An email landed about discrepancies. My manager forwarded it with a short note asking if I had changed my name recently.
I had not.
Payroll had my bank details correct. My tax file number correct. My start date correct. My name was not.
The fix took three weeks.
During those three weeks, every system flagged something different. Security access. Building passes. Software licences. Each system pulled from a different “source of truth.”
Some had my real name. Some had the badge name.
IT asked which one was correct.
I said the real one.
They updated their system.
Nothing else updated.
The badge stayed the same.
In week four, the HR coordinator finally stopped by my desk again.
She looked at the badge. She laughed. She said, “We should really fix that.”
She took it away.
On Monday, I received a new badge.
Correct name. Same photo. Same logo.
People walked past.
They hesitated.
One of them said, “Oh. You changed your name.”
I said no.
He looked genuinely unsettled and said, “Huh. That feels wrong.”
By the end of the week, the badge name was officially gone.
Except it wasn’t.
It still appears in old meeting notes, shared folders, and one recurring calendar invite that resurfaces every quarter. More importantly, it still exists in people’s heads.
There are colleagues who still call me by the badge name. Not because they are confused. Because that is who I was when they first met me.
The point of this story is not about names.
It is about how quickly systems decide who you are. How easily a small error becomes accepted fact. How rarely anyone questions information once it is printed, laminated, and clipped to your chest.
Also, it turns out you can answer to almost anything if it looks official enough and hangs from a lanyard.