The Day I Lost My Badge — And What It Taught me in my professional life
Every office day around 11:45 am, my colleague asks me if I want to join him for a quick lunch run to the supermarket. If I say yes, I usually grab my badge so I can get back through the security doors afterward.
That day, though, I looked at my desk and... no badge.
“Okay, maybe it’s under my laptop,” I thought.
Nope.
I lifted my laptop, moved my screen, checked behind my monitor. Nothing. Opened my headphone case. Still nothing.
And that’s when I started spiraling.
I stood up, panic mode activated. I looked under the desk, under my colleague’s chair, on the floor, next to my chair, on his desk, anywhere. My brain was telling me: "this doesn’t make sense — you always leave it on your desk."
But somehow, the more I didn’t find it where I expected it, the less I trusted that memory. I started doubting myself and searching in places with very low odds — just for the sake of doing something.
Then someone asked: “Have you checked your headphone case?”. I had. At least I thought I had. “Yeah, nothing there..” I replied, still spinning.
So I widened the search area.
The kitchen.
The coffee machine.
Above the coffee machine (why would it even be there??)
Even outside the building.
“Wait... am I really checking the pavement outside for my badge?”
It hit me. I was letting the panic lead. My search area was expanding rapidly, while the probability of finding anything useful was shrinking.
I went back inside. Sat at my desk. Took a breath.
Let’s go over this again, I told myself, but this time, slowly.
Laptop? Nothing.
Behind it? No.
Under the headphone case?
Wait.
The bottom of the case felt… weird. I flipped it.
There it was. My badge. Tucked in a pocket I hadn’t properly checked.
If I had to break it down:
- I discovered a problem: missing my badge.
- I searched the place where I knew it should be — my desk.
- I didn’t find it, and panic started.
- I rushed, skipped over details, assumed I had checked spots more thoroughly than I had.
- I fell into the Exhaustive Search Fallacy — the idea that “since I didn’t find it in the obvious place, it could literally be anywhere.”
- My brain started spinning irrational stories: “Maybe it’s on the kitchen counter?” “What if I dropped it outside?”
- I finally calmed down, retraced my steps, trusted my memory, and boom — found it where it had been all along.
What I Learned
As a software engineer, this whole thing felt weirdly familiar.
It reminded me of every bug hunt, every “weird issue in production,” where the fix turns out to be one missing line, one misnamed variable, one check you thought you did.
A few takeaways:
- Trust your memory — especially under pressure. It’s probably more accurate than your panic.
- Don’t let stress expand your search domain too early. Stay grounded.
- You probably didn’t check that thing as thoroughly as you think.
- Trust people's opinion especially the ones not in the tunnel
- We’re not wired to think clearly under time pressure unless we train for it.
- And most importantly: sometimes the answer is right in front of you — hiding in plain sight.