The badge photograph

An original literary non-fiction-style account of having a photograph taken for a first workplace identity badge.

In the booth outside the staff office, I tried to arrange my face into the expression of a person who knew where everything was. It was my first morning. I had already asked twice which staircase led to the training room. A photograph, I hoped, could begin a more convincing account of me than my questions had managed.

The first picture looked severe. In the second I smiled so abruptly that my eyes seemed to belong to somebody else. The booth offered another attempt. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, reconsidered it and let it fall again. Behind the curtain, I could hear people arriving for the same induction session.

A new colleague asked whether the booth was working. I said that the photographs were the problem. She looked at the strip I had printed and asked which one looked most like me when I was listening. I told her I had been trying to look confident. She said that she hoped nobody expected her to know the building yet, because she had just tried to open a cupboard on her way to the stairs.

We laughed. When the office assistant called for the photographs, I asked whether mine would do. She checked that my face was clearly visible and said that she needed to attach a name to someone the staff could recognise. She did not comment on my expression.

I chose the first picture. It was not the most flattering, but I had stopped believing it needed to disguise the fact that I was new. At the training room, my colleague recognised me from the booth and waved me towards the empty seat beside her. I reached her without consulting the badge once.

Explain why the narrator stops trying to obtain a different photograph and chooses the first one.