OAK RIDGE — Joyce Ledbetter has run the badge counter at a contractor visitor office off the Oak Ridge Turnpike since 2007, and she would like it noted that nobody from the White House’s new AI task force has contacted her.
Everyone else has. A line was already out the door Monday morning when a subcontractor’s safety manager asked whether task force members would get the same blue visitor badge as everybody or a different one, because his company wanted to order lanyards ahead of time. Ledbetter said she didn’t know who the members were. He said that was all right, he’d order extra.
By her count the counter has taken questions on the subject from three vendors and a woman who wanted to know whether the task force would be coming in person so she could wear something nice. A man from a promotional products company in Lenoir City left a box of sample lanyards printed with a circuit-board pattern. Ledbetter has put it under the counter next to the lost-and-found.
One man in line, who had asked about task force badges too, stayed to say that the clip on his own had broken last month and kept turning around on him, and he wanted to know whether anybody had looked at the clips.
“I keep hearing they’ve got a hundred and twenty days to come up with a plan. That’s fine. I’ve got a line out the door,” Ledbetter said. “Nobody called over here to ask what we do. You give me a license, I look at it, I look at you. Four minutes, if you’ve got the license out already, and nobody ever does. If they want a badge they can stand in line.”
She said the office does have a form for visitors who bring an animal, adopted in 2014 after a courier arrived with a service dog, and she would hand it over if anyone from the task force asked for it. It has been requested once, by a man who wanted it for his own use.
As of late Monday the task force had not visited the office, and the lanyard samples were still available at the counter.