HR started using badge logs to enforce the 9:00 AM office arrival policy. By Wednesday, 63 employees had been flagged late. One guy swore he entered at 8:56. Security footage: 8:56. Badge report: 9:03. I checked the access controller. Its clock was exactly seven minutes fast. Time synchronization was disabled. Why? Security had blocked the badge system from contacting an internet time server because: “Door controllers should not communicate externally.” I asked them to allow one time-sync connection. “No business justification.” HR said they’d manually correct the attendance records instead. Then the VP of HR arrived at 8:58. Badge system logged her at 9:05. She received an automated warning from her own department for violating the attendance policy. Eight minutes later my firewall exception was approved. Priority: CRITICAL Business justification: “Accurate time required for executive access reporting.” The controller synced. All 63 late arrivals disappeared. Security asked me to document the root cause. I wrote: “Clock was not authorized to know what time it was.”