Too many fingers

They say history repeats itself and certainly my password frustration seems to be doing so. Having suffered many years from an excess of passwords; banks, creditcards, internet stuff, airline programmes, elevator security etc. you name it, I was hoping that modern technology might ease this load.
But no, recently I have uncovered a new frustration just as inconvenient and vexing as this, finger identification.

In a perfect world we could all be recognised by proximity or eyes etc., but the finger identification seems to have been made as complicated as possible.

So there I am trying to get into the office in São Paulo and I forgot that it is standardised, everybody pushes the asterisk and places the right thumb over the laser, the door magically pops open.
As we have a lot of security you have to do this on 2 doors to get to my desk, there is a further door but my thumb doesn´t have the relevant clearance, database companies are up there with MI5 and Mossad for security you know. (Actually ours is better than MI5 as they have reportedly lost 5 laptops and a Blackberry this year so far, although if I had to use a Blackberry I would have chucked it somewhere by now too)

Back to the fingers, I couldn´t get into the office, I simply forgot the sequence and correct finger. At my gym I have a code number followed by a button with no sign, obviously used so much it rubbed off and then the left thumb, also standardised for all. So there I am, trying all the fingers, looking bewildered until a good samaritan buzzed me in.

After a frustrating day forgetting fingers then I get back to the condominio and have to place the correct finger over the laser, if I get this wrong it triggers a kidnap warning and previously smiling men get angry and run around waving guns.
A close relative on the first entry managed to put the wrong finger on the laser, luckily she realised and screamed out false alarm, prior to an international incident occurring.

Perhaps I am the only one troubled by this so far, but am sure that as more places implement these systems there will be an almighty cock-up at some stage, maybe I should tattoo the info on each finger to get it right first time.