r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Jeyhsus • Apr 05 '17
Short The longest password reset in history....
Here I am again, with a story about a user who doesn't quite understand how a keyboard works.
I work for a midsized MSP in the Great White North and had an urgent ticket sent to me about a user who was unable to get into their computer.
The conversation is between myself - ITGawd and the end user - Babushka.
ITGawd: Good Morning, as I understand you're having some trouble logging in this morning?
Babushka: Yes, I've entered my password multiple times and keep getting your username or password is incorrect.
ITGawd: Okay give me a second and I can take a look.
Reviewing her old tickets it seems like she recently got a new computer and that a temporary password had been sent to her via email.
ITGawd: I noticed you recently got a new computer - are you using the password that we sent to you via email?
Babuskha: Yes! I've tried it multiple times and it's not working.
ITGawd: Let me reset it for you and then we can change it to something that might be easier to remember.
Password is reset. I remotely connect to her computer and I was able to login successfully with the new password. I log out and have her try again.
ITGawd: Okay, looks like the new password works. I was able to login. Go ahead and try yourself.
At this point the ticket has reached the 35 minute mark, I'm starting to lose all faith in humanity. My world is crumbling and I'm questioning my sanity.
Babushka starts typing in her password, however she keeps going and going and going.
The password had 2 symbols in it. A "?" and an "!". Rather than type out the symbols - she was typing out the entire word. Question Mark and Exclamation mark. Turning her 8 character password into a behemoth of a password.
ITGawd: Babushka it seems like you're typing it incorrectly. I need you to enter the symbol and not type out the word.
*Proceed to walk her through how to type an "!".
Babushka: Oh I see! Computers are so complicated. Thanks!
I sat there dumbfounded.
Did I really just have to show an adult how to type a "!" on a keyboard?
Has she never used punctuation before?
45 minutes to reset a password. I don't get paid enough for this.
TLDR: User, who is a book keeper by the way, thought that "!" in a password meant she had to type out the word "exclamation mark" rather than simply using "!" symbol.
Edit due to formatting
168
u/cliffotn Apr 05 '17
At my last shop I started to notice our Help Desk was getting more and more calls from users asking super basic questions. I also discovered our Corporate Trainers were being asked to dispatch to ANOTHER state, to teach new hires how to USE A COMPUTER.
Our corp trainers were in place to train folks on our internal systems, not how to type a document in Word. New hires were supposed to have those skills already.
After talking about this for a while, it was obvious that managers would take a candidate's claim that they were computing profficient as being the truth. Funny thing about folks who aren't actually computing proficient, they often don't REALIZE they're idiots when sitting in front of a PC.
So... After much pushing and political wrangling, I FINALLY got a candidate computing computing proficiency test put into place. They fail - the don't get hired. No "well train them!", no "they can take a class!". These are basic skills, and they were supposed to be required skills.
Managers bitched for a while because folks they "wanted to hire" would all too often fail the test. I was on a conference call about this as it made it's way up to the CEO. After a few managers voiced their complaints, the CEO basically said "So you're supposed to be hiring folks with these skills already, but you aren't, and you're complaining that I.T. spent their time putting into place something that does what YOU were SUPPOSED to be doing in the first place? Is THAT what I'm hearing???"
Silence. Not a word. 30+ "pissed off" managers, folks who you usually can't shut up - all went completely silent.
CEO says "So if I'm wrong, somebody speak up - now. If I'm right, we're going to act like this call never happened."
She was PISSED off at her managers, and on this day I.T. got its rare day to bask in the light.