I forgot my the password for my work email address today.  I hadn’t needed to use it in about two weeks because if I log it off it takes upwards of 20 minutes to get into, and since we’re not supposed to write passwords down I was out of luck.

I called the 800 number for a reset, clicked the option for email password resets, spoke to a guy who informed me of a different 800 number that I should call to have the password reset and told me I needed my top secret tech pin number too.

In all seriousness, Social Security Numbers are less secretive than this secret tech pin number. 

I had completely forgotten about that tech pin number, and sadly, despite having a ton of internal numbers that could prove who I am, nothing is able to get done without that secret tech pin number.  I racked my brain trying to figure it out, and then ten minutes later I finally remembered it. 

I called this second 800 number, followed the automation through the valley of 3, 2, 3, 2, 3 until I finally was at the option to change the password.  I found it would have been easier to just have had that first guy from the first 800 number be able to reset the password for me…but that’s just me…and then again… perhaps the first guy gets paid only by the minutes he is talking on the phone and is the reason why he rushed me off the phone? 

Anyway, the computer on this second 800 number spelled the new password out slowly.  I’m talking really slow. 

Uppercase P…as in Peter…

3…

8…

lowercase C as in Charles…

It kept on spitting out all of the numbers and letters until it came to the last letter.

NM….as in…nmoonist…

WTF!!?? 

It then proceeded to spit the entire combination out again without saying that it was repeating the combo, so I ended up writing the combo down two and a half times. 

I was left with the last character of my password being either an N or M for a word that I had never before in my life heard before.

I then logged into Outlook and was prompted to change my password.  Nothing took.  It wouldn’t let me update my Outlook password within the portion of Outlook that requests for a new password.

I then remembered about the new-ish internal website that exists to update Outlook passwords - the one that isn’t mentioned in the update password prompt or on either 800 number.

Long story longer…what used to take five minutes max to do when we used to have a person do the resets for us, now takes 45 minutes from start to finish in order to get done.  In a company of losing billions of dollars a quarter and firing most everyone who has been around 15 or more years is the norm, this shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.