Tuesday Morning: 8:45 AM
Jack barely made it through his second cup of coffee when he got the dreaded message from the help desk: “Password Reset Issue – URGENT!”
He sighed deeply. It was always urgent.
Upon closer inspection, the request came from Sandra, one of the company’s top managers. The email subject line read: “I SWEAR I JUST CHANGED IT YESTERDAY.”
Jack messaged Sandra, calmly explaining the process for resetting her password. Five minutes later, she was on the phone with him.
“But Jack, I’m sure I typed it correctly!” Sandra insisted, sounding bewildered. “I used my usual password—‘P@ssw0rd123’—but it’s not working anymore!”
Jack felt a slight twitch at the corner of his eye. He’d personally told Sandra to stop using that password at least a dozen times.
“Sandra, remember, we implemented the new password policy last week,” Jack explained. “You have to use something a bit more secure.”
“Secure? Oh, right… I added an exclamation mark at the end this time!” Sandra exclaimed, clearly proud of her extra effort.
Jack took a deep breath and fought the urge to tell Sandra that her version of ‘secure’ wasn’t quite hitting the mark.
“Let’s try resetting it together,” Jack said, walking her through the process for the fifteenth time.
After 20 minutes, they finally got it sorted out. Sandra thanked him profusely as if she had just conquered Everest. Jack could only smile weakly.
He added a mental note to organize another “Strong Password 101” training session.