At Least They Don’t Have To De-Bugs Bunny The System

(I work in an IT department and we take turns covering the on-call shifts. I get woken up at 1:30 in the morning because a user is locked out of her computer. She doesn’t remember her password, so I give her a temporary one, which forces her to change her password. I stay on the phone to make sure she doesn’t have any issues. The conversation goes like this:)

Me: “Please remember, your password must be at least eight characters long and contain three of these four items; an uppercase, a lowercase, a number, or a special character.”

Caller: “I don’t know what you mean by uppercase and lowercase.”

Me: “A capital letter and a lowercase letter; a big letter and a little letter. Also a number or a special character. It needs to have three of those four things. I will wait while you try.”

Caller: *mumbling the password to herself as she types*

Me: “Please don’t save your password yet. You have not met the criteria. I only heard a capital letter and a lowercase letter. You need either a number or a special character.”

Caller: “But… Donald Duck is a special character.”

(Yes, her password was, “DonaldDuck.”)

Me: “No… no, it’s not.” *head in hand*

(This was a call that took forty-five minutes and normally takes five.)