How Did You Get Hired?

I work in internal IT for a retail company. Lately, a big portion of my job has been password resets. We have an SSO (single sign-on) system which means almost everything uses the same password. We have the ability to check the status of their accounts — is it locked/unlocked, how long until it expires, etc. We can’t see the password itself or what the user might be entering. I have a user call asking for a password.

User: “I need to set up my password so I can sign onto the computer.”

I check the account and see that there was a password set about a week ago. With the SSO, for some reason, everyone half knows what to call it, but most of the employees don’t seem to understand what it actually means or entails.

Me: “I’m showing that your password was just reset last week. It’s the same password you use for [System].”

User: “I’m not trying to sign into [System]. This is my first time, and I’m trying to sign onto the computer, but there’s nothing that says [System] on the screen.”

Me: “You use the same credentials that you use to sign into [System] to access the computer.”

User: “I don’t see anything that says [System] here. I’m trying to sign onto this computer for the first time.”

Me: “I understand that, but you still use your [System] credentials to sign in. I show a password was set on [date], so that’s what you’ll want to use.”

User: “Today’s my first day. I have no idea what that is.”

Me: *Headdesk*

I realize that I’m going to get nowhere with her, so I go through the process to verify her identity and get her a temporary password. Meanwhile, a manager or someone walks in, and the user kind of lowers the phone and starts half-whispering.

User: “Oh, yeah, Service Desk is helping me get signed in. She keeps saying that I set a password on [date], but I never did.”

Manager: “Yeah, you did. That was when you did [various pieces of paperwork].”

User: “I never did that.”

Manager: “Yes, you did. We filled out [various pieces of paperwork] so you could start.”

User: “No, I never did that.”

I finally got her signed on and everything, but I felt sorry for that manager. I hope it was just a case of early morning/no coffee versus the user actively forgetting doing paperwork, but who knows?