Let’s Park(er) Right Here And Think This Through

Me: “Good morning. Thanks for calling IT; this is [My Name]. How can I assist you?”

User: “I am a new employee with our company, and I cannot get into our system.”

Me: “Are you at the Windows login screen or the Citrix login screen?”

User: “Windows.”

I pull up her account and find the new hire spreadsheet. It has each new hire, their email, and their one-time-use password on it.

Me: “Can you tell me which password you are using?”

We cannot give out passwords over the phone, so I have them tell me their passwords.

For this next portion, I will use fake company names and fake default passwords.

User: “Parker4545%.”

Me: “Hmm. That is what we have on file. I’m going to open up Active Directory and reset it back to that same password in case someone fat-fingered it.”

AD gives me an error: invalid password.

Me: “Strange, it won’t let me use that password for some reason. Trying again.”

Again, AD tells me the password is invalid — strange because this is just a variation of one of many password templates at the company.

Me: “One moment while I reach out to an admin regarding this.”

I pull up teams and reach out to the account admin. He tries resetting it himself and gets the same thing. He pulls in another account admin and gets the same thing. We escalate up to the exchange admin in case it’s an issue with desynching. He checks everything, and he can’t figure it out, either.

This chat is getting larger and larger until the sysadmin (system administrator) joins in.

Sysadmin: “Well, you see guys, the reason you are unable to reset Ms. Park’s password to Parker4545% is that IT HAS HER LAST NAME IN IT!”

The chat is silent for roughly ten seconds and then is quickly filled with GIFs of people stating that they are dumb or GIFs of people smashing their heads into things.

Me: “Ms. Park?”

User: “Yes?”

Me: “We found the issue.”

User: “Oh, good. What was it?”

Me: “Your last name is Park. We were trying to set your password to ‘parker’, which has your name in it, and that is why it wasn’t working.”

She cackles with laughter.

User: “Oh, my God. That is hilarious.” *Jokingly* “How many people did it take to figure that out?”

Me: *Seriously* “Way too many.”