Many, many years ago, when I was but a lad of sixteen years old, I was working as a telemarketer (I know, I know, I’m sorry, I feel the crushing burden on my soul to this day) at a center located in California that commissioned with various different companies. 

One day I might be soliciting donations for political or environmental causes, the next I would be calling season ticket holders for zoos, orchestras, event halls, and the like for renewals, you get the picture.

We almost never called for businesses based out of California. Probably to make sure anybody whose dinner had been interrupted one too many times would have to really work for the bloody vengeance they swore upon our eternal souls, but I digress.

If there was an upside to that cheese-grater-to-the-gums job, it’s that we didn’t do cold calling; everybody we called had a previous transactional relationship with the company we were calling on behalf of.

This interaction came when I was calling season ticket holders for the Houston, Texas Symphony Orchestra, to see if they wanted to renew for the next season. And it gave me a new appreciation for the Mike Judge Magnum Opus, King of the Hill.

Bear in mind, I’m sixteen years old and Californian born and raised, and I had a few preconceived notions about rural southerners, which I would find utterly shattered over the next four delightful minutes… 

The call connects:

Customer: “Yea?”

Me: “Hello, Mr. [Customer’s Name]! This is [My Name] calling on behalf of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. I see you’ve been a season ticket holder for [number] years now, and we’re so grateful to you for your patronage! We wanted to see if you were interested in renewing your tickets for next year. How does that sound?”

Dear reader, I swear to you upon the soul of my non-existent firstborn son, this gentleman sounded EXACTLY like the King of the Hill character Boomhauer in his response…

Customer: “Wha? Dang ol’ Symphnee Orkstra man, dang ol’—” *Goes on for thirty seconds while I’m holding my breath and biting my tongue to refrain from laughing.* “—an’ my dang ol’ season tickets man.”

Me: *Practically choking.* “So… Um… Did you want to renew?”

Customer: “H*** YEAH I wan’ renew my dang ol’ season tickets man, dang ol’ wife wouldn’t—” *more Southern drawl my uncultured Californian ears can’t quite make out.* “—an’ my dang ol’ Mastercard ain’t changed man.”

Me: *Barely choking back my laughter.* “Uh, great! Thanks so much! I hope you have a great day!”

Customer: “Thanks, God bless man!”

I ended the call, and my supervisor came out of her office cackling like a madwoman, which broke the dam for me; we laughed for thirty seconds solid, at least. She gave me an early break, and we both walked to the break area to catch our breath. Sure taught me a thing or two about stereotypes!

I was driving from DC to Maine. I hadn’t gone this route for years, and wasn’t used to the new toll booths. It used to be situated so that you had to go through a toll lane and either pay $0.35 by tossing the coins into a basket-feeder, or through a lane with a sensor for an E-ZPass. The new arrangement had all the cash lanes separated from the E-ZPass lanes, the latter of which no longer had narrow booth lanes.

So at the first toll plaza, I was too far to the left and drove through an E-ZPass lane. I didn’t think much of it, but then I made sure to stay far right for the remaining tolls before I got to New York.

About a month later, I got a bill from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. (They’d ID’d me by my license plate from Virginia). Fair cop, so I expected to pay the toll and a penalty for not paying the toll initially.

No, I was only billed for the toll: $0.35. They instructed me to send a check or money order (no cash) via the pre-addressed postage-paid envelope. Since money orders cost 50 cents, I wrote a check for “Zero and 35/100 dollars” and mailed it.

So, to get their toll, they had to spend about a whole dollar in postage. It was nice that they didn’t penalize me, but it would’ve been cheaper for them to just forget it.

Employee: “I can’t log into the office computer.”

Assistant Manager: “What’s happening?”

Employee: “Every time I put in my login and password, I get a pop-up, and it kicks me back to the login screen.”

Assistant Manager: *Leans over and takes control of the mouse.* “Okay, put in your user ID.” *Clicks to password box.* “Okay, now put in your password.”

Employee: *Follows instructions.*

The assistant manager clicks login, and the pop-up appears immediately. He clicks “OK” and gets booted back to the login screen.

This repeats. And repeats.

On the FIFTH try, when the pop-up appeared, I loudly said:

Me: “Stop!”

Both turn to look at me, a little shocked.

Me: “What does the pop-up say?”

Assistant Manager: “Your password has expired and needs to be reset.”

I look at the screen, and the button on the left says “Reset password.” The button on the right says “OK”. They had just kept hitting “OK” without reading.

The employee reset their password, and everything was fine, other than me wondering what the f*** I was doing working there.

I work for a company that builds and supports web apps for various clients.

Recently, we had a support ticket come in from one of these clients saying that some of the users they’d added to the app recently were having trouble logging in. Every time they tried to log in, they would receive an “Invalid password” error. They would reset their password, and this would let them access the app again, but the next time they tried to log in, they got the same error and had to reset their password again. Could I please fix this?

Of course, my first instinct was that this was user error, but I had to check to be sure.

So, I tried resetting my password in the test environment. No problems. I tried resetting my password on a test account in the production environment. No problems. I even got permission from one of the users involved to try resetting their password myself and then logging in to their account, in case it was somehow an account specific issue. Again, no problems.

So, I respond to the client and tell them that there are no issues with the password reset process. I advise the client to make sure that the users are performing the password reset properly. In particular, I tell them to make sure that the users are entering the same password on the login page as they entered on the password reset page.

The client comes back and says the users are still having the same problem. Can I please fix this?

Okay, fine. I organise a call between myself, the client, and some of the affected users so they can screenshare and show me how they’re trying to reset their password.

We get on the call, and one of the users shows me what they’re doing.

They try to log in to the app in Chrome and get an “Invalid password” error. They click the “Forgot password” button, and a password reset email arrives in Outlook. They click the “Reset my password” link in the email, and it opens the reset password page in Edge.

They update their password, and the app logs them in. Edge dutifully offers to save their password, which they accept.

They then close Edge and go back to Chrome. They open the login page of the app, and Chrome dutifully auto-fills their old password. They click login and get “Invalid password”.

I explain to them that Edge and Chrome are different browsers and that a password saved by one won’t be remembered by the other. I teach them how to copy the reset password link into Chrome instead (“Right click the link. No, not left click, right click. Now click ‘Copy link’. No, not ‘Open link in new window’, ‘Copy link’…”).

The client and users are very grateful to me for solving their problem, and the client assures me that, if the same issue ever happens again, they’ll be able to recognise it now.

I don’t even blame the users for this one; I blame Microsoft for pushing Edge so hard.

Related:
Do Not Password, Do Not Pass Go, Part 5
Do Not Password, Do Not Pass Go, Part 4
Do Not Password, Do Not Pass Go, Part 3
Do Not Password, Do Not Pass Go, Part 2
Do Not Password, Do Not Pass Go

Reading this story reminded me of my encounter with that word in the workplace.

We’re in the back office doing weekly sales reports when my coworker starts narrating a spreadsheet that he’s going to present to a boardroom full of bigwigs. He’s asked me to be really nitpicky so that the presentation is impressive. He also has a habit of overusing the thesaurus to pepper his presentations with ‘fancier words’ to sound smarter.

Coworker: “So I only compared homologous items to keep the numbers clean.”

I glance at his screen.

Me: “Those are all the same SKU (Stock Keeping Unit).”

Coworker: “Yeah?”

Me: “So, those are homogeneous. Homologous would be comparable-but-different items.”

He frowns, visibly annoyed.

Coworker: “That’s basically the same thing.”

Me: “It’s not. One means ‘identical,’ the other means ‘structurally similar.'”

Our boss, who has been pretending not to listen while making coffee, looks up.

Boss: “I don’t know. They both sound identical and gay to me.”

My coworker and I look at him.

Me: “Why, [Boss], are you homophonic?”

He didn’t get it.