Adventures in Corporate World

Today, I had the type of day that we all dread. By "we", I am referring to those of us that spend the obligatory 2,080 hours per year of face time living the corporate life.

The work day started like any other: enter automatic revolving doors in my downtown office tower, grab an elevator from the middle bank & ride it to my floor, say hello to our admin on the way to my desk, put my bag down, hang up my jacket, switch on my desk light, and hit control-alt-delete on my PC keyboard. But then disaster strikes. On my computer screen, a pop-up appears that reads "Your password has expired".

An eerie chill runs through my body as I realize the horror to be endured throughout the day (the same horror endured 30 days ago, the same horror to be endured 30 days from now). I change my password that includes at least 8 characters with at least 1 capital letter, 1 lowercase letter and 1 number. Then the real horror begins.

Each day I am prompted to enter my network password approximately 46 times. This means about 29 times I will subconsciously enter my old password on my 1st attempt. That means about 8 times I will frustratingly and hastily fat finger a mistake in my 2nd attempt. If I get it wrong on my 3rd attempt, I'll be forced to deal with the PC help desk to reset my password, then wait patiently for 15-30 minutes for use of my PC.

So I have to be as careful on that 3rd attempt as a game of Operation. But even when I type my password at rate of 1 character per 15 seconds, I'm never confident that I got it right. All I see on the screen is "********". How can I ever be sure with that helpful display?

Fortunately, I got all my 3rd attempts right today. And there's something strange about the day after a password change. For some reason there are no problems that 2nd day. It's as if it takes my brain takes a full 24 hours to process any changes to my network password. The horror is behind me, but only for 30 days...