citizen428.blog()

Today when my girlfriend tried to log in to one of her favourite sites to download some music she paid for, her login credentials didn’t work. When she wrote an email to the support team (after automatic retrieval of the login credentials and checking them for correctness of course), she received the following answer:

Hey Silvia, many systems cannot recognize symbols in passwords.  We have updated your profile and removed the symbol from your password  so you should be able to successfully login to your account now. Your new password is [snipped]
[insert company name] Support

What do we learn from this?

1. They want to make us believe “+” is a symbol many systems can’t recognize. Sure. Besides thanks for assuming we’re too stupid to try out special characters (aka “symbols”) in the user name field after several failed log in attempts.
2. They store their customer’s passwords in cleartext.
3. They change user profiles without permission to avoid looking for the real problem.
4. They even try to make it look like a good solution (“you should be able to succesfully login to your account now”).
5. They suck like most tech supports do.

When I read replies like that, I really wonder how people would treat a mechanic who says “I don’t know what the problem with your engine is, but many streets don’t recognize your tires so I’ve changed them. Besides that I changed your ignition lock and made a backup key for myself. All cool, eh?”.

My only hope: those guys obviously are dull boys, and dull boys don’t get chicks. If we’re just a little lucky, the gene pool will sort itself out.

P.S. Yeah, I might be a little p*ssed after spending 13 hours in the office.

Boomtime, Discord 49, 3172 YOLD

1. You’ll turn into a bitter cynic. This in fact is probably the best thing about your job, which really should make you think…

2. Only wackos and smartasses work in this field. Depending on which group you belong to, this might even be fun. More often though you’re screwed.

3. If your boss screws up, it will probably get communicated to the customer as your fault. Given that you took the job in the first place, that’s even true.

4. Every job where people tell you things along the line of “An average day has 24 hours and if that isn’t enough, you’ll have to make use of the nights too!” and find that actually funny, is a good reason to spend the rest of your life in a zen buddhist monastery, a mental home or both.

5. The best thing about your average work day is that there’s always at least one person in the office who is worse off than you (see #1). However, he’s most likely also the one poor guy who’s neither a wacko nor a smartass (see #2), so you have to control your bitter cynicism and feel sorry for him.

6. The coffee is cold or bad and the coke is either warm or a diet coke. They’ve thought about everything!

7. After a certain amount of time you won’t be able to remember if the sentences “Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us.” have been said by your boss or Locutus of Borg. What’s even worse is that it doesn’t really make a difference anyway…

P.S. I’m also planning on writing up some reasons for “Why working in Business IT rocks”. Yeah, right.

Pungenday, Chaos 38, 3172 YOLD