I got into the office today after a relaxing holiday of three weeks (plus yesterday) and found, embarrassingly, that I couldn't remember my work password any more. I could remember a password, but I was pretty sure it was the one from before my most recent change, and it certainly didn't work when I tried it.

I can't believe that. First password I've forgotten in over a decade, surely. I had to go and queue outside the IT helpdesk room like a gormless student.

I had a brief moment of hope when I got back to my desk and found the new password didn't work either. ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘perhaps the password I'd remembered was right after all, and it's just my desktop computer that's confused.’ But no; after some more faffing, it turned out that password changes are just propagating slowly this morning and I had forgotten my original password after all.

It's at moments like this I feel that companies ought to have a mechanism whereby you can turn round and go home and back to bed, on the basis that you're likely to do more harm than good if you continue trying to do work.