Forgot my password!

[simont]

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.

Comments

[rmc28]

I am not in work until tomorrow but my phone has been demanding my work email password and ... I can't remember it. Oh well.

[pne]

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.

That's one reason why I think paid sick leave in "socialist health care" countries such as Germany or, so I'm told, Canada is useful: because instead of spending five days at half power you can rest for two days and get back to speed again. Or instead of spending a day doing stuff you'll need two days to undo.

[twigletzone]

I had to go and queue outside the IT helpdesk room like a gormless student.

Oh bless you XD

Mind you, you're not alone, it comes to us all with age. The other month I had my first proper senior moment and spent half an hour wandering round ASDA's car park like a lost soul with a trolley, looking for my car. I'd parked it somewhere I wasn't expecting myself to have parked it...

[simont]

Paid sick leave is obviously a good thing, but it's not what I'm talking about here. I suppose it might work differently in the countries you mention, but here if I want to take time off as sick leave then it has to be because I'm actually suffering from some kind of medical problem, rather than just being half asleep and gormless.

(OK, I don't actually have to get a doctor's note if it's for just one day, so I could in practice just claim to be ill, or if my line manager was so inclined then I could agree with him to maintain the polite fiction that I'd been ill. But those options are obviously unethical.)

And in any case, if my real problem today is that it's difficult to get back into a mental state capable of work after three weeks of holiday, extending my holiday by two more days would surely make the problem worse, not better! :-)

[pne]

Paid sick leave is obviously a good thing, but it's not what I'm talking about here.

(OK, I don't actually have to get a doctor's note if it's for just one day, so I could in practice just claim to be ill, or if my line manager was so inclined then I could agree with him to maintain the polite fiction that I'd been ill. But those options are obviously unethical.)

OK, true, yes.

in any case, if my real problem today is that it's difficult to get back into a mental state capable of work after three weeks of holiday, extending my holiday by two more days would surely make the problem worse, not better! :-)

I'm not sure how that would work with a duvet day, though? Isn't that effectively extending your holiday, too?

Or in other words, what's the difference between a sick day and "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" from the point of view of "getting back into a mental state capable of work after three weeks of holiday"?

[simont]

Or in other words, what's the difference between a sick day and "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" from the point of view of "getting back into a mental state capable of work after three weeks of holiday"?

A fair point! I think in my head there's some difference between coming in to work, trying to do something, and giving up and going home again, and on the other hand just staying at home in the first place. Probably the former has at least some value in getting me back into the rhythm of getting up early and going to work. But it's pretty borderline, so you have a point regardless...

[pne]

Perhaps I should also note that I've taken sick half-days in the past when I came into work but discovered part-way through the day that I wasn't up to the task - further blurring the distinction.

Essentially, it then comes down to whether you don't feel up to working because of general listlessness or because of, say, a fever.

[sunflowerinrain]

"Dear Manager, I wish to leave work immediately and book this as a Dangerous Day. I shall return as soon as I am made safe."

[gerald_duck]

That would be a duvet day. I've never worked for a company that had them formally, but equally on those rare occasions when I've said "Look, today just isn't working. I'm off." nobody's complained.

[xraycb.livejournal.com]

If you haven't logged into svn yet, presumably your old password is stored in the .svn directory? Might jog your memory...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) Oh dear. I don't think I've forgotten a password I use regularly (I obviously forget all the time passwords I knew I'd never remember), but it's only a matter of time.

In fact, if I'm forced to use a regularly changing password, I usually use a root and a stem, where there's some pattern to the stem but still a lot of flexibility, enough that it should be about as good as a password unless someone narrows the search space manually. I'm not sure if that's a good idea: the downside is that if someone cracks a previous password list AND wants to crack my password specifically and looks at it manually, guesses what's the stem AND spends a bit of time brute forcing the new stem, it's less secure, but has the advantage that I don't forget it.

I'm inclined to think that's a good trade-off -- I don't think that's really the weakest point in most systems I see. But I know some people think everyone should be able to memorise a new ten digit non-alphanumeric password every three months for the rest of their life for every system they use, so I'm not sure. (I wonder if there could be a claim under the age or disability discrimination legislation: if someone has a medical condition that makes memorising new passwords harder, or simple old age, and they can get experts to testify that something else is better than refreshing passwords like that, could they refuse to do it?)

[simont]

Yes, that's how I worked out that I really had forgotten it after all :-)

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

This morning I was asked to change my password. An hour later I had forgotten the new one entirely.

[simont]

Oh yes, that's always a risk. I generally find I do best at remembering a new password if I use it regularly for the first couple of hours – that seems to give it a smooth transition from short- into long-term memory.

Consistently locking my screen every time I get up from my desk, requiring me to type my password to unlock it when I come back, works well as a means of doing this.

[songster.livejournal.com]

Or write it on a Post-it stuck to the bottom of your neighbour's keyboard. At least a foot and a half of security there.