Sometimes working in an office environment is not all it is cracked up to be. Our workplace, for example, has its very own certified clipboard-totting computer weenie - Paul - who is always running around nagging and badgering everyone to make sure we drop whatever it is we are doing, including breathing, and change our computer password every time we turn around. “And if we don’t, our computers are going to be eaten alive by viruses!”
Because EVERYONE in our office is very very concerned about password protection, and because we take our computer security very very seriously, we all always instantly conform to Paul’s computer commands, by which I mean we point at him, laugh in his face, and throw pieces of heavy farm equipment at his head so he will go away and leave us alone so we can do some actual work. And he does go away. But he runs and tattletales on us to our boss; not that our boss could give two hoots about Paul’s processor predicament, because our boss, along with every other boss and especially every doctor currently on the planet, is too busy behind closed office doors sharpening up his vitally important putting skills to give a rats-butt about Paul’s password protection paranoia.
So when Paul barges into the boss’s office to voice his computer concerns, he is forever stepping right in-between the hole and the boss who is daydreaming about “The Master’s Tournament,” and lining up another picture perfect putt. The boss does not like when Paul bursts into his office and stands in-between him and the hole; this annoys the boss; it makes him lose his concentration, and messes up his picture perfect putts. So the boss calmly reacts to Paul’s uninvited, unwelcome, unwanted, undesirable, unsolicited, unasked for persistent processor pestering presence by gently beating Paul into a bloody unrecognizable pulp with his putter.
Now, on a normal day, it usually takes the paramedics twenty or so minutes to surgically separate the boss’s putter from Paul’s pelvis, at which point Paul is free to throw his standard no-one-is-paying-any-attention-to-me toddler-like tantrum making absolutely certain to stomp around the hallway, exerting the same amount of foot-force needed to crush and press the juice out of metal grapes, holding his breath until he turns a lovely shade of cadaver blue, and finally flopping around on the floor like a beached barracuda.
However, when the boss does go to the golf course, and with no management to intervene, Paul forces us, at clipboard-point, to change our passwords. But changing one’s password is not as easy as it sounds, which is basically due to the inflexible password provisions Paul puts in place, requiring everyone to violently squeeze their brains and wring them out like sponges so we can produce yet ANOTHER password that conforms to Paul’s carefully conceived cautiously constructed computer criteria, “carefully conceived cautiously constructed computer criteria” described here as “amazingly stupid” in the sense of being “unbelievably dumb.”
PAUL’S AMAZINGLY STUPID UNBELIEVABLY DUMB COMPUTER CRITERIA FOR CREATING NEW PASSWORDS ARE AS FOLLOWS:
Passwords MUST contain EXACTLY 800,871+ characters, of which at least one of the 800,871+ characters MUST be a small letter, and at least one of the 800,871+ characters MUST be a capital letter, but the small letter and the capital letter cannot be part of the same language; you MUST use at least one number greater than nine but less than zero; you MUST use at least seven symbols in a row, but they cannot look like you are trying to swear at the computer dork by stringing together a series of symbols in place of words (e.g. $#@!*#!); you MUST use the blood type of your great, great, great, great, grandmother’s father’s brother’s sister’s 3rd cousin five times removed; and you CANNOT - under penalty of having to sit and listen to Al Gore drone on and on about Global Warming blah, blah, blah - use ANY of the same 800,871+ characters, or small letters, or capital letters, or numbers, or special symbols used in ANY of your past passwords.
To add insult to injury, whenever I change my password to a new password, I can never remember my new password. So I jot it down on my skin in ink so it won’t rub off. But since I’m jotting down new passwords and scratching out old passwords four times a minute I look like I’ve been attacked by a crazed group of milk-and-nap-deprived kindergarteners armed with oversized ink pads and assorted graffiti stamps.
And thanks to all the ink leaking into my circulatory system, I now have a minor life-threatening case of ink poisoning, which will require me to go to the hospital. But I do not like going to the hospital, because my doctor is at the hospital. And every time I visit my doctor I’m greeted in the waiting room by his needle-happy nurses who swoop down on me with syringes the size of bicycle pumps, and begin randomly inoculating away. And after they are finished puncturing my person in places I don’t want to be punctured, they THEN ask me “why was I here to see the doctor?”
“Well, I originally came to see the doctor due to an ink related blood toxicity issue. But because I now look like a pincushion with ink seeping out all over the place, perhaps if the doctor is not too busy practicing his putting, he can putty up my punctures.”
