Tech Unsupport

At work last Thursday we all got an e-mail telling (Warning?) us they were changing our login IDs from firstinitiallastname to firstname.lastname, all lower case. The document gave several examples, all consistent. I printed this out to make sure I didn't need to rely on my faulty memory.

I was off Friday for Concave. When I got to work Monday I entered fullfirsname.lastname and my password. No joy. I tried twice more, thinking maybe I had mistyped my password. Still no joy. Tried shortfirstname.lastname. Nope. I called password support. They needed a while to figure out what was wrong, because there was no listing for me under my firstname.lastname. Or even under my shortfirstname.lastname. Whoever set up my computer violated the guidelines. Instead of rodford.smith or rod.smith they had me as rode.smith. Using the short version of my first name plus my middle initial.

Turns out what they were actually doing was making our computer network log-on ID the same as our e-mail ID. (Improving security by making everything the same, right…) Only the message I got didn't say that. And I’m not the only one who didn't know that.

Also, some people had a card with their new ID placed by their computer. I was one of those who didn't. And whoever used made the change on my machine messed up my monitor (it was not only out of position and at a different height, but cocked to the right) and chair.

I'm starting to think it was personal...