Abra-bloody-cadabra

Passwords.

Bane of my life. In the workplace, whenever I want to access media, post anything, read anything, ask anything. And it's all exactly the same at home too.

And of course, you can’t use just the one, because then you leave yourself vulnerable. And you have to renew them occasionally too, refresh the construct and the format, and don’t pick obvious stuff.

At work, I now meander along a security pathway of tedium, filling in passwords when prompted, clicking ‘OK’ dialogue prompts, and always having to negotiate all the additional safety filters.

Do you accept the terms of operating guidelines?

Will you abide by the working practice standards?

You’re not going to be naughty, are you?

As you slowly navigate the layer after layer of text preamble and coloured formatting, you do begin to lose hope. Will I ever get to the end of this ‘logging-in’ process, just so I can do my work that I get paid for? Aah, what’s this? A new one, a ‘have-you-completed-mandatory-security-training’ prompter. I thought this was exactly that?

I needed to re-arrange a parcel delivery today, and the password process was completely busted on that. You’re often left wondering how certain companies ever stay in business, how is it that with such appalling IT, they manage to maintain a market presence.

I should be able to track it, see it winding along country roads and motorways towards me. But of course I can’t. Even with my new password. System has a problem at the moment.

I then e-mail the complaints department and they give me a reference – totally different to the reference for the parcel itself – and a password to log back in with later. I give it a few hours and try it – reference number isn’t recognised. So I wait until several hours – the entire working day in fact – has passed, and try again. Reference number has now been tapped in by some unknown person, but the password – their password they gave me – doesn’t work.

With a great sigh, I shrug back into my armchair and stare at the screen, a harmless and useless cursor line winking on and off at me, awaiting further commands from my fingertips.

And I daydream of chopping firewood, filtering water, skinning animals for food, making cooking stoves from discarded drink cans, and the long-awaited Apocalypse whereupon I can sit atop my fortified hermitage and who so ever fails to use the proper password as they approach me, I can then shoot them.