background

The literacy of today’s youth

F.S.F
Oct 13, 2024By F.S.F

Once upon a time, I was the CEO of a cloud company. This title didn’t stop me from occasionally fat-fingering the phone and picking up calls meant for the help desk. In good spirits, I did my best to play the role of FSF, the Help Desk guy.


I remember one particular day and time vividly: 7:37 AM on a Tuesday. I mispicked a call, and without any introduction, a gentleman bellowed, "Your bloody system doesn't work!"


"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. How can I help you?" I replied.


He proceeded to tell me that he was the Deputy Director General of [Extremely Redacted] Department. He was trying to use the system our company sold to the government, but it wasn’t working. Clearly, it wasn’t working, as he couldn’t log in.


Like a good trooper, I jumped in with the usual let-me-help-you platitudes. “I’m very, very sorry, Mr. Deputy, Deputy General General General dude of some important place. Let’s work through this together. Okay, let me just log in. What’s your login credential? How about I change your password and we’ll try that? Give me a word, and I’ll put that in. We’ll do it together, and then I’ll reset it for you at the end. Let’s see if we can get you into the system.”


“No problem,” he said. “I want the password to be personal1.”
“Okay,” I confirmed. “Like ‘personal’ and then the numeral 1?”
“Yep, yep,” he replied.


So, I made an easy backend change to password = Personal1. I logged in, and it worked perfectly. The system fired up. Isn’t that great?


I then said, “Mr. Deputy General, General Deputy of whatever important department you’re from, I’ve just tried it. It seemed to work quite well. How about you have a crack? Here’s your login. For now, your password is ‘personal’ followed by the number 1, as you told me, and we’ll go from there.”


Click, click, click on the keyboard. “Your bloody system still doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.”


“Oh, okay.” We checked the caps lock and the usual muppetry, like if the power was actually on…. Then I said, “Okay, let’s do it together. We’ll spell it out. I start typing and verbalizing, ‘P-E-R-S-O-N-A-L-1.’” I got to the "P-E-R-S-O" part when the man with the many letters in his title loudly stopped me.


“That’s the problem. You’re illiterate!! It’s spelled P-U-R-S-E-A-O-N-L-1.”


“Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me check that again.” Back into the backend, I changed it to Purseanol1. “Can you try again, please, Mr. Deputy Deputy General Head of Some Large Department?”


“Yep. Oh, it’s logged in. It’s perfect. No problem.”


“I’ll send you a link right now so you can reset the password to whatever you’d like. Have a wonderful day.”


“Oh, thank you……. And a suggestion to you, Mr. IT Man, …. you youth really must work on your literacy.”……….