A few weeks ago, I was blessed (rolling my eyes) with the opportunity to represent my company on a business trip. I’ve talked previously about the joys of business travel…

• Exhibit A – Booking Travel
  
• Exhibit B – The Trade Show
• Exhibit C – Stomach Turmoil

This time, pretty much everything was uneventful. That doesn’t mean it was great. I just means the plane had equal scheduled take offs and landings, I did my dog and pony show, and got out without getting yelled at by someone.

All in all, reasonably successful. Time to bust it to the airport and get home to the family.

********

“Welcome home CV! How was your trip?” – Mrs. CV
“Meh…I need a drink.” – Me
“Why don’t you pour yourself a Gentleman Jack and let’s watch some TV” – Mrs. CV
“You had me at pour!” – Me
“Oh, and don’t forget to do your expense report right away. We need the cash especially since you had to pay for your plane ticket like 2 months ago to get a decent fare.” – Mrs. CV
“OK no prob. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.” – Me

********

So, arriving at the cube early I was ready to tackle the mountains of receipts.

First, log onto the corporate system.

Oh shit not again. How often do we need to change these fucking things?

I swear I just did this like 3 weeks ago.

OK after 20 minutes of trying to come up with a random set of characters that fit my company’s requirements, tested my patience (doesn’t take much surprisingly), and made me feel like a complete moron, I finally found one that would work:
tH!$i$st!llF**k3d

Now that I’m on the network, I need to get into our expense report system. But, in order to do that, I need to sign into our Single Password System, aka SPS. Yes, technically I have already signed on so it’s my second password, but I digress.

The theory here is simple – sign into one system and all your corporate accounts from the CRM system, HR benefits, Payroll, Flex 125 and Expense Reports are at your finger tips without having to log into each separately. No more dealing with their individual idiosyncrasies.

Click on the Expense Report portal

“Wait, you’ve gotta be shitting me?”
From over the polyester wall my coworker says, “Ummm, CV you ok over there?”
“This is bull shit! I sign onto the SPS and click on the Expense Report system and it says my password needs to be changed. That’s crap!”
Coworker – “Did you have to redo your network password?”
“Yeah.”
Coworker – “Well there’s your problem. You change the main mothership password and it’s a cascading cluster fuck of captcha’s. Good luck with that. Heehee.”

Grumble.

********

Screw this I’m giving up. Wait…what’s that sound?

Shit!

OK, let’s see…click on “reset password”.

Alright let’s make this easy. I’m just going to add a digit at the end of my old one like I always do. So, in this case it’ll be:
g!V3M3My$8

Crap! The dreaded captcha!

OK for those of you who don’t know what captcha’s are, they are the Devil’s test to prove you are 1) human and 2) have the ability to read seemingly random crap that’s melted into a blob of word goo.

OK, take one:

Umm what’ s that second…word…thing? Click - Try Again

Take 2:

Umm? Click – Try Again

Take 3:

Seriously? Click - Try Again

Take 4: 

OK! I can do this!

e   x   c   Ummmm   e   l        m   ?   u   s   i   c   a   l   e

SUCCESS!

Ok that only took about an hour, but it’ll be worth it to not have Mrs. CV yell at me when I get home.

Now where did I put those receipts?

Awww crap…I think I left them on the kitchen counter.