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This Boss’ Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

In sports, there is one wonderful rule – do not touch what works so well. By the way, this also applies to many areas of human activity, including business. How many times have we witnessed how the excessive initiative of someone from company management to make things even better than they were ended up making everything worse?

There are also some situations when a boss believes that employees are not working effectively enough, and begins to take measures to fix it. Needless to say, it often turns against the company. But the heroes of this story were lucky – the new rules only backfired on the one who set them.

The original post, published in the Malicious Compliance community on Reddit, has already gained about 11.8K upvotes and over 600 comments. Apparently, readers have also come across similar decisions from bosses more than once.

More info: Reddit

The Original Poster is in a senior role at a service desk

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: Lewis Ogden (not the actual photo)

The author of the post is in a senior role at a service desk, helping solve technical system problems as per the tickets submitted by other employees. As in all similar structures, if a ticket comes in that has already been done or is a duplicate request, then it is simply canceled or archived.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

The vice president of the company used to send a lot of tickets themselves

According to the Original Poster, a lot of tickets were sent by the company’s vice president, who believed that the world revolved around them, and if they sent a ticket, then after some time, they’d send more and more if they didn’t see that something had been done with the ticket.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

The company introduced a new ticket policy which the employees didn’t take so well

After some time, according to the OP, the company introduced a new ticket policy so that before resolving any ticket, it would have to be actioned anyway. Most likely, the OP believes, the same VP was the author of the idea.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

Later, the company switched to a new password policy (at least 18 characters, etc.). One of the requirements was also to change the password after a reset, and the previous password could not be used. Most users took this innovation normally, though the previous policy was simply no requirements… and then the VP went on vacation.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

When the VP returned from their vacation, they forgot their password but started making new tickets as usual

After returning from vacation, the boss forgot their password, but the first thing they started doing, of course, was sending tickets. However, this time, the OP’s team members acted strictly according to the new instructions and reset the VP’s password after each new ticket.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

Finally one of the managers received a wrathful email saying “Stop resetting my password!”

In about an hour, the password was reset eleven times. After that, one of the managers received an email from the VP with the subject: “STOP RESETTING MY PASSWORD!!!” The vice president wrote that they had run out of passwords after the twelfth change, and demanded that this be stopped.

In response, the OP wrote that the employees were acting in full accordance with the company’s new ticket policy – every ticket must be actioned, and after that, the password is mandatorily reset.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

The new ticket policy was soon reviewed and canceled by the company’s management

Around an hour later, says the OP, their department received an email from the president saying that management had reviewed the ticket policy and decided it wasn’t the best use of employees’ time.

Is it necessary to say, continues the OP, that this policy was just stupid? By the way, by an interesting coincidence, after this incident, the vice president began to send fewer and fewer tickets.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

Image source: Christopher Sessums (not the actual photo)

People in the comments mostly admired the situation a lot

Commenters, of course, admired the ingenious solution to the problem, although they noticed that the members of the support team were lucky that the management admitted their mistake and did not punish the entire department in the heat of the moment. According to some people in the comments, such cases, alas, are not uncommon.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

The author of probably the most witty comment claims that people who believe that the whole world revolves around them should find jobs in the field of replacing light bulbs. So they just need to hold the bulb over their head – and everything else will happen automatically.

This Boss' Plan To Set New Password Policy Goes Wrong As Helpdesk Maliciously Complies And Make Them Change Their Password 12 Times In A Row

In the meantime, please feel free to write your comments or tell a similar story based on your personal experience, and we, in turn, promise that we will not reset your password after each comment!

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After many years of working as sports journalist and trivia game author and host in Ukraine I joined Bored Panda as a content creator. I do love writing stories and I sincerely believe - there's no dull plots at all. Like a great Italian composer Joaquino Rossini once told: "Give me a police protocol - and I'll make an opera out of it!"

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Saulė is a photo editor at Bored Panda with bachelor's degree in Multimedia and Computer Design. The thing that relaxes her the best is going into YouTube rabbit hole. In her free time she loves painting, embroidering and taking walks in nature.

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What do you think ?

POST

Frisinator 2 years ago

My wife worked IT at a hospital. She trained Doctors how to use the Electronic Medical Record system. This one doctor was a real asshat. He attempted to tell IT how to do their jobs. Super bad idea. My wife was moving to a new job so before she left she set this dbags two passwords he used to expire every 3 days and the second password every 7 days. And then she left. I can only how long this went on.

4points

Izzy 2 years ago

your wife is amazing -- being able to find a seemingly minor way to cause relentless nuisance to someone who treats others like s**t. i find small ways that cause just enough damage to consistently make someone's every day a bad one (and doing so in the most innocent looking way) is actually more satisfying than a one-time major, traceable act. like having a small pebble in your shoe the whole day. sticks with u & annoys u for hours and hours without u even realising how annoyed u are! since he knows soooo much about the IT department's job & goes around telling them what to do, he should have no issues resolving this for himself i'm sure😌 please pass my condolences to her for having to deal with the asshat for so long, and congratulations in getting back at him in an effective way!♥️

2points

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Pat Bond 2 years ago

This story sounds strange. I've worked in enough major corporates to see this is exactly how not to treat a VP, it creates noise that gets back to your boss who will re-educate you on how things work in HQ. In general most VP's are nice and understanding, just keep them updated and provide realistic timelines for them, they will have a PA to do any work in the short term and chase you. Also, if a major corp they will have a dedicated VIP team, it's usually senior directors and below trying to get the VIP support they're not entitled to in my experience. I've also never seen an 18 character password policy ever, that will create tickets off the scale every three months, be interesting to see what SLA's they agreed. Oh, and as a VP the call taker will be aware immediately that it's a higher priority ticket, they go to a different group.

4points

Robert T 2 years ago

I have seen an 18 character password policy... on a production database... the only problem was they used short passwords in test and when we rolled out an upgrade to production it failed as the password used was too long for the client software. It also resulted in me getting to spend yet another weekend in The Netherlands to babysit the next attempt.

3points

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Kevin Felton 2 years ago

Yeah I think that ridiculously strict password policy came about because of a data breach. That's usually how policies go from 0 to WTF.

0points

Eliza Osenbaugh-Stewart 2 years ago

I'm not sure I've seen 18 characters either but my work laptop has a 15+ character requirement and 18 is not much more so it seems plausible.

0points

Damon 2 years ago

I don't understand how "senior" people can make such spelling errors and other nonsense

0points

Red Panda 2 years ago

Because (a)' not everyone on BP/reddit speaks English as their first language; (b) English skills have deteriorated to the point that there are a lot of people who think correct spelling/grammar are unnecessary; (c) a lot of people post using a mobile and it's harder to proofread and format, plus autocorrect is possessed by demons; and (d) s**t happens. If you can't handle it, stop reading anything online.

2points

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