One of the more unique things in the US is the idea of middle names. Sure, they have been around since when King Arthur was banging coconuts together while skipping his way to that one dire bunny den. But their prevalence (of middle names, not of the Knights of the Round Table) around the globe these days has faded and the US is one of those few countries that still rolls with it.

And sometimes—just sometimes—you win the jackpot when you have two middle names. And then your initials spell out something awesome. And, to top it all off, you can get some maliciously compliant goodness shoved somewhere in there.

More Info: Reddit

When you’re picking out names, you gotta consider the initials, right? Because that alone can lead folks to many amazing situations, including malicious compliance

Image credits: Seth Frei (not the actual photo)

A Redditor recently shared how their initials led a university systems admin to have a lowkey meltdown because of uni policy

Image credits: Jeffrey_Friedl

Image credits: Wolfgang Stief (not the actual photo)

All the original poster wanted was a username that makes sense and ended up with jeff, which incidentally is his first name

We got a short, but a good one for you today, folks. Redditor u/Jeffrey_Friedl recently shared a story of malicious compliance from the ’80s, when he was in graduate school studying computer science.

His university had a system that everyone was supposed to have accounts on. The policy clearly stated that everyone’s username should be whatever their initials are, so most had a 3-letter jumble. OP, however, asked for a custom login credential, i.e. jfriedl, because that’s what he always had everywhere. At the end of the day, it’s just a username—just do it and move on, right?

Well, the systems admin was what OP called a “master of his (tiny) domain” who “took great pleasure in denying his request”, citing the username naming policy. Nobody was exempt. OK then, then let’s do it the right way.

“Everyone had three-letter names (or three letters with a ‘2’ appended), and he had chosen a three-letter name for me. We weren’t allowed to choose our own, so when I asked, he cited the ‘must use your initials’ rule as justification. He just really didn’t want to give a custom name, or he really didn’t want a non-three-letter name. I’m not sure exactly, but it’s possible that the ‘rule’ was something he made up on the fly just to shut down my request for ‘jfriedl’”, elaborated OP in an interview with Bored Panda.

“It’s possible that it had just been the convention he’d been using. I don’t know. But since he said that rule out loud, I ‘maliciously’ made him comply with it and give me ‘jeff’. He was not happy at all, which, now that I think about it, makes me wonder whether he made up the rule in the first place. He just liked being king of his little domain, I guess.”

Because OP’s full legal name is Jeffrey Eric Francis Friedl, the systems admin had no other choice than to comply with the set rule of “initials only.” This, incidentally, also spelled out OP’s actual name, which probably added to the “fuming” state that the admin was in. Though OP did note that “fuming” was only for that moment—the two were overall on good terms since then.

Image credits: Arina Krasnikova (not the actual photo)

“My goal wasn’t to stick it to him, my goal was to get my desired username. I failed in that goal, but at least I got something better than the three-letter alphabet soup he wanted to give me.” It also probably helped their subsequent relationship that OP wasn’t trying to be mean about it, though knowing the internet, I wouldn’t be surprised if netizens found more than one way to one-up the malicious compliance here.

What the internet did do, however, is appreciate the post and get vocal in the comment section. This was where people were questioning the sustainability of the system, with the university’s approach only providing around 17,500 possible variations until duplicates start to pop up. But OP explained that the system just adds a 2 or a 3 or whatever number there is to the name and calls it a day.

Others shared stories with their unfortunate initials, like PMS or TIT, or an unfortunate last name, like Null, which, if you know anything about computers, will definitely screw up the programming if it doesn’t account for it. On the bright side, it does, however, get you some good program testing done.

Now, could JEFF have been a coincidence when his parents were naming him? We asked about it, and he did confirm that his parents were in on it: “Of course they intended it. I can’t imagine a parent choosing a name without considering the initials.”

The post got a solid 14,400 upvotes (with a 96% approval rating) with a couple of Reddit awards, which aren’t really Oscars, but it shows love, and that’s what really matters. Incidentally, you can check out the post here. Or you can take a peek at OP’s website, where you can check out his book Mastering Regular Expressions about “geeky but useful computer science,” as well as his blog and other useful things.

But before you go anywhere, why not leave us a comment with your stories of usernames, initials, or just sysadmin troubles, without sparing the juicy alphanumeric details, in the comment section below!

And folks couldn’t approve of the maliciousness of the compliance more, giving the post over 14K upvotes and sharing their stories

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