Password Plus

If somebody wanted to really screw up my life they could take the tattered piece of paper taped to my desk and use it. On that piece of paper are scribbled passwords. No, not my bank account passwords. Those are the only ones that I've been able to commit to memory. These are passwords for the electric company, phone company, email accounts, and various other internet accounts that require passwords. Some of them need me to use an uppercase letter combined with lowercase, a number, and a symbol such as an ampersand, aka the 'at' sign. Others need nothing more than a simple word. The rest fall somewhere in between. Yesterday I tried to retrieve some information from my Social Security account. I went to the SSA web site and tried to sign on. As soon as I hit the enter key, a warning flashed.

Error!

Wrong user name. So I went through the gyrations they required to find out my user name. With that in hand I tried again.

Error!

Wrong password. It wasn't the wrong password. I had entered it exactly as I had scribbled it on the piece of paper. I tried again.

Error!

Again, wrong according to the United States Government. So I tried to reset the password. Error, error, error. I had no other recourse but to phone the Social Security Administration to get the information I needed. I dialed the number, punched in the appropriate digit for the automated answering machine, and I got this. "The estimated wait time to speak to a representative is one hour, and fifteen minutes."