Pilot fish and his help desk colleagues do a lot of password resets and have learned that it’s best to sympathize with the callers and normalize forgetting those strings of letters, numbers and symbols. It can happen to anybody is the message.

But some forgetfulness is more normal than others, finds fish, who told one user, “I'm going to reset your password to your last name, with the first letter capitalized.”

Reports fish: “He said, ‘Wait a minute. Let me get a pencil and paper to write that down.

“I then spelled his last name for him and reminded him to capitalize the first letter. He thanked me and hung up the phone.

“Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe how this felt!”

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