Return of the Net-Neophyte

On Friday, about 45 minutes before closing, the door opened and a semi-familiar looking woman walked in.

"Oh... You're here again," she said dismally. Now, her tone did not suggest that my presence was necessarily a bad thing. I think instead, her tone actually meant that she would have preferred to have found someone on shift who didn't have quite as much dirt on her as I did, but that I would do in a pinch. I came to this conclusion a few seconds later, after I heard her next words and realized why she looked so familiar.

"Could, um... could you help me set up an e-mail... again?" she asked.

Oh, no, I thought. Not her!

Yes indeedy, the Internet Neophyte had returned. This was the patron who drove me nigh unto insanity back in July by taking damn near an hour to sign up for a Hotmail account--WITH my help! This was the same patron who refused to stop using her dog's name as both her username AND password despite both my and Hotmail's insistence that she cease doing so. This was the same patron who had then refused to write down either of her final username and password choices, despite my repeated entreaties that she do so, and then had that fact bite her squar in the taint when she couldn't get back into her own account after having JUST CREATED IT! Yes, this was the same patron who then had to use Hotmail's I'M A DAMNED MORON AND FORGOT MY PASSWORD link, then, when faced with having to choose a new password asked me to choose one for her. I chose the word orange, the same color as our internet signs, which I hoped would be easy for her to remember. As you will soon see, I was WRONG!!!!!

Ms. I.N. Phyte had just asked me to help her set up a new e-mail account. What she was REALLY asking me, though, was: Would you just do all the work for me since I'm incapable of doing it on my own?

Nuh uh. That was not going to happen.

I told her, "Well, I can put you on a computer and show you where to go, but..."

"But I'd have to do it myself," she finished for me, returning to her dismal tone. "Do I have time?"

I looked at my watch. "You've got 45 minutes."

On the way back to the computers, Ms. Phyte explained to me that she had not been faithfully checking her e-mail at all over the last two months so her Hotmail account was no more. I thought this unlikely, as Hotmail usually only puts accounts in drydock when they've gone unused for a time, but they will allow you back in if you jump through a couple of minor hoops. So I logged her onto a computer and brought up Hotmail for her to try and login anyway. It booted her out saying either her username or password was incorrect. Why were they incorrect? Oh, maybe because she had NO CLUE what they really were! She tried again and again to no effect.

"Errm. I just can't remember my real password," she said.

Barely able to keep the deep levels of frustration and loathing out of my voice, I said, "I do."

I pointed at the orange internet sign, then leaned over and typed "orange" into the password blank. Still, she was denied. This meant either she'd changed her password--not likely given her inability to login in the first place--or she'd gotten her username wrong. I was pretty sure the later was the case, as she'd gone through five username choices when she'd set up the account back in July. I should have just gone up front and re-read my original write up of the event and then I would have remembered it was her dog's name. As it stood, though, I only recalled the password and only because I had a memory-link to it taped there on the monitor itself. Still, I was pretty sure her original one, whatever it was, had three numbers affixed to the end of it and the one she kept trying then didn't.

"Are you sure that's the right username?"

"Oh, yes. This is it," she said.

"Didn't you have numbers in it?

"Oh, no. This one is it."

Yet, wonder upon wonders, it still didn't work! In fact, Hotmail gave no indication that there was any sort of account with that particular username. It didn't even give us the I'M A DAMNED MORON AND FORGOT MY PASSWORD link, cause the password wasn't the problem.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts, I suggested she would be better off starting from scratch. I loaded up the New Account page and then I hauled ass for the front to get a pencil and paper, which I brought to her and, yet again, told her to write down her username and password AS SOON AS SHE HAD CHOSEN THEM. Then I got the hell out of the computer hall so as to avoid any accidental chokings.

I knew running away was futile. Throughout the oh-so-lengthy Hotmail signup process, Ms. Phyte kept coming to find me and drag me back to answer obscenely simple questions for her. Like: "What time zone are we in?" and "What does it mean when it says `Type in the characters you see in the security image'?" While answering these and many other questions, I took a gander at the paper I'd given her to write everything on. She'd written a username on it all right, but it didn't actually match up with the one I saw on the screen which had a _wholeotherword affixed to it.

Dammit, why can't people figure shit like this out? You have to write down the WHOLE USERNAME!!! Not half of it!!! ALL OF IT!!!!

With admirable restraint, I told her this in far more polite terms and with less verbal violence than I really wanted to use.

"I hope I'm not keeping you from anything?" she said after finally writing the whole username down.

"Oh, no," I said. "I have to be here until seven anyway."

At ten minutes before closing time, a full thirty-five minutes after she'd begun the Hotmail sign up process, Ms. Phyte finally finished up. I checked over her work, told her to hit continue, then I personally skipped through all of Hotmail's Spam Sign-Up pages and showed her the new account...

...again.