techrecovery | The Bar is Raised again... (Reply)

Backstory: All employees are required to take a training course regarding hazard communication. This is the first year the course is being offered online. Each user, at his or her leisure, logs into a site and does the course. Of note: Our department does not administer the service.

To the story...

So... [stupid_user] can't log on, and, of course, we're the computer guys, and we solve everything even if it's not our problem. So, I politely inform him (via his supervisor) that we have no control over this. I suggested he use the provided "forget password" feature to see if he could log on.

Backstory again: The site uses self-registration. During the reg process, one is asked to supply a hint question as well an an answer to this question. While registering myself, I had no idea what this meant (The purpose of the "Hint question / Hint answer" was not spelled out on the page), but seeing the "hint question" phrase on the Forget Password screen turned on a light bulb.

So, on a whim, I enter his user name. A question comes up, so he did in fact register. The question was "What is my middle name"

To recap:
1) User forgot the password he made up himself.
2) User forgets the answer to the question "What is my middle name"; calls tech support for help.