office check-in

[cellio]

Before the pandemic, I went to the office every day, as one does. Our office manager did what he could to make it an ok environment, but it has the usual pathologies. Pandemic-induced working from home has been good for me in oh so many ways. I'm fortunate to be at a point in my career where I am quite comfortable telling my employer "I really do insist". (There's some pressure, mild so far.) I'll go to the office if there's a specific reason to, like the group outing we had a few months ago, but most of the people I work with aren't local, so going to the office is social, not productive.

On the day of that outing, I learned -- via a coworker finding out the hard way -- that corporate security disables badges that haven't been used in 90 days. That makes sense, though doing it silently isn't so great. Fortunately for me, I last changed my domain password around the time of that outing, so the "time to change your password" reminder serves double duty.

A few days ago I changed my password, and today I went to the office to wave a badge at a sensor. While I was there I cleared out the last of my personal belongings; demonstrably, I no longer need to keep an umbrella or a spare USB charging cable in my desk drawer there.

Comments

[goljerp]

I'm mostly here to comment on the 90 day password life. Do the powers that be *want* people to be writing their passwords on post-its, or having passwords like securePasswordn (where n is an integer)? Because that's what I'd guess that policy would do...

(My office wants be back every day; I've been going in 3-4 days in practice; fewer if I have a good reason. I wear the best masks I can, all the time... and eat lunch outside.)

[cellio]

or having passwords like securePasswordn (where n is an integer)

Ding ding ding ding ding. That's what most of us do. It's a stupid policy. (A variant I've heard is to append, e.g. 22q4. I asked this person how a year/quarter suffix meshes with a 90-day policy, and he said that q5 is short.)