I can't log on and other sign language

"Can't log on." A woman says quietly as she balances the door on the end of her shoe and leans into the room waving her ID at us.

I try to ignore her bobbing about as she tries to hold the door open with her foot and pass her ID to me at the same time. She wobbles slightly, realises that the door can support itself and gives it up. She steps into the room and looks at me expectantly as the door slams.

I check her account out and all seems ok, I reset the password for good measure. I tell her what I have changed it to and that she can setup a new password when she logs in.

The woman glares at me with a blank expression, maybe trying to communicate with me telepathically. This doesn't appear to work for some reason and she is forced to ask me what I mean.

I explain to her again that I have changed her password so that she can login, and that she needs to change it herself. She gives me another quizzical look and goes her on her way, letting the door slam again as she whirls out of the room.

"Still not working" she says as she bursts back into our office a few minutes later.

"What error are you getting?" I ask her.

She shrugs loudly and silently to show that she doesn't care what error message appeared, she just wants me to fix the problem now, without any information.

"It's not working" she tells me. (Yes dear, I am aware of that!)

"What error are you getting?" I ask again.

She shrugs again, giving her shoulders a good, thorough workout, but refusing to answer.

"It just doesn't work." She says finally.

"So, you are at the log on screen, you press CTRL, ALT, DEL and type in your username and the password I set and nothing happens at all?"

A nod and another shrug.

"There must be an error." I tell her.

This time I get a very long shrug, her shoulders raised for almost a complete ten seconds.
I check her account again, still no problems. I reset it again.

With another shrug and not so much as a thank you she is off again, shoulders and all.

...and back to our office.

This time after some more shoulder action, I go back with her. Although asking her which room she was in proved to be as difficult as asking for an error message. I got another unenthusiastic, non-caring gesture of her shoulders (they must be tired by now) and a mumbled "down there."

She didn't point, maybe her arms were tired after all, but I gathered "down there" to be down the next corridor. It wasn't until we actually got to the room that she gave any indication as to which one she had been working in.

She leads me to the computer she was using and points at the screen like a zombie. 'Computer bad...'

"So, you are logged on to the computer?" I ask as I see internet explorer loaded and her personal email open for all to read as well as a social networking site on the next tab. It's amazing how they can always remember the password to their personal email, but using a company system makes them forget their cats name.

She nods.

"So what's the problem?"

She does another ET impression as she points again at the screen, towards another tab in IE. I then realise that she is trying to log into an internal website. The idea is to log on with exactly the same credentials as the computer. Would have been nice if she had actually told us what she was logging on to. In addition, the error was "incorrect username or password."

No shit! First she had typed her password in WRONG! Then I had changed it and left the box ticked for her to change it when she logged in. She obviously hadn't done this and had just tried the password over and over on the site.

This is my fault obviously. Not her own for not telling us what she was trying to do, for not conveying the problem to us or even for typing the password incorrectly in the first place. Bloody users!

I log her off the computer completely. I thought that maybe it would probably have been best to leave it that way, but company policy says that all should have equal access to the own personal email accounts and Facebook pages (sorry, I meant all company systems.)

I attempt to log her back on with the password I set. Of course nothing is that simple, by this time the dozy woman has finally locked out the account. I had to go back to the office, unlock and reset her password for a third time.

I log her back on, and stand over her while she types a new password. I got a couple of shrugs when I explained it had to be something new and six characters or more, but I had come to expect this and I took this to mean she understood. I was wrong, it took three attempts.

Logged in at last I load the website myself to avoid more violent shoulder shrugs and get her to enter her username and then the password she had just set. This took two attempts, but she managed it without locking herself out... again.

She looks up at me and glares again.

"It's working now" she tells me. I was slightly taken aback by the sudden sentence of more than a few syllables.

I glared back at her, shrugged my shoulders and left her to it.

Communication is a wonderful thing... Or so I have heard.