Tag Archives: password

WiFi

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Person Holding Wi-fi Stencil PaperThree East Indian men came into the Mercantile on a Sunday morning. The first one asked me if we had any food, and I directed him to our shelves of snacks.

The two other men came in shortly after. The short young guy with puffy hair asked for food too, or at least I though he did. When I directed him to the snacks, he got exasperated and said, No. Like a banana. Apparently, he had asked for fruit.

I spared him my boisterous rendition of “Yes, We Have No Bananas” and simply told him we had no fruit. He bought a Payday bar and a granola bar, and then the men were on their way.

The other clerk had gone to lunch when the short fruitophile guy came back into the store. Excuse me, he said politely. Do you know the password to the WiFi?

Yes, I said, which I thought was the truth, but I’m not allowed to give it out, which was certainly the truth.

The young man looked very sad. Is there anyone here who can give it to me?

I shook my head and said no. All employees were under strict orders not to share the WiFi password with anyone not employed by the company that runs the store and the campground.

I don’t have signal, the young man said, looking sadder by the second.

No one has signal up here, I told him.

Knowing he was not alone in his lack of signal did not seem to comfort him. He stood there and looked at me with his big, dark eyes.

Do you have an emergency? I asked. If someone had been bleeding or his car had been on fire, I would have handed him the store phone.

No, he said, and I appreciated his honesty. I get super annoyed when folks try to convince me that their lack of planning is an emergency.

I haven’t talked to my family in like five days, he continued,

(That’s why I come up here! a camping friend of mine exclaimed when I told her this story.)

Once you get down to Tiny Babylon, you’ll have service again, I tried to comfort him.

My friend has the car, he said. Maybe he could only go where his friend drove, but I’m not sure how the ownership of the care affected his cell phone service.

There’s a facial expression I found myself making when I had nothing more to say to someone in the Mercantile. I pressed my lips together and turned down the corners of my mouth. This expression was accompanied by a little noise which sounded something like Hmm. This is how I conveyed that I could do nothing to help and the conversation was over. This reaction was the last thing the young man got from me. He looked at me sadly for several long seconds, then he turned around and walked out the door.

I found out later the same man had asked the other clerk for the password as she was coming back from lunch and had asked Javier the camp host for it too. Of course, they told him no, but I was a little miffed he’d asked after I told him no one would be able to give it to him.

Javier pointed out to me that although he’d put the password in his phone and he was now allowed to access the internet, he couldn’t access the password anymore. He wasn’t able to share the password with anyone even if he wanted to because he couldn’t find it on his phone.

I poked around on my phone and discovered I was in the same situation. The password was in my phone, doing its job to allow me to access the store’s WiFi, but I sure as hell couldn’t figure out how to see the password. (I had the password in a note on my old phone, but the battery on that one died so completely, I couldn’t get to any screen even when it was plugged in. I hadn’t thought to copy the password before my phone was totally gone.)

I was pleased when I realized I could truthfully tell people who wanted the password that I didn’t know it. I didn’t have to tell people I wasn’t allowed to give it out; all I had to do was admit my ignorance.

Image courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/blur-cliff-fingers-grass-386135/.

Attempted Bribery and a Lie

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Person Holding Wifi Logo CardShe tried to bribe me; I told the lie.

It was Friday morning at the Mercantile, and members of a large family from Indiana and Illinois staying in the campground were shopping. The parents of one family were probably in their early 30s, and they had four kids—three boys and a girl. The oldest kid was probably 10, the youngest 5. The kids ran around touching things and playing with puppets while receiving practically no supervision from either parent.

The mom of the family noticed the WiFi networks on her phone, or maybe she had noticed it before she stepped foot in the Mercantile. Do you have internet here? she asked. Since she must have known there were networks available, what she really wanted was the password so she could utilize one.

I shook my head and made a sad face. No, I said, then realized her phone was telling her otherwise, so I added, not for public use.

At least once a day, someone asked about accessing the store’s WiFi. If I didn’t think they’d seen the networks on their phone, I just said no. If the visitor already had a phone out, I’d say the internet wasn’t available for public use, and maybe I’d add it was only to run the cash register, which was a fib in and of itself. All of the company employees in the area had the password to one of the networks and connected to it to so we could access the internet. Still, I used the only for the cash register fib when I saw that a visitor was not going to simply give up on the idea of using the internet while near the Mercantile. Most people were obviously disappointed but didn’t push the issue.

I tried to help people by finding out why they wanted to use the WiFi. Most people told me with panic that their GPS wasn’t working. They didn’t seem to feel any better when I told them that no one’s GPS was working on the top of the mountain, but I could usually give them directions to where they wanted to go. For the people who wanted to post pictures or check their social media, there was nothing I could do to help.

It seemed like the mom on this Friday morning was going to let the topic of WiFi drop, but then she brought it up again as her family piled their souvenirs on the counter on front of me for purchase.

Couldn’t she use the internet for a few minutes? she asked. Couldn’t we just give her the password? I’ll pay you, she offered.

I knew what was going to happen if we gave her the password. She would go back to her extended family camping on three sites and brag that she had access to the WiFi. Maybe her family would beg, or maybe she’d hand out the password with no coaxing, but I was confident she’d share it and all the adults in her group and the older kids too would be on our porch, logged in to the WiFi.

She offered to pay me, but I just said no. That’s when I told the big lie.

I could tell she wouldn’t give up if I simply said no again or told her it was against store policy to share the password. I knew she’d promise not the give the password to anyone else or even tell anyone she had it, but I was confident she wouldn’t be able to keep such a score a secret. I knew I had to tell her something that would make an impression on her. That’s when I told her the big lie.

I’ll pay you, she said, and I said, No. If I give you the password, I’ll get fired. You don’t have enough money. I shared this information flatly, matter-of-factly, no smile on my face, not like I was joking.

I knew I probably wouldn’t get fired if I gave her the password, even if The Big Boss Man somehow found out about it, but I knew if The Big Boss Man found out I’d done such a thing, he would not be happy with me. At the least, I’d get a stern lecture. At worst, if I gave the password to this woman and she shared it, her extended family could use up our monthly allotment of internet access or crash our system from overuse. Why would I want to bring any negative consequences on myself for what I’m sure would only be an offering of a .few bucks?

I don’t like lying and I try not to do it, but in this case, as I suspected it would, my lie shut the lady down. She quit asking for the password. Perhaps she didn’t want my job loss on her conscience. Perhaps she realized I wasn’t going to give her the password no matter what she offered or how much she begged.

Image courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/blur-clear-sky-close-up-fingers-423367/.