Trapped in Google Verification Code Purgatory

Dear Google:

In 2016, you shelled out
$1.65 billion to buy YouTube and
added it to your monolithic holdings. In the process, you inherited an implied
contract with me as a YouTube user.
That contract comes with certain expectations of customer service. Therein lays
the problem.

Earlier this week, I
tried to log into my employer’s YouTube account.
Since I had not logged on in some time, it required me to undergo a
verification process. You would think that would be straightforward. But you
would be wrong. Oh, so very, very wrong.

At 1:05 pm, I received
an e-mail with a Google Verification Code to use to show that Google could
reach me at the specified e-mail address. I dutifully entered the code.

At 1:07 pm, I received
another e-mail with another Google Verification Code. Stupid, bleeping system! I just entered a code! But okay, I’ll do it
again.

At 1:08 pm, I received a
“Welcome Back to Your Account” e-mail advising that the account had been
successfully recovered. Really? I wasn’t aware that it was lost. Alas, the
account, apparently rescued from internet oblivion, was not cooperative. It now
would not accept my password. Stupid,
bleepity-bleep system! What the bleep is wrong with you?!

The only way forward at
this point was to reset my password. I dutifully followed the Change Your
Password process.

At 1:10 pm, I received
an e-mail indicating that a text message had been sent to the telephone number
on record with yet another verification code. Stupid, bleeping, bleepity-bleep system! You sent just sent a text message
to a corporate telephone number!

The only way forward at
this point seemed to be to change the telephone number. So I followed the
process and changed the telephone number to my personal cell phone. A text
message arrived with yet another verification
code which I angrily hammered into the keyboard.

All good now, right? Oh,
hell no! Your AI system decided that what was called for was to set up a new YouTube channel for me. AI, my ass! And
the final indignity, when I tried once again to log into my employer’s YouTube account, it again refused my
password!

You
stupid, bleeping, bleepity-bleep, expletive, bleepity-bleep, expletive bleeping
system!

At this point, I had no
choice but to give up and ask someone else to access the account and retrieve
the statistics I needed.

Google, I realize that
in metaphorical terms, where the Internet is the ocean, I am a mere Krill the
size of a single pixel and you are the granddaddy of all Blue Whales. So my
rant, as I languish in verification code purgatory, will make scarcely a ripple
in your world.

But one day, one fateful
day, all us pissed off end users will rise up in a mob, storm the Google office
and kick your virtual ass. There is no verification code secure enough to stop
us!

~  Now Available Online
from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of
Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which
was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

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