After orientation, Kimberly gives us another bad omen—several sets of randomly generated log-ins and passwords to memorize. None are the same; few are even related. We’re not allowed to write them down in any way—paper, pens, and cell phones are forbidden anywhere but the break room—and they’re not easy.* Kimberly will waste a lot of time over the next five weeks reading out half the class’s log-ins and passwords for various systems when we need to use them. It’s a good three weeks before I have mine completely down. I recognize the password situation, like highly scrutinized bathroom breaks, as a dead canary in a coal mine.

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There’s so many passwords because Convergys’s computer system is actually about eight separate systems kludged together like Frankenstein’s monster. Each system has its own log-in, password, and set of uses and rules, and they don’t play particularly well together.

Kimberly’s an excellent teacher and does her best to keep the weeks of memorization interesting, but the systems don’t make it easy on her. Since Convergys is nominally paperless, our entire curriculum is online. But the computers are ancient, pages we need are frequently 404’d, and often half the passwords won’t work. Everything feels really bootleg compared to the sleek efficiency of Amazon.