Story Of A Matron

At my book club last night, this story came out.

A mother at one of Toronto's most prestigious private schools was in a fretful state one night because she was drunk and couldn't remember her password to her account to log into her son's school web site. She was distraught over divorce proceedings that were happening in her life.

Out of frustration, she tracked down the school's technical support person in the middle of the night and demanded that he help her recover her password. The tech support wanted to help, but it meant looking into his database and seeing the passwords of all the other parents. Instead of doing that, he offered to help her try out variations of her password in hopes of hitting on the right one, if she could only remember what her password might be.

The mother was angry that he would not breach the database. So she started screaming at him and finally succumbed to offering what her password might be. It was a variation on "youfuckingbastardmotherfucker". The tech support tried out different arrangements of the phrase and after what seemed like hours, bingo, he hit on "youmotherfuckerfuckingbastard".

The next morning, the mother phoned the school's principal to complain that the tech support hadn't been helpful to her, wasted her time, and was discourteous. Fortunately for the tech support, he had the smarts to record the service call. When the school principal raised the complaint with him, he played the tape for him. The principal heard a woman scream, "It's youfuckingbastard, how about youmotherfuckingbastard. I don't know... Try youbastardmotherfucker. How should I know? Just look into my account, you idiot. You're the motherfuckingbastard..."

So the principal got up, left the room, and never raised the complaint with the tech support again.