That time that I was right. And I won. 🏆

Me: You owe me a 🤏 tiny little trophy 🤏 if I’m right.

Him: 😐

Me: It’ll say, “Claire is sometimes right.”

I need you to know right off the bat:

I won.

I can’t stand it when people insist on unnecessary steps.

Especially if those unnecessary steps are self-defeating.

In this case, someone was insisting we send them an image of an executive’s social security card.

Social security cards themselves are silly.

It’s a piece of paper with your name and 9 numbers printed with a dot matrix printer.

And we all pretend like this is the most secure information in the world.

IT’S NOT EVEN LAMINATED!

Asking to see the card itself is one thing, since no one in the world but the Social Security office has a dot matrix printer anymore.

But an IMAGE of it?

F*** that.

You’re asking someone to take a photograph of their “super secure” piece of paper.

A photo that will be in their camera roll.

Then you’re asking them to upload the file ~ which usually means it needs to be downloaded to a hard drive, uploaded to the cloud, forgotten about, and never deleted…

…Except that the person who’s doing whatever the “secure” dumb process probably isn’t the same as the person whose social security card it is.

So that’s another unsecure step in your chain of custody…

Then someone on the other side downloads this image of the super-secret document onto their hard drive so they can look at it…

And what? Determine that it’s not AI?

The number itself is the security. Not the image.

It belongs in as few places as possible.

Not your photo library.

Not your downloads folder.

So anyway.

Back to the bet I won.

Him: They’re going to need the CEO’s social security card to register with the California Secretary of State.

Me: No they don’t.

Him: Yes they do.

Me: No they don’t.

Him: If they say they need it, they need it.

Me: No they don’t. I’m registered with the California Secretary of State and I lost my social security card in the 90s.

Him: Okay. I’ll check with the team and get back to you.

Me: If they don’t, you owe me 🤏a tiny little trophy.🤏

A few days later…

Him: They don’t need it for the CA Secretary of State. They need it for the Employment Development Division.

Me: No they don’t.

Him: Yes they do.

Me: My trophy had better say, 🏆 CLAIRE IS SOMETIMES RIGHT.

You know what I did?

You betcha.

I registered the company myself.

Took 10 minutes.

There *was* a question that asked for ID.

It asked for a driver’s license.

Not a social security card.

It was an optional field.

We got our EDD number last week. No social security card needed.

Where’s my trophy?

🏆

🙆‍♀️

—-

👋 I’m Claire. I was right.

Do you want to be right, too?

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