Instagram Armageddon
It’s Saturday morning and I’m having my breakfast thinking of an idea for an Instagram post highlighting some of our favourite pieces of the season so far. I was about to have a scroll to get further inspiration and bang it happened, we’d been hacked! I was locked out and couldn’t get in. I spent the first few minutes scratching my head in a confused daze then the calls and messages started coming in from friends and customers telling me our Instagram account had started promoting bitcoin. Thanks to you all for getting in touch so quickly.
I spent my drive in that morning swearing out loud and generally being annoyed, no Dolly Parton podcast today (see last week). I opened up the shop not in the best of spirits to say the least. Soon after Gary was on the phone, he gave his son a hard time for not being sufficiently awake to help us out with our crisis, Luke works in Cyber Security but it was 10.30 and when I was his age I definitely couldn’t function before 12.00 on a Saturday morning.
Next on the scene was Sasha, our newest team member, she’s also significantly younger than the rest of us. I was hoping that between them we might find a away out of our social media hole. The next couple of hours we juggled running the shop on a busy Saturday with trying every conceivable way of getting back into our account, nothing worked. It was Instagram Armageddon!
I then made the executive decision to follow that tried tested route when it comes to IT frustration, we gave up!
What’s the worst that can happen, our customers and friends are a smart bunch, surely they’re not going to believe that Tonic has suddenly become expert in bitcoin procurement? Still having no idea how we’d get back control we got on with doing what we do best, selling decent clothes to good people.
Not long after, we met Peter and his wife, he was interested in a striped knit from French brand Parages, they were very complimentary about the shop and told me they’d recently moved to London from San Francisco. Then it happened…. Peter asks “are you on Instagram?”
We collectively groan “Oh don’t mention Instagram we’ve been hacked and we can’t get back in!” I think I maybe swore a bit too, not particularly professional I know but it had been a challenging day. Well, it only goes and turns out that Peter works for…… Instagram!
What is going on, how is this happening? At this point I think my head might explode, surely this is a wind up! But no he really does and he’s sympathetic that it can be a bit of a nightmare when this kind of thing happens. He takes the details and my contact information, he says he can’t promise anything but he’d reach out to his colleagues to see if they can help. I honestly have no idea how these random coincidences happen but for some reason, and thankfully for me this time they do.
At the end of a pretty intense day we decide an after work drink is required, it is 5 minutes after sitting down that the email arrives from Instagram telling me “the email address had changed and to follow a link to reset the password”
We were back in control and no longer in Instagram Armageddon!
Thank you Peter, see you soon and here’s to the power of synchronicity
Phil ✊
