- By: Áine Byrne
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The Day I Ate My Client’s Password (And What It Teaches Us About Business)
We’ve all had those moments at work where time seems to freeze. You realise you’ve typed a message into the wrong chat, or posted a celebratory GIF into a conversation that absolutely wasn’t celebrating anything. Every alarm bell in your head starts ringing, your stomach drops, adrenaline surges, time slows down, and the startle effect kicks in. You frantically try to delete it, hoping nobody has managed to read or see it.
But the other morning, over breakfast, my husband gave me a whole new scenario to dread. He’d had a dream where he was sat with a client, who happened to look remarkably like a villain from a series we’d recently been watching, going through their finances together. Giant custard cream biscuits sat on the table for a bit of a sugar boost. The client logged into their accounts and, to prove it was really them, held up a very specific donut crumb, icing side out, to the camera. Their biometric of choice. Unique pattern, instant access, sorted. Then he reached for a biscuit and, without realising it, ate the crumb.
Chaos erupted. The client was frantically searching the desk while my husband stood up in horror, realising he’d just digested their financial access. He was apologising before they had even finished looking for it.
A client locked out of their own money because the one thing proving who they were was now somewhere in his digestive system.
After scraping myself off the floor from laughing so hard at the story, I realised there was a surprisingly relevant business lesson hiding inside it.
When Your Only Proof Of Identity Is A Single, Irreplaceable Thing, You’re One Small Crumb Away From Disaster
That client didn’t have a backup. No second crumb in a drawer somewhere, no alternative way in. One point of failure, and it happened to be edible. The risk wasn’t that the system was insecure. The risk was that it was absurdly dependent on one thing.
Most SMEs have their own version of the donut crumb. It’s the thing everyone assumes will always be there, until it suddenly isn’t. It might be the one person who knows how the invoicing system actually works. The single supplier with no alternative lined up. The password only the founder remembers. The client relationship that lives entirely in one person’s head rather than anywhere the business can access.
It’s fine, right up until the crumb gets eaten.
The Fix Isn’t More Security, It’s Less Fragility
We often talk about security as keeping the wrong people out. But resilience is about making sure the right people can still get in when something unexpected happens. This isn’t really about verification systems, obviously. It’s about asking a simple question across your business: if this one thing disappeared tomorrow, whether that’s a person, a password, or a process, could you still get in?
If the honest answer is no, that’s worth sorting before it becomes a very awkward apology across a plate of biscuits.
Three Business Lessons Hiding Inside A Very Strange Breakfast Conversation
Single points of failure are everywhere
If your operation depends on one person, one supplier, or one undocumented process, you're relying on a business equivalent of a donut crumb.
Every process has to survive contact with actual humans
People get distracted. People get busy. People eat things they shouldn't. A good process accounts for that reality.
When things do go wrong, speed matters.
We all swallow the metaphorical donut crumb once in a while. Whether you've eaten a client's security crumb or made a genuine business mistake, owning your biscuit-related mistake quickly is usually the shortest route to a solution.
Sometimes the best business insight comes from the strangest places, don’t you think? This one came from a dream, but I think the lesson holds up in real life.
So, next time you’re setting up a vital process for your business, ask yourself: Is this system foolproof, or is it delicious enough to be accidentally eaten by a consultant? And maybe, just keep the snacks a safe distance from the keyboard. Particularly if your security strategy can be defeated by my husband’s habit of reaching for a giant custard cream.
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