A recent survey of network administrators and help desk personnel shows that lots of people are pummeling their computers when the $#@%$ things don’t work right. In the online survey, conducted by network analysis and reporting-tool vendor Concord Communications Inc., 83 percent of 150 respondents reported witnessing such attacks.
The survey didn’t track the specific causes or results of all those smashed monitors and keyboards, but judging by the poor communication between users and information technology staffs it took to fix problems, frustration and impatience no doubt lit the fuse to many an explosion. Almost 9 in 10 respondents said it took more than six e-mail or voice-mail messages between a user and IT to resolve a single problem; more than a third said it took more than 15.
Not all users are stressed-out, of course. As any help-desker will attest, some users are just plain daffy. The goofy-user stories respondents offered included the following: