I worked helpdesk and near-helpdesk jobs for a number of years. And one thing I found is that about 2% of the users are responsible for 95% of helpdesk work, calls and tickets. It’s an extremely uneven distribution.

At one place I worked where we tracked tickets and non-ticket contacts, one woman alone was responsible for more work and tickets than the entire rest of the company combined. She had constant “problems” with her machine, with her network, with remembering how to do anything more complicated than clicking on an icon and innumerable other nearly all self-caused issues.

At one point all three of the techs I had working directly for me were involved in various of her tickets (as in actively troubleshooting) — and thus were unavailable to help any other users.

The first time I brought it up to management they said, “We’re here to help all users, even the less competent.”

And then when those other users started complaining my techs were not available for them, I let management know why, showed them evidence and let them decide what to do. That week, the woman was banned from using the helpdesk at all without going through two layers of management first. We rarely heard from her again¹.

Admittedly, she was an outlier (though not that unusual). But the truth is a relatively-small contingent of the utterly incompetent will monopolize the average helpdesk, especially at a smaller company.

1. Which made me wonder how much of what she was doing was to get out of working? A lot of tickets are put in for precisely that reason too at most helpdesks.