[Shengster]

Great response. It's hard to get any real work done when you have to constantly context switch between different things. Ed didn't know that he'd have to waste 3 hours of his time. It was only supposed to take 10 minutes after all.

[babebridou]

I've often had people ask me how I could context switch all the time like I did and stay sane and a bit productive. I usually reply this: "I might be a bit rusty but I can still dual task". It's generally enough for them to realize that they are asking me to do something that they would never accept to do themselves. They might not know the first thing about computer science, project management or actual IT work, but at least they understand that they're doing something wrong when they see me multitask only because of the additional work they give me.

Call that passive-aggressivity, social engineering or mind games, I call it just a game. Multitasking at work is tons of fun when you've practiced enough to recognize and leave all error-prone activities out of the picture. And it's very good to make people double-check their problem before they come bother you, even though you're behaving like an open and helpful guy all the time.