IT Scapegoat Formula

Our Internet connection was down for exactly ten minutes the other morning.

At first, I thought it was no big deal. Comcast had it fixed pretty quickly, and the users could still access the database and internal network in the meantime.

However, we missed a milestone by about 4 hours. Management wanted to know why.

Suddenly, those ten minutes magically turned into the most important ten minutes of the day.

It seems that a disruption of x amount of time = x² loss of productivity.


For instance, when a user stands outside my office talking obnoxiously loud for ten minutes, it doesn’t impact his productivity. But take the Internet down…


Weird. I blame sunspots and global warming.

Let me call Comcast and see if they can fix it.


What fun blame games do you play at your office?
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