Email Downtime More Stressful Than Divorce

from the get-a-grip,-people dept

A new study suggests just how dependent business people have become on email. In the US, twenty percent of people immediately get angry if their email doesn’t work. However, the calm ones don’t stay that way very long if things don’t come back. After five minutes downtime, another 13% have switched over to the angry side of the fence. By the half hour point, two-thirds of users are furious, and by the one hour mark, a full 82% of email-less business users are ready to burn down their cubicles. Folks over in the UK are a little bit calmer early on, but after an hour, their true colors come through, and they’re just as angry as those of us on this side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, if you think the users have stress problems, think about the IT staff that is charged with keeping all those users happy. Many find it incredibly stressful to keep all those workers from revolting. 20% expect to be fired if they were to ever let downtime reach a full day. A full 37% say that if they ever experienced a week’s downtime, it would be more stressful than going through a divorce.


Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “Email Downtime More Stressful Than Divorce”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
2 Comments
Paul Duffield (user link) says:

Email downtime

This is so very true.

The thing that amazes me too is that even though we bust a gut in support to fix these issues which are often/normally no fault of ours “they” non IT staff still want to shoot the messenger!

By comparisson to many IT jobs other staff jobs are generally relatively simple and straightforward. I think we should triple our fees for people if they want to do business and put us under unjustified personal pressure.

Anyone reading this not in IT spare a thought for the guys working through the night on extremely complex issues and difficult issues at times to keep the business going as best they can!

Budgets from company to company vary considerably and everyone wants 99.99 % uptime but faint when you give them the bill for additional servers or out of hours support.

It’s a trade off of course but generally almost without exception every IT support person I know will do considerable extra overtime and make considerable efforts to keep people working in times of crisis.

Ed Palmer (user link) says:

Email Recovery

This is what Microsoft said about Mailretriever.net!

“MailRetriever helps restore sanity to the chaotic and stressful daily life of Exchange administrators and network engineers. By delivering an easy-to-use application that delivers needed message-level recovery capabilities, MailRetriever is a great compliment to the Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager solution for protecting and recovering Microsoft Exchange Server. If your business requires restoring lost and deleted messages, Microsoft suggests enhancing your DPM solution with MailRetriever.”
-Marc Kamstrup-Braad
Senior Product Manager Microsoft DPM

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...