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.

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.

And if you do happen to try writing some code amid the constant interruptions, you stand a good chance of introducing some stupid error that could take hours to debug later. Best not to even try to code under such conditions.

I'll add that, after enough time, one can start to do this as a self-defense mechanism. Trying to switch back and forth -- and remember to keep switching back and forth -- becomes exhausting. And after this has happened to you enough in the first few years of your career, you can also start to get pretty pissed off. Deliberately "opting out" of the counter-productive switching, and/or of dwelling on its context, can be a way of retaining your sanity. Just document your time and how it was consumed, so that you can't be accused of being the cause of missing targets.

P.S. I'll add that if the boss had taken Ed's suggestion, all of this could have happened asynchronously in email or the ticket system. Especially if the user has been given a copy of SnagIt or similar screen capture software on their system (along with strong admonition to never "snag" confidential data) and been shown how to use it.

Screenshots (or these days I suppose, video) go into the ticket. Ed can see it's "really happening". Ed confirms and follows up with Fred. Fred responds the next time he reviews emails or tickets. Ed follows up with the boss.

    Time for Sue:  ~30 minutes
    Time for boss:  ~15 minutes
    Time for Ed:  ~15 minutes
    Time for Fred:  ~15 minutes

If Fred reviews at least once a day, boss would have his answer latest by mid-day of the following day. As compared to mid-afternoon of the same day while burning a lot of expensive time/resources.