HR SoapBox: No Computers Were Harmed In The Writing Of This Article

Are you the type of person who believes that using body English will direct your bowling ball down the middle of the lane? I am. I know that if I lean far enough over to one side and repeatedly wave my arms in the same direction like an air traffic controller and yell, "Hook!" several times, my ball will move away from the gutter it is slowly rolling towards. So I'm also the type of person who believes that my computer will respond to coaxing and begging when it acts up. Although sometimes the response is that it just ignores me and does whatever it wants. Which is usually something bad.

When my screen suddenly freezes or unwanted style changes suddenly appear in my text document, I know it's not me. Can't be. All I'm doing is typing. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. No reason for the computer to start acting up. While I'm generally a patient, levelheaded person, when coaxing and begging don't work, I have to resort to stronger measures. If my computer doesn't respond to a few choice swear words, smacking the side of the monitor or pounding the mouse on the desk ought to fix it.

My name is Gloria, and I have computer rage.

I'm certainly not alone. Kent Norman, the director of the University of Maryland's Laboratory for Automation Psychology and Decision Processes, created a website all about computer rage at http://www.lap.umd.edu/computer_rage/. I was amazed by the anecdotes individuals shared involving smashing, burning, throwing, crushing, nuking, and otherwise destroying computer equipment. (How do you suppose employees explain to their employers why their monitor is now in a million pieces or why their hard drive has footprints all over it?) Luckily, I've never felt the need to go that far.

If you are prone to acts of computer rage...well, at least it's better than taking your frustrations out on a co-worker! Just be sure to protect yourself. Buy extended warranties for your keyboard and mouse (which are easily launchable). And safety gear to protect your eyes (from flying pieces) and hands (from breaking before the computer does).

But seriously, I learned to just walk away before I hit the rage stage. In fact, I walk right over to our resident IT gurus for help, rather than do something that could make things worse. But they have taught me an alternative to lashing out against my computer. My main mantra now: When in doubt, reboot. That usually does the trick for the most inexplicable computer malfunction.

Another secret: Saving and backing up. Frequently. While it doesn't prevent or solve my computer's misbehavior, it does help keep my frustration levels down because I'm not at risk of losing hours of work for no good reason.

My computer still gives me occasion to swear at it, but I have been keeping my hands to myself. Once in a while, I kick the hard drive that sits under my desk. On accident. I swear!

Good luck, stay legal, and lay off the hardware!

Gloria Ju
Senior Editor