I don't believe it's any more prevalent than the public service sector or any other field where one group is typically inundated with the requests of another gr

I don't believe it's any more prevalent than the public service sector or any other field where one group is typically inundated with the requests of another group, and where request/action responsibility is never reciprocated to even out the power dynamic. Add to that the issue that IT workers rarely get to deal with their users when things work well or perfectly. When IT systems work, they're invisible to the users, and no one thinks to go say thank you. Again this isn't just in IT- things that just work become invisible, and we don't tend to appreciate them until they fail and then are quickly restored. Then we go back to ignoring that the system exists. If the strong majority of your experience in automobiles were crashes, or the only time you saw your parents were when they were angry, your opinions around automobiles, their operators, and parenting would be drastically different than others. There's also just the simple fact that people who tend to deal with machines more often than people may not end up perfectly socialized and end up reacting in a way that feels natural but might be seen as 'different' to those who would work in (say) a daycare all day, unintentionally coming off poorly. A company's Social Club planner is going to have a very different view of what "fun" in the office is compared to most people, I think it just comes down to expressing appreciation and trying to remember that everyone is trying to do their best. I do hope none of this was read as being condescending, I don't intend for it to be.