I was doing a bit of online reading and I found a guide on how to annoy people using instant messaging.
Disregard any presence indicators your colleagues use such as busy or away.
Your needs are more important than anyone else’s and you know that some people regularly set their IM status to busy or away even when they’re working on unimportant stuff. Bonus: if you catch someone at the computer when she says she’s away, berate her for it. She needs to set her presence indicators according to your needs not her own.
I appear as busy at Windows Live Messenger sometimes. I really don’t mind people coming to find me online. If I really don’t want people to find me, trust me, I would have signed out completely.
When I tell people I’m busy and they keep finding me back, I feel like smashing my LCD screen. Okay, I’ll smash that person’s one instead. It’s freaking irritating. It just happened and I told the person I’m busy thrice and only to get a phone call to ask how to spell Nelly Furtado after I went offline answering every question of his.
So please respect people’s status. If they show that they are busy and you really want to talk to them, message something like, “free to chat?” or “mind sparing me five minutes of your time?”. That would most certainly help lots and save a couple of LCD screens.