While not addictive, I’ve made tools at work that people become dependent on. They were quick and dirty solutions to make things a bit easier than the manual process people typically did. If the tool broke for some reason, they’ll throw up their hands and think they can’t do the work anymore, instead of doing what they had done before it existed. They also won’t tell me it isn’t working, so I have no idea.

I really have no idea how to solve this. With one of the bigger ones, I handed it off to someone still in the trenches recently. He’s closer to the work, so it makes sense that he can see when it’s broken and be empowered to fix it himself. At the same time, he learns some new skills and reaches out to me when he has questions.