That pesky admin password

Most everyone has heard some of the stories about the frustrations of providing tech support. Here's a fun one that Help writers will appreciate:

My friend Duane was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon. He noticed a patron sitting in front of one of the workstations with his arms across his chest as he stared at the screen. When my friend asked if the guy needed help, he replied, "It's about time! I pushed the F1 button over 20 minutes ago!"

So it's understandable that an admin might get fed up at times. But holding the password to the city's network hostage is...extreme, no? (I can see it as grounds for being fired, but I'm really curious which law they charged him for violating.) Although there are probably many admins who would sympathize with the lawyer's explanation:

"Mr. Childs had good reason to be protective of the password," Crane said. "His co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it ... and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves.

"He was the only person in that department capable of running that system," Crane said. "There have been no established policies in place to even dictate who would be the appropriate person to hand over the password to."