Are your days at work being wasted by the minutes being requested by the various people?

Being retired..no.
But it used to be thirty odd kids who insisted on asking questions and having their work marked.
Very annoying.

Definitely. There’s times when I’ll be pulled to the side for that “minute” and it’ll be twenty minutes later before I’ll have an opportunity to break away. It’s fine though. They needed me and all that jazz but more often than not I didn’t need the extra commentary along the way holding me up. And I usually come back to a huge clusterfuck that takes a good mental repositioning to dive into the dismantling of it.

The solution to that is very simple. When someone asks if you have a minute, just take out a stopwatch before saying "sure". No further comment or explanation needed.

Often yes, or by tasks that people should be able to do without me but still come to me for.

Set a timer on your phone when they say it ... and cut them off once the timer goes off. Well unless it's a client, then just gently warn them 😄

Yep. Or, can we hop on a quick zoom call.

No MFer. I don’t want to.

That just means you’re important and reliable.

No quickies for you 😜

Unfortunately, yes.
Like - sod off, mate.
It's not gonna code itself.

L'enfer c'est les autres.