How do you deal with network blaming?

What the title says.

Here’s the longer version: I’ve got a good job, a great schedule, and a supportive boss. I’m the sole person responsible for the operation and performance of a mutli-site enterprise network.

At the same time, I have about 1000 internal users who are convinced I don’t know what I’m doing, including powerful decision-makers above my boss.

Nearly all of the issues our staff runs into are run-of-the-mill remote web server anomalies, user-created circumstances (hasn’t rebooted in four months or has 9 billion tabs open), or our user has very dated hardware (devices with 5200rpm HDDs, 2.4 GHz-only WLAN adapters, hasn’t been re-images in 5+ years). But to our users, these are all “network” issues indicative of an incompetent IT staff and our network is slow and broken and never works.

I know the obvious solution here is data, data, and more data, but these aren’t people who are willing to even consider listening to a layman’s explanation of any data I collect. I’ve tried to keep my head down and block out the noise, but the constant barrage of criticism is demoralizing and it’s really starting to eat away at my confidence.

What do you guys/girls do in blaming/burnout situations like these?