> I had the exact opposite problem when I was both a TA and later a professor. I would beg and plead for my students to come to office hours. ... And then I'd get feedback at the end of the semester that I "was never available to help."

My first year of grad school I had this problem and it made me immediately become disillusioned because the reality was so starkly different from what students wrote.

I worked in my office and would be there from 9am/10am till 10pm most days. I had an open door policy along with my scheduled office hours and 2 lab sections. I also frequently responded to emails at or after midnight. I wrote custom mini lectures for the lab sessions based on asking students (in those lab sessions) what were the things they were struggling on (and using what I ended up helping the most on + feedback from the good students that were always the "help sinks" where others would go to them for help). My own office mates complained at the end of the term (but not before. To be fair, I was usually the only one in the office (of 3) and the other two only started showing up more at the end of the term). YET I was student ranked as 2 standard deviations below the median for availability and one below my department.

I literally could not be more available! What's worse, is the department sent an email to me about how I should be more available. -__- What I learned is that these things don't mean anything about my performance. They were low ranked because the course was very hard. This is also a course I caught 2 junior CS students cheating and told the professor and I that they didn't know "GitHub" was on the internet (syllabus had a weird policy about not using the internet, but intended to basically mean don't copy GitHub or SO solutions). I had a hard time trying to not fall over laughing and I saw the prof's brain just break.

(Side note on that last part. We reported it to the department. They didn't care. It is because it makes the department look bad because the uni measures department rates of cheating by how many people are formally disciplined for cheating and so if you don't report it, you don't look like your department has a problem. We gave them a 0 on the assignment and said they'd fail if they did it again. They did anyways)

(I also had two students write that I was the best TA they've ever had and two students write that I was the worst. I learned a lot, that's for sure)