An apparatus, program product and method of handling tasks that are sleeping and waiting for the completion of I/O operations of other tasks comprises determining a second task which is to await the completion of the I/O operations of a first task, and putting the second task to sleep. A timer is created and associated with the second task. The timer expires when a predetermined wait interval is exceeded. When the timer expires, the sleeping second task is awoken so that a sleeping task is generally prevented from waiting indefinitely for the I/O operations of another task.