LastPass is especially horrible at this. I have it configured _not_ to start with windows because I don't want it running in the background. Whenever I need to open it, I launch it, copy the password to the clipboard and paste it into whatever program, and click the X or hit alt-f4 to close it. Unfortunately, it does not close. It minimizes itself to the system tray, and gives me a helpful notification to let me know that my attempt to close it has failed. In order to close it, I must right click the tray icon, at which point the icon moves to hide itself in the hidden tray icons due to a bug in either LastPass or more likely in Windows itself. So now I have to click the overflow menu on the tray and right-click the icon again to close it. Finally LastPass is closed.
Now, due to another bug in Windows, the overflow menu has remained open and must be manually closed. The third bug here is when I alt-tab out of LastPass, it doesn't take me back to the most recent application; instead it dumps me on the desktop or some other program at random (why is the desktop even there in the alt-tab menu?)
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Applications abuse the systray to force themselves on the user and that is a bad thing, that should not be supported or apologized for.
I'm not against apps running in background, just that monolithic implementation with systray is the wrong approach. Android has shown a good model: background service that cannot talk to UI, but can send notifications or communicate with separate UI app. With this model, user has control over what is running in background or what started on login time by system (not app-specific!)-provided tools, like systemd user units under Linux or LaunchAgents under macOS. When the user wants something off, it will be turned off in one place, with no ors or buts or other black patterns that prevent user turning the application off.
Now, due to another bug in Windows, the overflow menu has remained open and must be manually closed. The third bug here is when I alt-tab out of LastPass, it doesn't take me back to the most recent application; instead it dumps me on the desktop or some other program at random (why is the desktop even there in the alt-tab menu?)