Here’s a detail of my professional life that has been bothering me for a while. I suppose I could summarize it by saying this: the levels to which people within our society’s various echelons of corporate structure fail to grasp even the most obvious and obtuse details of said structure is pure madness. Let me explain.

If you’ve never worked in big business, you may be surprised and somewhat disheartened to find out that no CEO, VP, or other such high-ranking officer within a company writes, speaks, or really thinks for him/herself. When you receive a letter, a phone call, a greeting card from a person of this nature, you’re actually receiving the product of a team of assistants, analysts, and other sundry staffers. Hell, s/he probably didn’t even sign it her/himself. Them’s the breaks, and you might as well get over it. I don’t really have a problem with this, per se, though I find it pretty amusing. The simple truth is that the success and endurance of the American corporate structure rests heavily on the elaborate system of buffers that surround The Powers That Be. It’s pretty reasonable, really—if we allowed anyone and everyone access, both incoming and outgoing, to TPTB, the bullshit levels would really get to be intolerable. The teams of buffer staff would instead spend their time cleaning up all the messes created therein rather than maintain what actually shakes out to be a pretty efficient buffer system.

Anyway, so the buffers are real. What really rattles me is the levels to which people from other equally corporate structures seem completely oblivious to and often indignant about the existence of such buffers in my organization. What the hell? The number of people who call here and ask to speak to our SVP (asking for him, of course, by FIRST NAME) and proceed to identify themselves only by their first name and refuse to state their company or purpose for calling is really staggering. Seriously. They try everything, too. They’ll get all shirty and demand to speak to him, then they’ll name-drop for a minute, assuming we’ve never heard of these people but will be really impressed that the caller has a battery of names to vomit on command. I have to admit, the snarkier people get with us, the more resistant we are to let them through the buffer.

Oh, and don’t believe it, ever, when anyone tells you so-and-so is in a meeting/just stepped away/is behind closed doors if you’ve already told them your name and reason for calling. You’ve just been defeated by the buffer, and there’s nothing you can do about it.