When the phone rings, lift the receiver, punch whichever button is lit, and say: “Thank you for calling the Marketing Department (or whatever). Kindly hold the line.” Then quickly punch the hold button.

Now you should check around briefly to make sure that everybody the caller could possibly want to talk to is in a meeting. This is also a good time to go to the bathroom. When you return, punch the hold button again, and say: “I am sorry, but whomever the person is to whom you wish to speak is in a meeting at this present time and is expected to remain there until at least the next major economic recession. Did you wish to leave a message?”

Now this is very important: the instant the caller starts to respond, you must say: “Will you please hold again for a moment?” and punch the hold button with a very rapid and sure motion. Now you should head on down to the Supplies Cabinet and get some handy pre-printed phone message forms, in case the caller did wish to leave a message.

When you get back to the desk, push the button again and say, “I am sorry. Now, did you wish to leave a message?” And the caller will say something like, “Listen, I’m calling from France and I don’t want Marketing, so could you ask the operator to transfer ...”

Now at this point, if you are an experienced message-taker, your sixth sense tells you the caller is just about to complete a sentence, and we certainly don’t want that to happen! So you will have to very quickly—but politely!—ask the caller to please hold the line again for a moment, and at the same time strike the hold button the way a hungry cobra strikes a small furry mammal.

Okay, we’re almost ready to take the actual message. Punch the button again, and say (in case the caller has forgotten): “Thank you for calling the Marketing Department! How may we help you?” Now at this point, there is every likelihood that the caller will have hung up. This might seem like a major obstacle, in terms of being able to take a message, but it is not, thanks to the handy pre-printed phone message forms that you got from the Supplies Cabinet. Here is what they look like:

WHILE YOU WERE OUT IN A MEETING

Mr./Mrs./Miss/Ms./Rev./Massa/ (name)

Check one:

Telephoned.

Did not telephone.

Thought about telephoning, but then changed his or her mind.

Telephoned, but could not for the LIFE of him or her remember why.

Telephoned, then hung right up, but I am certain it was him or her.

Wants you to call and attempt to leave a message for him or her.

Wants to fire you.

Wants to reveal a sordid episode from his or her past involving a goat.

Wants to end World Hunger in our lifetime.

Wants your body.

Wants for nothing.

Wants to tell you the joke about the man who finds out he has only eight hours to live, so he goes home and makes love with his wife once, twice, three times, and finally they fall asleep, and at 3 A.M. he tries to wake her up, and she says, “Not AGAIN! Some of us have to get up in the morning!”

Ate paste as a child.

Has the clap.

So all you have to do is check the appropriate space to indicate what message you feel the caller would have left if he or she had had the time. The only hard part is deciding what name you put where it says “name.” I recommend you put the name of a corporate vice-president, for two reasons:

1. It will enhance your reputation as a person who has spoken directly to a vice-president; and

2. Nobody will ever be able to prove that you’re wrong. Any attempt to contact the vice-president about his “message” will result in failure, because he will of course be in a meeting.

Okay. It is all very well and good to be able to take phone messages, but you are never going to get to a position of corporate power, a position where you can cost thousands of people their jobs with a single bone-head decision, until you learn how to attend meetings.

It might be useful to compare the modern corporate meeting to a football huddle, in which the people attending the meeting are a “team,” attempting to come up with a “play” in which each team member will be assigned responsibility to “block” a specific “defender” so that a “fullback” will be able to carry the ball through a “hole” in the “line” and get into the “end zone” for a “touchdown,” which will cause everybody to exchange “high-five” handshakes and slap each other on the “butt.” So we can see that in fact it is not at all useful to compare a modern corporate meeting to a football huddle. It was a pretty stupid idea, and I apologize for it.

Perhaps a better analogy would be to compare the modern corporate meeting to a funeral, in the sense that you have a gathering of people who are wearing uncomfortable clothing and would rather be somewhere else. The major differences are that:

1. Usually only one or two people get to talk at a funeral; and

2. Most funerals have a definite purpose (to say nice things about a dead person) and reach a definite conclusion (this person is put in the ground), whereas meetings generally drone on until the legs of the highest-ranking person present fall asleep.

Also, nothing is ever really buried in a meeting. An idea may look dead, but it will always reappear at another meeting later on. If you have ever seen the movie Night of the Living Dead, you have a rough idea how modern corporations and organizations operate, with projects and proposals that everybody thought were killed constantly rising from their graves to stagger back into meetings and eat the brains of the living.

This depends on what kind of meeting it is. There are two major kinds:

1. MEETINGS THAT ARE HELD FOR BASICALLY THE SAME REASON THAT ARBOR DAY IS OBSERVED, namely, tradition. For example, a lot of managerial people like to meet on Monday, because it is Monday. You’ll get used to it. You’d better, because this kind of meeting accounts for 83 percent of all meetings held (based on a study in which I wrote down numbers until one of them looked about right). This kind of meeting operates the way “Show and Tell” operates in nursery school, with everybody getting to say something, the difference being that in nursery school the kids actually have something new to say. When it’s your turn, you should say you’re still working on whatever it is you’re supposed to be working on. This may seem pretty dumb, since obviously you’d be working on whatever you’re supposed to be working on, and even if you weren’t, you’d claim you were, but this is the traditional thing for everybody to say. It would be a lot faster if the person running the meeting would just say, “Everybody who is still working on whatever he or she is supposed to be working on, raise your hand!” You’d all be out of there in five minutes, even allowing time for jokes. But this is not how we do it in America. My guess is, it’s how they do it over in Japan.

2. MEETINGS WHERE THERE IS SOME ALLEGED PURPOSE. These are trickier, because what you do depends on what the purpose is. Sometimes the purpose is harmless, like somebody wants to show everybody slides of pie charts and give everybody a copy of a big fat report. All you have to do in this kind of meeting is sit there and have elaborate sexual fantasies, then take the report back to your office and throw it away, unless of course you’re a vice-president, in which case you write the name of a subordinate in the upper right-hand corner, followed by a question mark, like this: “Norm?” Then you send it to Norm and forget all about it (although it will plague old Norm for the rest of his career).

But sometimes you go to meetings where the purpose is to get your “input” on something. This is very serious, because what it means is, they want to make sure that in case whatever it is turns out to be stupid or fatal, you’ll get some of the blame. I mean, if they thought it was any good, they wouldn’t want your “input,” would they? So you have to somehow escape from the meeting before they get around to asking you anything. One way is to set fire to your tie. Another is to have an accomplice interrupt the meeting and announce that you have a phone call from somebody very important, such as the president of the company, or the Pope. It should be either one or the other. It would sound fishy if the accomplice said, “You have a call from the president of the company. Or the Pope.”