> When you're the phone company, calls are free

Not so. But the culture prioritized phone use in a way

that's been completely forgotten. High execs would

answer their own phones when they were at their

desks. "Your call is very important to us. Please wait

for the first available representative" would have been

anathema. 

One of my few managerial decrees in the Unix lab was

to give a year's notice that "research" would  stop

forwarding Usenet traffic, not because of phones, but

because uucp was becoming a burden on our computer.

Doug