Life & Wisdom Quote by Harold Coffin

Coffin’s line is a neat little tripwire: it starts as a tidy taxonomy of workplace expertise, then detonates with that last clause, turning a management bromide into a jab at organizational vanity. The opening sets up familiar stereotypes - the executive as generalist, the technician as specialist - a pairing that flatters both roles. Then he slips in the switchboard operator, a job associated with low status and clerical labor, and crowns them with omniscience. The punchline isn’t just “ha-ha, gossip.” It’s a critique of how information actually moves inside institutions: not through org charts or strategy decks, but through the overlooked nodes that route calls, messages, favors, and small humiliations.

The subtext is bluntly democratic and a little cynical. Power likes to imagine itself as knowledge: executives “know” broadly because they’re paid to decide; technicians “know” deeply because they’re paid to execute. Coffin suggests a third category that neither MBA nor engineer controls: social intelligence. The operator knows everything because they sit at the switchpoint of human behavior, overhearing patterns, moods, alliances, and crises. In a pre-email office, the switchboard was literally the network; today it’s the assistant, the IT help desk, the group chat admin, the person who “just handles logistics.”

Context matters: the line comes from a mid-century corporate culture that publicly worshiped expertise and hierarchy while privately running on informal channels. Coffin skewers that hypocrisy with a single reversal: the least prestigious role becomes the most informed, reminding you that organizations are less like machines than like villages with payroll.