Maybe you will get to it at some point in this story but in my work, I can create value greater than my pay with just a couple insightful or innovative contributions each year. I am very much less likely to come up with those contributions if I am not interacting with design and production teams and those interactions are often spontaneous and face to face. Oh, and that is in addition to the routine mentoring and document processing that fills the rest of my time not spent in meetings. E-mails, my inbox is not a burden, I wish my coworkers would express themselves more often in e-mail or PM's. Communications is key to my productivity, I can't fix problems if I don't know about them. A simple e-mail could start a chain of events that could save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars and save our customers months of schedule. So, even if I was twiddling my thumbs 90% of the time, I would be contributing much more than my pay costs the company. You need to open your aperture and see the bigger picture. 90% of white-collar productivity is accomplished in 10% of the labor hours but if you eliminated 50% of those hours, chances are you will be eliminating the productive 10%.

TEK