Got our legal bill from my company's fine lawyers. Along with all the hourly rates for the various people who've worked on our stuff in the past month (at hourly rates I wish I could command) was this entry:

Disbursements: Telecommunication Costs $0.16

Sixteen cents? Someone in the company actually kept track of the cost for a single long-distance charge during the month so I could be billed sixteen cents?!?!

What next, are they going to charge me for the postage to mail me the bill? A per-bit fee for sending them E-mail? Management and billing for paperclips and staples?

"Better reuse that staple, Bob. It's worth money."

The more interesting question is, in this age of business long-distance charges of under $0.03/minute, who exactly decided that it was worth the cost to maintain a billing structure to track long-distance charges?