The hour was late, quite late, in fact, somewhere around 8 p.m. The office had technically been closed since 5 p.m., but I was still there working with two volunteers. I was tasked with the job of preparing registration packets for the 1,300 or so incoming guests at a conference. The sponsoring organization had contracted with me to coordinate the conference, which required me to spend some time at the main office.

I had the situation well in hand, and my team of volunteers and I were well on our way to getting the packets completed and in the mail except for one persistent and annoying person—the CEO of said organization. All day long he kept leaving his office and invading our work space.

It would have been fine if he merely came in to check on progress or came at our invitation to solve a problem (we weren’t having any). But he felt he needed to make a contribution to the effort, so he kept coming in to do things. One particularly annoying interference came when he suddenly decided that the font used to print out confirmation letters should be changed.

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